How Crowds Work

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1:29every Monday from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

1:48Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry. And you squeeze us together in a one-meter square space, we're still doing pretty good. On stuff you should know. You know, it's funny as I was reading, and we'll get to it, but when things start to become problematic as far as people per square meter, and I started to panic. Oh, really? Yeah. That didn't get me, but it occurred to me that some people listening to this are going to feel that way too. Yeah, because we're talking about crowds, and if even the discussion of being in very close proximity to someone else triggers you, then consider this your warning.

2:29Yeah. Great, great job, Chuck. Yeah, sure. So we are talking crowds today, Chuck. You spoiled the entire episode by mentioning that. Yeah. I'm just kidding, buddy. And generally, you think of this as huge mass of people, say, like at a concert or something like that, or a show if you're into indie bands. But it can be any assemblage of people, any group of people. I'm guessing more than two, if that old adage is correct, about three being a crowd. But it can be anything from a bunch of people in an elevator to a bunch of people going to Mecca, flocking to Mecca for the Hajj on any given year. Yeah, I think like technically just any grouping.

3:11Who put this one together, by the way, initially? This was a Julia joint. And thank you for reminding me before we go further. Kimberly from the Prison Labor Listener Mail is the person who got this one going. So thanks, Kimberly. Okay. Yeah, thanks. Big time because I thought this was super interesting. But yeah, I mean, Julia did some research and basically came back with this. A crowd is any group of people temporarily gathered in the same physical space relatively close to each other. Elevators. Sure. I mean, it's a little surprising if you think about it. For some reason, I got hooked on the elevator thing.

3:47But there's a lot of different reasons those people could be together. They're all going to different floors in the same building, say, if they happen to be on an elevator. Or they could all have a shared interest. They're all at a gun show. Or they have a shared goal. They're trying to overthrow their regime, their ruling regime. There's all sorts of different reasons people come together in crowds. Sometimes it's on purpose. Sometimes it's not planned by that person. But it just happens. And one of the cool things is we've been studying crowds through all sorts of different lenses. and we've kind of whittled down to the fact that humans are essentially innately good at navigating crowds for the most part.

4:32Yeah. You know, some of the stuff Julia came back with was fairly like you might be a little scared of crowds. But it is good to know that that is sort of outdated thinking. And while we will talk about bad things that can happen in crowds, the modern understanding of crowds, You're right, is that people are generally pretty orderly, even in the face of disaster. And the things that make a crowd go bad, a lot of times it's not the crowd's fault. Yeah, they get blamed by authorities very frequently in retrospect. And then in further retrospect, it turns out like, no, actually, the authorities are probably at fault in this case.

5:13Yeah. I mean, it's almost as if sometimes a peaceful protest can turn bad when an armed military shows up. Right. Just the presence of that. Just the presence and other things that happen after. Right. So, yes. And we'll talk about that for sure, because there is a huge role for law enforcement in dealing with crowds like part of their job. Sure. Crowd, crowd. They say crowd control, but that's apparently an outdated term as well. But dealing with crowds, managing crowds. So that's part of their job. That's not going to go away. We don't really want it to go away. Instead, we want law enforcement to do it in the using the best practices that have been proven over and over again that cut down the chance of a crowd turning ugly by huge percentages.

6:02Yeah, but, you know, one thing is for sure, like, people behave differently in crowds, and sometimes it's great. You know, I never dance like this, man, but I'm at Burning Man, and look at me all of a sudden. Right. Or it can turn bad, and we're going to cover all angles. Well, let's talk about some of the bad ones, because there are some famous ones. This happens, you don't want to say a lot, but it's one of those things like a plane crash, where it seems like it will happen all the time because it's just so shocking. The details of it, whenever it does happen, it seems like it happens way, way more frequently.

6:38That's just not the case. But when it does happen, like I said, it can be pretty bad. Yeah, you know, because people can get trampled. People can be squashed by force. Like in a crowd rush, pressure can reach a thousand pounds of force, which is a lot. That can lead to loss of life. Notably, like you said, we're going to mention a handful. but the Astroworld Festival in Houston, very sadly, in 2021 at the Travis Scott performance, 10 people lost their lives and many more were injured. Yeah, there was one I hadn't heard of that was pretty bad, quite bad. It happened at the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II in Moscow in 1896.

7:15Yeah. There was a crowd of half a million people who were all there for the coronation, and they knew that they were giving out free souvenirs, essentially. I saw half a pound of sausage, bags of nuts, a souvenir cup. And apparently they had enough for everybody, but a rumor spread in the crowd that they didn't have enough for everybody. And so the people in the back started pushing. The stampede broke out and 1 ,300 people died. Yeah. It feels like concerts and sporting events, it can be dozens of people, which is all incredibly sad. But when people in the order of thousands are dying from an event, that's pretty striking.

7:50And that really follows the model, it seems like, for loss of life in crowd crushes. There's some sort of bottleneck toward the front, and it's wider in back, so people in back start pushing, and the people in front can't go forward, so they get crushed. That seems to be like the case. That's what happened in Astroworld. That's what happened in Moscow. That's what happened in Duisburg, Germany, at the world's largest techno festival, the Love Parade. Yeah, I remember that. 2010, 21 people died. And it was a tunnel in that case. Yeah. It also happened, I mentioned the Hajj, and 2 ,000 people, 2 ,000 people died at the Hajj as part of that annual pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims are required to do at least once in their lifetime.

8:43Well, they have like on the order of one and a half million people, up to 2 million people every year do this thing. And in 2015, 2 ,000 people died because there was a bottleneck, people pushed from the back. And that actually broke the previous record of the most people killed in a crowd crush. That was also at the Hajj, this time in 1990. Yeah, super, super sad. Because of all these tragedies, people have been studying how people move through crowds, crowd dynamics. It's, you know, they use a lot of different sciences. Physics definitely is one, and we're going to talk about all these, but also physiology, psychology, certainly.

9:24And what they're looking at is human behavior, how people behave when they get in a crowd, because it changes once you have sort of a veil of anonymity going on. And again, it can be good or bad, but they use this in all kinds of modeling, whether it's in city planning or certainly event preparation, disaster management, crowd management, all kinds of people will pay people a lot of money to study and give their findings. And you mentioned applying the principles of physics to studying this. I think that started in the 50s. And it's not like tit for tat, but the movement and the formation of crowds resembles it so much that you can basically use physics terms like orbital motion or oscillators to basically describe how people behave in a crowd and how crowds behave themselves.

10:17One of the ways of looking at it is systems theory. And complex adapted systems are what crowds do. It's chaotic at first, but then they start to move together as a whole. Lines of communication develop without speech. It's just you kind of like the crowd learns through feedback and it just starts, it becomes a cohesive whole rather than just a bunch of people together in the space. Yeah, I mean, certainly fluid dynamics is a factor, and they kind of use some of that terminology as well when talking about crowds. Because if you're a fluid, like let's say you're a liquid or even a gas, the particles are really tightly packed, but they're never actually colliding because they have electrons repelling each other.

11:00We do a similar thing, but it's called what's known as social force. It's that thing when you're in a crowd, and you just unconsciously, instinctively navigate without like constantly bumping into other people. At least if you're doing it right. I've been in crowds where people are a little more unaware and there may be reasons for that. So I'm not like casting aspersions, but generally speaking, your body is just automatically adjusting because you want that path of least resistance. You don't want to be banging into people all around you. And even in great crowds, like a huge excited stadium after a big sports win or after a big energetic concert or something, you still find your way out of there.

11:48Generally, you know, not making contact with other people, maybe slight, you know, bumps here and there. But unless someone really has their head up their butt or they're super drunk or there may be other, you know, some genuine factor they can't help, they're not just banging right into people constantly. Yeah. That made me wonder if it's electrons repelling each other that keeps liquids from bumping into one another. I wonder if the collective group of electrons in our bodies are what makes us inherently, makes us inherently avoid it and almost have a sixth sense for that kind of thing. I like that, Eddie.

12:24It's like the quantum explanation of swerving. Yeah, a little hippy dippy. So there are a couple of things that we figured out about crowds that that the way that they behave is, again, this is spontaneous. I don't even know if we've said it. So maybe not again. It's spontaneous. It's unconscious, typically. And it's collective. Right. So we're actually moving cooperatively with other people, whether we realize it or not. We think we're just trying to make it to the exit because we want to get to our car first so we can get the heck out of the parking lot as soon as possible. But we're actually unconsciously moving in conjunction with other people.

13:01One of the really great ways that that expresses itself is in lane formation, which is, well, it's exactly what it sounds like, right? Yeah, it's people kind of gathering and moving in one direction together, forming a lane. No one's taking the lead and saying, everyone, this is the United States. So we generally walk down the right side of the hallway or the corridor and other people on the left. That is something when I've traveled abroad, I had to get used to because I didn't realize the rules of the road typically apply to moving around the world as well. So I didn't know that until I went over to England for the first time and was bumping into people constantly.

13:44But yeah, here in the United States, it's generally right side, left side. So I guess that doesn't explain it well, but you move along the right side of a hallway. Sure. And that's just a difference in the electron spin of people in Europe and the people in the U.S. Oh, man. I also mentioned orbital motion, too, right? So apparently in a crowd, people moving in the same direction, or if you're in a crowd that's just basically in one place, I think they studied the festival of the running of the bulls in Pamplona to get this information. you basically create you move in a circle in an orbit is what they call it in in you complete this orbit in about 18 seconds and when i was reading this i'm like that's just not true and then i went and watched video of this study and yes people just move around in a tight circle basically you're you're moving because other people are moving but you're ultimately you're keeping your same space, this one orbital circle, which is pretty awesome.

14:45I mean, to be clear, because that sounded slightly confusing, people are not walking in a tight circle. You're just moving your body within a circular space. Right. Like maybe raising your elbow to scratch your head or something like that. Right. So imagine, imagine the person in front of you, imagine the person in front of you is backing up. So you back up and then you maybe move to the right and then they move this way and you kind of come forward to your left and then you kind of back up a little bit to your left and then you back up center like that. So you're facing the same way the whole time, but you're just shuffling your feet in the way that you're doing this.

15:23You're ultimately creating an orbit. Yeah. And I think that also applies to just taking up your personal space with general body. Yes. The electrons. So this this works out pretty great. This idea of social force, it seems to work pretty well. And even in big crowds, when it starts to get a little more highly dense is when it's a problem. And this is where you might get triggered like I was. And I don't even mind crowds. But when it started talking and getting like denser and denser, I just found myself getting a little, you know, my breathing sort of increased. Yeah. So at two people per square meter, a crowd moves a little slower because they're still trying to get that distance between you and your friend next to you.

16:08Four people, you're going to start to bump around a little bit. At six people, things get truly difficult. And at 10 people per square meter, and I measured that out on the floor, that made me panic a little bit. That means individual movement is basically impossible and the likelihood of like in a big crowd that's that dense. something bad is likely to happen. Yeah, this is the point where you can't raise your arms. They're at your side. If a crush starts to happen, you can't breathe. So, like, you can die of asphyxiation. There was a very famous tragedy in 2022 in Seoul, the Taiwan tragedy, where kids in their 20s, healthy kids in their 20s, died of heart attacks because they asphyxiated and their hearts stopped because of a crowd crush.

16:59Yeah, and if you're wondering what this all looks like, we didn't do Big Macs, should have done Big Macs, but six people per square meter where, you know, it's not tragic, but movement is difficult, that's about 1 ,700 people packed onto a tennis court. Yep. So that's a lot. Yeah, and that was at six. We're talking 10 is when you can really be in trouble. Now, that is not guaranteed that something's going to go wrong. In Ataewon, this situation was going on for an hour or so before it turned problematic. So as long as the people in the back are doing good and not pushing, as long as somebody in the center doesn't faint and fall over or trip and fall down, this can work.

17:46It's not inherently going to be deadly, but the chances of it becoming dead, it's just sitting there balancing on the razor's edge at that point. It's a really dangerous place to be. Yeah, it's that one triggering incident is when it can really go south there. Yeah, for sure. Scary. Shall we take a break? Yes. All right. We'll be right back with more crowds.

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21:01All right, so we covered, partially covered physics. We should talk a little bit about psychology because crowds have their own distinct psychology around them as well. And people can behave in ways that they don't normally behave in a crowd just because of that psychology. And early on, the explanation for that was like if there's a violent crowd, then it was just full of violent people. And there was a French psychologist named Gustave Lebon in 1895 who wrote the literal book on this, like the first one, called The Crowd, colon, A Study of the Popular Mind. And it was very influential, but this is one of those that's a little outdated in a lot of ways.

21:47Yeah, it's right in some ways, but his whole thing was like, you have any crowd together, they're inherently mindless. They form a collective mind. They become capable of anything. They're very suggestible. They're going to kill everybody in their path. Right. And like, there are crowds that have done that before. But that's not the inherent, I guess, trait of crowds. Like crowds are actually the opposite. They're actually way more peaceful and pro-social than that. But Le Bon essentially set the view of crowds that's still persistent today in a lot of quarters. And he did. Yeah, he just had a huge impact on this.

22:28Yeah, absolutely. If you look at the different explanations over the years of like this collective behavior, because collective behavior is definitely happening. Yeah. There are a few different theories. One is the contagion theory, and that was put forth by Le Bon himself, which is that this irrational behaviors that happen in a crowd spreads like a virus. Yeah. That can happen, and it also can't. So I'm sort of 50-50 on that one. Yeah. Yeah. Again, like all of this stuff makes sense. It's just not like this is the most salacious, rare version of crowds. Right. Yeah. You can also make the case like good positive behavior can be contagious in a crowd as well, because like you said, people behave differently in crowds.

23:14That's just a fact. Yeah. Like that dancing at Burning Man. Yeah, exactly. There's also convergence theory, which also makes a bit of sense. That explains why crowds have a collective mind. And it just basically says that's because crowds are made up of similar people. Like usually there's not a lot of crowd-like mindless, say, behavior on an elevator because everybody there didn't come together on the elevator to protest something. But if you have a protest, there's way more potential for collective mind behavior because there's people who are there for the same reason. So they're sharing kind of a wavelength already when they get there.

23:52Yeah. If you're at that concert together, you're there because you want to see Bob Dylan in person. All right. You're all there for the same reason. Sure. Or you want to hear David Crosby harangue you. Oh, man. He will, too. Or he would have. He did. Oh, yeah. Okay. So that's convergence. There's also group mind theory. Yeah. Just a little on the nose. It's basically saying, like, you lose your individual identity and it's replaced as a part, a cog of this larger group's identity. Yeah. A little, I guess. Yeah. It's not totally off. Social identity theory seems to be the prevalent dominant view of, I guess, kind of de-individuation in crowds.

24:37Yeah. That's where you just, you're acting like everyone else is acting because you just want to fit in. Yeah. Yeah, but you can't really put it better than that. So, how do you become a crowd member? There are a few key concepts there. First, you have to get training, go to school. Got to go to crowd school. Right. And the first thing you need in crowd school is a lot of people in a very tight spot. It's called panic school. How are you feeling right now, by the way? I'm okay. And it's weird because I don't have like, what's it called, claustrophobia necessarily. Uh-huh. I think it's more for me just like I can't wait to get out of that crowd because I just want to have a little space.

25:21Maybe I do have a little claustrophobia. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it, but I think everybody does to a degree. It's just a threshold, you know. Yeah, but I've never, you know, I can accept hugs and I was never one of those kids like under the dog pile that was like freaking out or anything like that. Oh, yeah. I did not like that. Yeah. Well, you have a little claustrophobia, right? Yeah, a little bit. I've kind of outgrown it a lot. But, yeah, if you put me in like a sewer culvert or hearing about like a caving accident, I mean, I'll start. Yeah, I can't handle that. Well, maybe you have a fear of dying.

25:56That could be it. That might be what's going on. It could be it, which is rational. But what are we talking about? We're talking about the three key concepts that form these foundations of collected behavior. And they are deindividuation, emotional contagion, and suggestibility. And that first one, deindividuation, is basically like kind of what you were hinting at earlier. There's this new social identity and your individual identity is taking a break. Yeah, and this is a good example of how this stuff can kind of make sense. But it's also like you really just paid attention to the worst part of it.

26:39And this came from Philip Zimbardo. Remember him from the Stanford Prison Experiment? Oh, yeah. It was all about de-individuation. So he focused some work on crowds. And essentially what he said is that, yeah, you just basically leave your own identity at the door. You take on a new identity of crowd member, group member. and basically whatever the group's up for, you're up for too. You feel anonymous. You feel unidentified. You also feel connected to those other people. And so if those other people start, you know, looting or something like that, you would probably never loot by yourself. But since you're in that group, you've lost your individual identity that would prevent you from looting.

27:23Now it's like, well, yeah, I mean, I'm part of this group and we're looting. So let's get to it. I think that's fascinating, and I think that is so true and happens all the time. And we've seen it all across, I feel like in recent years especially, with various protests and things that people might call riots, things that people might call insurrections, where people that normally wouldn't behave in a certain way, like, hey, I was going down to the Capitol building to voice my opinion about how this country is being run, And next thing you know, I'm beating a cop down with a flagpole. And normally I would not do something like that.