ABSTRACT
T he study of collective behavior has a long and illustrious history in social psychology. It was the study of collective behavior that very much defi ned the new discipline of social psychology at its inception in the late 19th and early 20th century, and collective phenomena such as crowds, riots, deindividuation, and particularly group processes and intergroup relations have maintained a high profi le ever since. However, at the same time social psychology has also focused on the self-contained individual person who processes and represents information, has feelings, engages in behavior, and interacts with individual others, an approach that often treats people as being fundamentally different from one another and having unique biographies and enduring personalities.
