How applied crowds actually act. And what the police do wrong
The world is in turmoil. Randal and Revolt alleries, times during the "Third half" after sporting events, sometimes with socio-political background "Blockupy" or other protests ("A society with ragged nerves that are delivered to the bitterness and anger"To). So the scenery is not new: Through used people provide bloody strain battle with the police. Clear, violent enthusiasts gave and there is always. But often peaceful demonstrators can be infected and voices in the choir of violence with one. Which mechanisms are here at the factory? And what role does the police play?
"The violence potential is always present in primary peaceful groups of people", explains Clifford Stott. The English social psychologist researches the University of Leeds and is considered one of the worldwide leading experts for protests, violent priorities and the secrets of group dynamics. Stott has examined several mobs in recent years and coordinated, for example, the security precautions for the Fubball European Championship 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.
After Stott, the opposite police work is often based on traditional and all over unscientific amptions. In some cases, these amptions are still based on Gustave Le Bons ideologically fabricated work psychology of the masses from 1895. According to Le Bon, crowds are characterized by one "Reduction of the mind", one "Discontinuation of the personality" as well as a "Resume the brain life and a prevalence of the backmarks" the end.
Le Bon looks in such masses "barbarian" and irrational action piles of faded stakeholders, the herd shoot and "Collective Halluzinations" be subject. The individual personality is simply cut out. The picture of senseless and uncontrollable people who are fahig to everything is still prasent today in our power – and a popular motif of the media.
"Mass ramps are pathologized by politicians and media", criticize steam. Even if the television images usually suggest other: MOBS never behave irrational or morbid in his opinion: "With such false explanation patterns, state and police have been released from their responsibility for centuries. And your equally wrong answer is: repression", so stalk.
How is a heterogeneous group a homogeneous community?
The social psychologist does not want to justify violence, but understand. And the success gives him right: the largely non-violent-free "Summer march" During the 2006 Fubball World Cup had quickly become a horror movie, if the police had trusted the basic amptions of the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM). The Esim, who has developed Stott together with the social psychologists Stephen richer and John Drury, tries to explain group dynamics:
Imagine, you are at the end of the work at a superfilled supermarket fund. You have nothing in common with the other waiting, you may have hungry and want to go home. But then they see through the shop window a group of teenagers, the breadradder steals and willfully scratch the paint of parked cars. From a moment to the other solidarize with the other customers, storming from the supermarket and put the taders – the waiting customers automatically have a common "social identity" developed and see one in the group of young people "opponent" Your own interest group: "We here – you there."
At the supermarket strain, it can certainly happen that people consciously ignore the situation and wait for someone throwing the first stone. For this purpose, a demonstration can come much more rather because people deliberately go to the strain here to formulate a common will.
But such a mob does not behave barbaric, as Le Bon, media and politics assert, but always according to certain patterns: individuals who are in a group of people think for themselves. That’s how you have individual thoughts and emotions. However, at the top of their individual iceberg, they fully fleet a change towards the social identity, each other all other individuals of the group.
If this accumulation is now undifferentiated by the police – for example through water windows, Tranengas or the aimous use of rubber sutures or even firearms -, then the group has a common opponent, and the feeling of social identity is stronger. The still thinking individual solidarizes with the group and fails to her horny. And if this group is threatened by the police, then she is forcibly defeated. Even a peaceful way to think then: "The police attack us in love and brutally, I have to stand by my fellow human beings."
If the police then react undifferentiated and inappropriate to the protesters – with waterers, tranengas or pivoting -, this happens exactly what happens to the customers in the supermarket: the individual individuals feel threatened as a disclosed interest group and thus strengthens their social identity: "As soon as the police goes without the crowd, a homogeneous community is formed from a heterogeneous group. We against that, it then is called", How Clifford Stott.
Policemen, according to the social psychologist, should not attack the collection as such, but targeted those from the crowd that are involved in criminal actions. If innocent and peaceful demonstrators are arrested or injured, the situation can tip over any moment and escalate the violence.
Crowds act rationally, if the police are rational
Stott emphasizes that one must interfere with single stars, during group of people of the dialogue the A and O was. That may sound pathetic, but have preserved in practice. Unarmed de-skid teams, street workers and appecoming speaker announcements, sat down more than a pinpeling phalanx of policemen.
His research results around the EMIS show that crowds act rationally if the police themselves act as rational. Therefore, the police often carry the main debt when Hooligan or applied mobs whole inner fashion turn to the left or escalate themselves. If the police ame in the outset that the masses are violent, then they occur accordingly and thus succulse the potential for violence – the police cabled rattle leads to a danger "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy".
The situation becomes particularly tricky when the proper dogs have already borned their beliefs in front of the upstream. There are countless examples: In August 2011, Policemen in Tottenham shot the drug dealer Mark Duggan (the sad truth of the Riots =; in Marz 2013, Policemen in New York tied the 16-year Kimani Gray with Elf Schussen (New York police explored Brooklyner district "Frozen zone"To). Both times it came to massive riots that made headlines worldwide. The involved mobs had understood in their social identity as a morally legitimate Robin Hoods of society – as Duggan and Gray in the eyes of the demonstrators "their people" was.
The New Yorker "Stop-and-Frisk Program", to be stopped and felted at the passers-by, such violent busts fueled, because they drove to comprehensible mistrust towards the police. Similar applies to the "Racial Profiling", How it is practiced in England, but currently in Hamburg and other German bads: the indiscriminately suspicious and felting of people alone due to their skin color escape immense rage against the ordinals. As long as the police continue with these practices in everyday life and in demonstrations, as long as she will provoke stogs also provoke rioting.