ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the crowd, especially in its more dynamic, emotional forms, then with the audience, and also with the broader psychological features of mass behavior in our modern world. A crowd is a gathering of a considerable number of persons around a center, or point of common attention. In analogy to the movement of iron filings around a magnet, there is a polarization of individuals with reference to something seen, heard, or otherwise sensed together. Important features of a crowd are its transitory nature, its spatial distribution, and a common focus of attention and action. The brutal lynching of a Negro, Arthur Stevens, in one of our Southern states, well illustrates the operation of an attack-rage crowd. Man in mass society is easily aroused to a pitch of enthusiasm for this cause or that, but may be thrown into despair by reverses as easily as the man in an action-crowd.
