Gustave Le Bon (1841-1930) was a French social psychologist and is considered as the father of the study

of crowd psychology. His work, ‘The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind’, has been considered as a
classic and a highly influential piece of work in understanding the nature and psychology of mass behavior.

The main tenets of the nature of crowd behavior are summarized below:

 Crowds act in herds and they act in sync. This allows them to take cover under the guise of
anonymity and thus, their dormant savage and destructive instincts are unleashed.
 For them to act in sync, a guide is required who translates the intellectual idea into more pervasively
recognized common goals. This guide is the leader without whom the crowd cannot function, and
he has the full power and control over their actions.
 The leaders usually become so because they appeal to the believability of the crowd by visually
and audibly painting grandiose pictures in their minds, which is aimed at feeding on the fear and
greed of crowds.
 A charismatic leader helps to rope in more people in the crowd by virtue of the halo effect, in
which the charisma of the leader is associated with positive crowd goals even if the facts suggest
otherwise.
 Curiosity is also one of the major reasons why a person joins a crowd. He wants to feel significant
and strives to know how he can be of assistance to reach that common goal.
 When an individual joins a crowd, he loses all rationality and psychologically transforms to
become a pawn who sacrifices his own personal goals in favor of those of the crowd.
 This is made possible because crowds act like contagions - an idea which is illusionary would
spread quickly and enrapture a stream of people who would unite towards the common goal.

On crowd behavior, Le Bon said, “The tyranny exercised unconsciously on men’s minds is the only real
tyranny, because it cannot be fought against.”