Gustave Le Bon, the author of Mob, is French. Speaking of France, there is no way to bypass the revolution. The observation point of this book is based on the transitional period after the Great Revolution. The group will gradually enter the political life of the country and gradually become the ruling class. This background also makes group psychology more worthy of study.
The most striking feature of the group defined in psychology is the disappearance of individuals, and the thoughts and feelings of individuals in the group will develop in one direction, which makes the group have great power that no one can stop. Influenced by more powerful unconscious factors, the group has several basic characteristics: first, it is impulsive, changeable and impatient, because the individuals in the group lack the ability to deal with stimulus reactions, and the social constraints on individuals disappear under the protection of the group; The second is easy to be hinted and credulous. From this perspective, history has also become unreliable; The third is the exaggeration and simplification of feelings; Fourth, they are intolerant, pretentious and conservative, but arrogant and eager to be enslaved; Fifth, the moral level of the group, whether low or noble, is extreme. In addition, the group has no rational reasoning ability, and only mixes seemingly similar things together, but it has rich imagination and is easily influenced by hints.
The basic characteristics of the group make all their beliefs have religious forms, and the leader supported by a certain group is the real god in the eyes of this group. Therefore, to become a leader of a group, we must first gain prestige through personal charm or social status and wealth, and continue to successfully maintain prestige with firm will, and then drive the group through assertion, repetition and infection. However, this driving force is often not lasting, because although the group concept appears superficial variability, its core is stubborn, which takes a long time to produce and is difficult to change. Once a leader runs counter to the general beliefs and feelings of the group, it will not last long.
Group concept is mainly determined by saving factors and immediate factors, the former is a deep-seated factor. The factors of salvation are race, tradition, time, political and social system, institutions and education, among which race is the most powerful factor; Direct factors include images, words and phrases, hallucinations, uselessness and irrationality of experience.
At the end of the book, it analyzes four heterogeneous groups of individuals with various characteristics, occupations and intelligence levels, namely, criminal group, jury group, voter group and parliamentary group, and summarizes the same stage of civilization evolution: at the beginning of civilization, a group of individuals from all directions gathered together, and naturally formed laws formed the only bond of the whole. A long time and a consistent environment have created a race. Race has acquired the basic idea of an ideal, and a civilization including system, belief and art began to be born around this ideal, but when civilization develops to a certain extent, it will inevitably be destroyed. The ideals supported by the state began to weaken, the religious, political and social structures began to shake, and the crowd eventually became individuals lacking unity. Civilization is only superficial, and the country has begun to exert significant influence. When all civilizations dried up, the rabble began to carry out the historical mission and the revolution began. This is the life cycle process of a nation. So the book says that there can be no civilization without tradition, and there can be no progress without destroying tradition.
It is undoubtedly an interesting angle to look at the course of society and civilization from the perspective of psychology with the group as the fulcrum, but the views in the book are undoubtedly inconsistent with socialism. To sum up, the book recognizes that groups or people are promoters of history, but one is destruction and the other is creation. This is debatable. In addition, the discrimination against women's psychology and intelligence revealed in the book makes people disagree.
I watched Mob 2, Many hands make light work, Many people gather firewood, and Unity is power. Throughout the ages, various expressions of words are nothing more than praise for the "group", and we rarely see alternative voices. But think about it carefully, why do more and more people in today's society like to act recklessly in their own small world, but once they are integrated into the group, they feel uncomfortable and nervous. Is this a choice for personal interests?
I heard about mobs a long time ago. Just from its title, we can see the author's attitude towards the group. As a book with far-reaching influence in the field of social psychology, I can't help but admire the author's definition of group after in-depth reading. The realistic description and incisive criticism, combined with familiar historical facts, further demonstrated the author's point of view. Its description of individual psychology, with the terrible transformation of individuals due to the influence of groups, makes people feel the same, but it also breaks the fixed concepts that people have formed or been instilled for a long time.
No one in this world exists alone, or it can be said that people can't exist without other things. Every individual is interrelated, nothing more than time and space, poverty and wealth, and status. Everyone is part of a group. Perhaps this is also the essential reason why individuals can't get rid of the negative influence brought by groups.
Starting from the characteristics and concepts of the group, the book explains how people become a member of the group from a single individual, blurring their self-awareness, losing their subjective thinking, logic and judgment, gradually assimilating into the wisdom of the group, and then making unimaginable and shocking moves. Groups can rise up to overthrow the autocratic ruling class and call for freedom and equality, but they can also gather into a rabble, lose themselves, lose their basic moral judgment and slaughter and cleanse.
Nowadays, the social news and the comments of major public opinion positions are full of cyber violence and keyboard man everywhere, whether it is "onlookers encouraged to commit suicide by jumping off a building because of novelty, and the audience in the live broadcast left a message to watch the anchor commit suicide" or "the source of happiness-a word from a sand sculpture netizen instantly relaxed the unhappy heart". This is the so-called group that can nourish human survival and promote collective death. This is the power of group public opinion.
This book lists the impulsiveness, variation and irritability of this group, as well as its vulnerability to suggestion and credulity. Collective suggestion will instantly form a consistent tendency of this group's feelings. Therefore, the group will listen to all the hints from the outside world without any purpose, lacking their own opinions, judgments and critical spirit. If we put the concepts in the book in the present, it is also close to reality. Even in China, a wait-and-see nation, there is a rabble temperament.
This book was written in the 1930s, during the French Revolution. Some of its viewpoints are biased, but the author's ideas are not out of date. Le Pen said that groups can only do two things-icing on the cake and adding insult to injury. The individual's thoughts and emotions are too weak, no matter whether they are good or bad, the influence is not great, and it is difficult to transform them into external behaviors. If it is sublimated into group thought, it will do great harm to society.
In such an era of information explosion, Mob can provide us with a good alert to the subtle assimilation of groups.
Mob 3 is the most famous social psychology work of Gustave Le Bon, a famous French social psychologist. This book is not very thick, but it describes the different mentality of people when they form a group. After reading the general characteristics of groups, I suddenly realized that people, people gathered together, and psychological groups are so different.
The individual is the simplest composition. Think alone, act alone. These personalities do not necessarily remain after individuals gather in groups. People get together, if only a lot of people stand together, it can only be called crowding, not a group of psychological research. Only when people gather in a group and enter a state, form a unique existence and are dominated by the spirit of the group can psychological groups be formed.
The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in the same direction are the primary characteristics of people who are about to become organized groups. It sounds obscure, but the reality is true. As a basic part of society, human nature is bound to be complex and changeable. As the saying goes, "people talk nonsense", so does the integration of individuals into groups. A group of people around a man did what he was afraid to do, so they did it with a clear conscience, good or bad.
The most striking feature of psychological groups is that once these individuals who form a group gain collective psychology, no matter what lifestyle, occupation, personality or intelligence they have as independent individuals, their inherent thoughts and feelings will change whether they are the same or not, and the individuals who form a group are different from isolated individuals. As the book says: "If there is no group, some thoughts or feelings will not happen at all in the individual, or they will not become actions." Just like the incident of robbing Shuanghuanglian during the epidemic.
When analyzing the causes of psychological group characteristics, the book points out that groups are more likely to make people lose their sense of responsibility and vent their instinctive desires. There is an infection between groups, just like invisible hypnosis, which is enough to make people sacrifice their personal interests for the sake of collective interests at any time. Under the influence of infection, groups are more likely to accept hints. After careful analysis by the author, this group suddenly became a strange and even magical force in my heart. Because of the existence of groups, sometimes it will lead to the bloodiest atrocities, and sometimes it only takes a sweet word to wake them up.
It is true that China, as a socialist country that emphasizes collectivism, has more obvious psychological group characteristics. However, the upsurge and flood of public sentiment are not "China characteristics". Any society will face such a process in the transition period, which can be said to be the only way for a society to move from prosperity to civilization. History shows us how the United States became a relatively happy and just society through the efforts of two generations in the period of 1890- 1920, or how Spain moved from the depression and closure of Franco's era to openness, freedom and prosperity in the period of 1976-202 1.
With the continuous improvement of China's economic strength and its gradual integration into the world, we should have a calm and rational understanding of the current situation of public opinion fanaticism, and we should not be passive and pessimistic, let alone blindly optimistic. But what we need to be wary of is that we can't let a vague emotion turn into a true belief. If this exaggerated and simple emotion becomes a real power that can dominate the group, its harm to society will be incalculable. We have reason to believe that the present situation of China society is only a transitional stage. Although the road ahead is full of thorns, we can finally cross it.
Comment on Mob 4 Mob is a classic of French Gustave Le Bon, and it is also the foundation work of group psychology that affects the world. The book tells where the group psychology is affected, the difference between groups and individuals, and the relationship between groups and leaders. There are many examples about the characteristics of group psychology and its influence on society in this book.
Ponle said, "The individuals in a group are like a grain of sand in the desert, which can be blown anywhere by the wind." I think this metaphor is very appropriate and vividly reflects the performance of individuals after being grouped. This is why the phenomenon of drifting with the tide is getting stronger and stronger nowadays. In the above-mentioned examples of cyber violence, it not only reflects the impulsive, impatient and changeable group characteristics, but also reflects their characteristics of being easily hinted, trusting others, and having a very paranoid and strong moral sense, which forms the so-called moral kidnapping on the Internet. Groups are often not good at thinking, they will simply identify a truth or a mistake. Because they have too many "brains", and there is only one kind of thinking in so many brains, that is group thinking. This is what Ponle calls group accumulation, only stupidity, not cleverness. This is the embodiment of the continuous lack of individual consciousness in the group. The disappearance of such a conscious personality and the rise of an unconscious personality will make people completely obey the person who made the conscious personality disappear, and even make things that go against common sense or contradict his personality at the hint.
People will force others to do things that satisfy their moral sense because of their strong and paranoid moral sense, such as forcing the rich to donate money in disasters and forcing others to give up their seats on buses regardless of physical reasons. If you choose to refuse, a group of people will flock to accuse you. These acts are regarded by the organization as doing justice for heaven. But the reality is that people point fingers without knowing the truth, which may be the most painful for the parties, and those who wear moral aura may be the real perpetrators.
Therefore, as far as social progress is concerned, it is very important for individuals to retain their conscious personality. Don't blindly believe what others say, and don't blindly choose to be forced to socialize. As individuals, the only thing we can do is not to let our thoughts become the racetrack of others. The most important thing to keep self-awareness is self-awareness. Only by being confident in your point of view and judging right and wrong can you stick to it.
In terms of groups, a positive hint is also important because "groups are not planned in advance at all." They can be inspired by the most contradictory emotions, but they are often influenced by the current stimulating factors. They are like leaves rolled up by a strong wind, flying in all directions and then falling to the ground. This metaphor vividly illustrates the "plasticity" of the group. It's not all a collection of negative energy. To some extent, the newly formed group is like a blank sheet of paper, and what kind of painting it becomes depends on the colored brush. A positive hint can make the group develop in a good direction. Hint will form faith in the group, and faith is the foundation of a civilization. Groups will sacrifice their lives for the success of a certain belief, so throughout the ages, in troubled times, there will be various ideological revolutions to overthrow the original system that is still declining and create new systems. In the era of prosperity and stability, groups should be stabilizers and practitioners of truth, goodness and beauty. Only when the group has the correct values, the society will progress more and more, and a nation will make steady progress.