ABSTRACT
A comprehensive analysis of the incident was undertaken by a group of researchers which comprised psychologists from various Home Team departments. The researchers reviewed the scientific literature and research on crowd psychology theories prior to analysing the Little India riot data. Little India is a historic cultural district in Singapore. As the Indian and Bangladeshi foreign worker populations in Singapore increased, Little India naturally became a locus of activity among them. The chapter discusses a psychological and behavioural analysis of the incident, crowd psychology theories and their relevance to this incident, and indicates some lessons for crowd management. The classical theories of crowd psychology emerged in the European social sciences in the late nineteenth century and their most prominent theorists were the French scholars Gustave Le Bon and Gabriel Tarde. The elaborated social identity model is the most widely used theory to explain crowd behaviour as it accounts for ideological and structural settings.
