Early theories of collective behavior tended to regard it as negative, associating it with the rise of fascism and communism in Europe during the 1930s. Crowd behavior was seen as irrational and dangerous because it suppressed individual will, and posed a threat to the democratic political order and established ways of life. Other theories have regarded collective movements as meaningful acts striving to affect positive social change. Hence, collective behavior theory has influenced social movement research. For instance, by treating social movements as rational, strategically calculating political phenomena, resource mobilization theory embraces the rationalism implied in the collective behavior perspective. Other scholars, by contrast, focus on the supposedly irrational aspects of social movement activity, such as emotional expression and feelings of anger, injustice, and indignation, which help explain not only why people become involved in collective action in the first place, but also why they continue to participate over time.

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Collective Behavior

Stephen Markson, Erich Goode · Teaching Sociology · 1994

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Collective behavior,

LaPiere, Richard T. (Richard Tracy), 1899-1986. · The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association

Cited by 0Open access

Collective Behavior

Paul Vanderbroeck · 1987

Cited by 42Open access

Collective Behavior.

Richard T. LaPiere · Journal of Educational Sociology · 1939

Cited by 30

Collective Behavior:

2024

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Collective Behavior

Robert L. Goldstone, Todd M. Gureckis · Topics in Cognitive Science · 2009

The resurgence of interest in collective behavior is in large part due to tools recently made available for conducting laboratory experiments on groups, statistical methods for analyzing large data sets reflecting social interactions, the rapid growth of a diverse variety of online self-organized collectives, and computational modeling methods for understanding both universal and scenario-specific social patterns. We consider case studies of collective behavior along four attributes: the primary motivation of individuals within the group, kinds of interactions among individuals, typical dynamics that result from these interactions, and characteristic outcomes at the group level. With this framework, we compare the collective patterns of noninteracting decision makers, bee swarms, groups forming paths in physical and abstract spaces, sports teams, cooperation and competition for resource usage, and the spread and extension of innovations in an online community. Some critical issues surrounding collective behavior are then reviewed, including the questions of "Does group behavior always reduce to individual behavior?""Is 'group cognition' possible?" and "What is the value of formal modeling for understanding group behavior?"

Cited by 117Open access

Collective behavior

Morrison, Denton Edward, Hornback, Kenneth E. · 1976

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Collective Locomotion as Collective Behavior

Clark McPhail, Ronald T. Wohlstein · American Sociological Review · 1986

Milling clusters, surges within gatherings, street actions, demonstration marches, and state processions are forms of social behavior with which we mark points along a continuum of collective locomotion. A theoretical framework, field observations, measurement criteria and procedures are presented to systematically describe variations in the complexity of collective locomotion. An explanation for these variations is drawn from the ideas of G. H. Mead and from the cybernetic model of W. T. Powers. Field observations and quasi-experimental evidence are presented in support of that explanation. Implications are discussed for the recharacterization and explanation of, and for future research on, other elementary forms of collective behavior.

Cited by 51

Collective Behavior with Endogenous Thresholds Collective Behavior with Endogenous

Sergei Izmalkov, Vijay Krishna, Dmitri Kvassov et al. · 2006

We endogenize the threshold points in Granovetter’s threshold model of collective behavior (Granovetter 1978). We do this in a simple model that combines strategic complementarity and private information in a dynamic setup with endogenous order of moves. Looking at Granovetter’s model in the strategic context allows us to highlight the sensitivity of collective outcomes to the timing of the games and the reversibility of the actions, and to emphasize an extra incentive for people to follow other people: to encourage more people to follow them.

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Extremal collective behavior

Eric W. Justh, P. S. Krishnaprasad · 2010

Curves and natural frames can be used for describing and controlling motion in both biological and engineering contexts (e.g., pursuit and formation control). The geometry of curves and frames leads naturally to a Lie group formulation where coordinated motion is represented by interacting particles on Lie groups - specifically, SE(2) or SE(3). Here we consider a particular type of optimal control problem in which the interactions between particles arise from a cost function dependent on each particle's steering, and which penalizes steering differences between the particles (expressed via the graph Laplacian). With this choice of cost function, we are able to perform Lie-Poisson reduction. Furthermore, we are able to derive a closed-form expression (using Jacobi elliptic functions) for certain special solutions of the coupled multi-particle problem on SE(2).

Cited by 8

- Collective Community Behavior

2013

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