The Crowd Psychology of Negative Mass Movements

1. Image source: faz.net We are the people – wirsind das Volk!The crowd psychology of negative mass movements Thomas Brudermann, April 14, 2016

2. http://www1.wdr.de/wdr-migration/pegida-150~_v-gseapremiumxl.jpghttp://www1.wdr.de/wdr-migration/pegida-150~_v-gseapremiumxl.jpg Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

3. tagesschau.de kurier.at

4. http://si.wsj.net wikimedia.org

5. Aims & Motivation • What are common elements in these phenomena? • Mass-psychological aspects • How do different scientific disciplines contribute to the understanding of phenomena driven by mass psychology? Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

6. Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

7. Contemporary approaches Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

8. Mass Psychology What haveBehavioral Sciencesto offer? Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

9. Other-directedness • Conspicuous consumption (Veblen 1899) • Group conformity (Asch 1951) • Psychology of affiliation (Schachter 1959) • Groupthink (Janis 1971) • Contingent behaviour (Schelling 1978) • Reciprocity (Axelrod 1984, Fehr et al. 2002) Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

10. Social influence • Social norm theory (Cialdini et al.) • Descriptive/injunctive norms • Compliance & conformity (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004) • Goal of Accuracy • Goal of Affiliation • Goal of Maintaining a Positive Self-Concept • Reference groups • Two main behavioural traits: • Belonging to a collective • Standing out from the collective Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

11. Psychological Contagion • Other-directedness becomes especially strong under two prerequisites: • Emotional arousal makes people more susceptible to psychological suggestion • Uncertainty: Unfamiliar situation for which experience is lacking (Schachter & Singer, 1962) • Given appropriate circumstances, an idea/opinion/emotion may spread like a virus • ‘Psychological virus’ Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

12. Amsterdam, 4. May 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4n7wo8rvTM Spiegel.de Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

13. Prerequisites for psychological masses • Appropriate circumstances • Situation that involves uncertainty + arousal, e.g. a major change, a shock, or a shift in economy/society (“Displacement” – Minsky 1991) • “Fruitful” environment (Pelzmann 2002) • Social mood / context (Casti, Prechter) • Randomness (Taleb 2006) Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

14. Confirmation bias Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

15. Confirmation bias & filter bubbles Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

16. Mass sentiment • Emotion over reason, opinion over facts • Only one topic • Synchronization • No reflection, no critical elaboration • Thoroughgoingness & focusing, no compromises • Irrational exuberance • Decoupling of micromotives & macrobehaviour thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/demonstration-crowd-people-demonstrating-no-48499405.jpg Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

17. What have Behavioral Sciences to offer? • Important insights on behavioral traits • Variety of methods which make up a good methodological canon • Observations on macro-level • Weak on aggregation • Method set not sufficient for directly studying mass psychology / mass phenomena • Lab experiments not possible • Surveys etc. are not helpful Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

18. Mass Psychology What have Neurosciencesto offer? Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

19. Neuroscience aims • How does the brain operate? • Neural correlates of behaviours • Neuroeconomics: Interdisciplinary science of decision making • Psychology • Behavioural Economics • Neuroscience Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

20. Neuroscience methods (1) • Lesion studies • TMS (Transcranial magnetic stimulation) • Direct neuron measurement • Largely restricted to studies with animals • Imaging methods • PET (Positron emission tomography) • EEG (Electro-encephalogram) • fMRI http://www.uni-graz.at/psywww_psylab.htm Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

21. Neuroscience methods (2) fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) • tracks blood flows using changes in magnetic properties • good spatial, but poor temporal resolution neuropsychology.uni-graz.at/methods_fmri.htm Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

22. Neuroscience: General lessons • Highly integrated neural circuits are involved in decision making • No 1:1 mapping brain area ↔ brain function • Energy demand • Of all organs, the brain has by far the highest energy demand (50% of total body glucose utilization) • Deliberation is costly – and slow (mainly located in the pre-frontal cortex) • Brain allocates resources selfishly, but tries to economize on its scarce resources Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

23. Neuroscience: General lessons (ctd.) • Implementation of brain efficiency (McKenzie et al., 2010) • Information selection: PFC otherwise would be overwhelmed by huge amounts of information • Habits & automated behaviour • Intuitive decisions & gut feelings • Other-directedness & mimicking • Primacy of affect (Damasio et al., 2001) • Emotional pre-evaluation of sensory information • Affective system is faster than deliberative system, but: • Deliberative system is able to over-write affective system Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

24. Mirroring and Mimicking • Mirror neurons • Increase activity not only during the execution of certain actions, but also while observation of corresponding actions being performed by others (Keysers, 2009) • Supposed to play central role in other-directed behaviour (but disagreement on actual purpose) • Mirror neuron system(Bastiaansen et al., 2009) • Sharing actions in the pre-motor and parietal cortex, primarily at the level of motor goals • Sharing sensations in the somatosensory cortex • Affective sharing of emotions Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

25. Example: Red pedestrian lights • If one pedestrian starts walking, an initial mirroring impulse is triggered • The more people walk, the stronger the impulse • Deliberative system: • Over-write impulse • Post-hoc rationalizing Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

26. Alignment of preferences • Knowledge on the preferences of others alters individual preferences • fMRI insights (Mason et al. 2009) • Activity in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) differentiates between symbols that are / are not socially tagged • Activity in caudate (one part of reward system) differentiates between popular and unpopular symbols • Integrating activity in caudate and mPFC differentiate objects that have become valued as a result of social influence from those valued for non-social reasons. Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

27. Alignment of perceptions (1) Which line has the same length as the line on the left? (Asch 1951) Are these two objects identical? (Shepard & Metzler 1971) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MR_TMR.jpg Credits: Jennifer Oneske; adapted from Shepard & Metzler (1971) www.panarchy.org/asch/social.pressure.1955.html Adapted from Asch (1951) Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

28. Alignment of perceptions (2) • Change in perception due to social influence (Berns et al. 2005) • Mental rotation tasks in group experiment • Erroneous answers by others alter activity in brain regions related to mental rotation (effect is stronger if false answer originates from other participants, not from a computer) • Non-conformity with others associated with increased amygdala and caudate activity Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

29. What have Neurosciences to offer? • Enhances understanding for how brains operate • Not equipped for independent decision making • Rational deliberation only involved in a minority of decisions • Advances analysis of human decisions • Enrichment of behavioural models • Some are supported, some rejected • Methodological & technological constraints • But: Significant potential • Experiments embedded in artificial environments • Hence not very ‘social’ in a common sense Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

30. Psychological contagion & thresholds • We are not immediately imitating whatever we see • Mirroring vs. deliberative system • Strength of signal matters • The more people perform a certain behaviour, the stronger the mimicking signal • Deliberative system • Has problems with handling uncertainties • Steps back under arousal • People are different! • Some are very susceptible to suggestion, some not at all • But: Being more rational does not mean being less emotional (De Martino et al., 2006) Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

31. Contagion model • Individual “threshold”, depending on • Individual/Person: personality, experiences, current situation • Social: Environment & normative influence • Context / circumstances: General conditions, collective mood, economic climate etc. • Different thresholds for different suggestions/emotions T = f (Person  Environment  Circumstances) Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

32. Mass Psychology What have Complexity Sciencesto offer? Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

33. Bridging the micro-macro gap Agent-based Modeling • Model individuals and their interactions • Let them interact in simulation runs • Look what happens “Explanatory Modeling” Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

34. “Thresholds” “Turn positive (negative), if at least 40% of contacts are positive (negative)” “Turn positive (negative), if at least 60% of contacts are positive (negative)”   Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

35. Simulation results • Wide-spread propagation depends on interplay of several factors • Number (Influence) of Initial Agents • Communication channels (Neighbourhood/Network) • Randomness • Degree of Compactness among Initial Agents • Average Thresholds • Small Cause, large effect! Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

36. Thresholds and Susceptibility • What happens, if agents (on average) get slightly more susceptible to psychological contagion? High susceptibility Low susceptibility “Turn positive, if x% of contacts are positive.” High susceptibility Low susceptibility Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

37. Small change – large effect! “Turn positive, if at least x% of contacts are positive.” 0.9 % 2.9 % 21.3 % 95.5 % • Simulation details: • 8000 agents • Communication structure = Lattice • Neighbourhood size: ~5-50 (Reach = 3) • Thresholds: Normally distributed Standard deviation = 0.25 • Monte Carlo simulation, 100 runs per condition

38. Small change – large effect! (ctd.) Average propagation rate Average thresholds Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

39. Compactness of ‘initial agents’  low  medium  high Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

40. Compactness vs. Susceptibility • Low susceptibility • Focused, compact movements attract more followers (but remain small) • High susceptibility • More followers are attracted in general • Less ‘compact’ movements are more successful Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

41. What have complexity sciences to offer? • Modelling of interactions & aggregation • Individual behaviour  collective outcome • Mass propagation dependent on interplay of several factors, with susceptibility of individuals being crucial • Concept of critical mass has to be questioned • Utilization of data from various sources • No predictions • Extrapolations of results to a limited extent Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

42. Lessons for contemporary movements • Psychological contagion is a basic element • Arousal + uncertainty • Human “hard-ware” makes us susceptible to comply with “the others” • Small changes in the context sometimes matter • Isolated weird group vs. mainstream movement Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

43. Some final thoughts • Predictive vs. explanatory modeling • Chaotic elements make prediction difficult • Probabilistic assumptions • Emergence of catalysts (Trump) • Open question: validation • Basic mechanisms vs. concrete phenomenon • Limits of science and formalism • Stretching the limits with big data? • Mass psychology is just one part of the explanation Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

44. Thank you for your attention. Thomas.Brudermann@uni-graz.at

45. Critical mass • Concept from (nuclear) physics • “The smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon various factors, i.e. its nuclear properties, density, shape, enrichment, purity, temperature and surroundings. “ • Very popular in social sciences • “[...] the smallest fraction that will suffice to change the nature of the entirety.” (Drucker 1987) • “What all of the critical-mass models involve is some activity that is self-sustaining once the measure of that activity passes a certain minimum level.“ (Schelling 1978) Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

46. Critical Mass (ctd.) "I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.“ Isaac Newton (quoted from Kindleberger 1978/2005, p.41) www.newton.ac.uk/art/portrait.html Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology

47. Adding to the socionomics perspective • Not critical mass, but susceptibility to certain ‘ideas’ (e.g. , ) is crucial • Slight shifts in susceptibility may determine whether ideas (e.g. , ) go viral or not • These thresholds are affected by social mood • The formation of social mood yet remains a mystery Th. Brudermann - Mass Psychology