The Crowd - Softcover

Le Bon, Gustave

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1546770720 ISBN 13: 9781546770725

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017

Synopsis

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind is a book authored by Gustave Le Bon that was first published in 1895. In the book, Le Bon claims that there are several characteristics of crowd psychology: "impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments, and others...". Le Bon claimed "that an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd soon finds himself – either in consequence of magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from some other cause of which we are ignorant – in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer."

About this title

About the Author:

Gustave Le Bon (7 May 1841 – 13 December 1931) was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist. He was the author of several works in which he expounded theories of national traits, racial superiority, herd behavior and crowd psychology. His work on crowd psychology became important during the first half of the twentieth century when it was used by media researchers such as Hadley Cantril and Herbert Blumer to describe the reactions of subordinate groups to media. He also contributed to controversy about the nature of matter and energy. His book The Evolution of Matter was very popular in France (having twelve editions), and though some of its ideas—notably that all matter was inherently unstable and was constantly and slowly transforming into luminiferous ether—were used by some physicists of the time (including Henri Poincaré), his specific formulations were not given much consideration. In 1896 he reported observing a new kind of radiation, which he termed "black light" (not the same as what modern people call black light today), though it was later discovered not to exist.

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1546770720
• ISBN 13: 9781546770725
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 92
• Editor: Gouveia Andrea