MINDS IN A CROWD - WHY RIOTS OCCUR.

The following quotation is from the abstract of Dr. Elizabeth Zoffmann’s presentation, Minds In A Crowd, at the 32^nd International Congress of Law and Mental Health held in Berlin, July 17-23, 2011.

“People ‘en masse’ often behave in ways that the individuals alone would not. Literature review reveals little empirical study of mass behaviour though individual interviews with protest/riot participants indicates that frontal lobe functions are limited or absent in the context of excited crowd activity. Recent advances in policing methods have used principles from this theory to manage group behaviour by addressing the principle that critical mass, physical proximity, a physical or psychological focus and a driving ‘beat’ are required to form a ‘mass brain’ or syncitium that is less than the sum of its parts.”

The unusual word in this excerpt – syncitium – comes from biology. It describes individual cells that act as one. In this context, however, syncitium means that people in a crowd lose their individual sense of critical judgment and personal discipline. They then behave as a mob, acting in such a way as to cause a riot.

Dr. Zoffmann, a practicing behavioural psychiatrist and an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, first worked on her theory with a former Vancouver police inspector, Dave Jones.  Her psychiatric practice and teaching are based on evolutionary biology. Her ideas were featured in an interview published in the Vancouver weekly newspaper Georgia Straight. The interview referred extensively to the riots following the loss of the Vancouver Canucks in the Stanley Cup playoffs of the National Hockey League in May 2011. 

The riots in the United Kingdom during the past week have given rich new data for the research Dr. Zoffmann hopes will result in further tests of her theory. It would appear at this date that the massive police force that swarmed onto London’s streets after four days of rioting, arson and looting have indeed proved adequate to quell the violence permanently.

One should note, however, that placing the blame on the frontal cortex of our highly evolved human brain is only one theory of why such widespread destructive behaviour occurred in London and other British cities last week. Other explanations cited such political decisions by the Conservative government to reduce expenditures for education and training of the large phalanx of unemployed youth. These political decisions had economic causes in the massive debt incurred after extended budgetary deficits at all levels of government.

Some of the louder voices blamed the widening gap between rich and poor in Britain’s traditional class structured society. Others called this a race riot pointing to the large number of rioters who were black and south Asian youth. Such descriptive terms themselves were racially intended as people looked at photographs of youths throwing molitov cocktails to start massive fires or running out of stores with stolen merchandise. Black youth workers responded that budgetary cutbacks on social assistance and unemployment had made it virtually impossible for many youths to avoid involvement in criminal gangs.

From those inclined to moral and religious interpretation of events came angry cries that parents were neglecting their responsibilities to teach their children moral discipline. When the riots had subsided a few parents did turn their children in to the police to be charged. Angry right wing religious groups placed the blame on Islamic fundamentalists. Religious leaders responded defensively, falling back on the fact that Christianity and Islam alike embrace family moral values.

The history of riots cites incidents as far back as 44 BCE when a mob seized firebrands from Julius Caesar’s funeral pyre in the Forum and ran through the streets of Rome to attack the houses of Cassius and Brutus. British and American history includes plenty of similar examples of mob violence. The original Boston Tea Party in 1773 led directly to the American Revolution. Belgium emerged as an independent country after riots that began with what is called “the Opera Riot.” Street violence was joined by theatregoers emerging from an opera on August 25, 1830. Violence continued through the southern provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands for nearly a year, ending with the declaration of the independent Kingdom of Belgium on August 12, 1831.

During the parliamentary debate that followed the suppression of the riots, Prime Minister David Cameron told the nation that there had been too few police deployed available to quell the violence. His admission that the police had got the riots wrong was immediately countered by a retort from Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers. He acknowledged that police had faced "an unprecedented situation, unique circumstances" — but added that it was police themselves, rather than "political interference," that got the situation under control.

It is popular to express the traditional philosophical position established by John Locke (1632-1704) that God made humans in God’s own image so that even in our natural state we are not jungle beasts because we possess the God-given gifts of reason and conscience. It would seem that both reason and conscience are in very short supply of late. If Dr. Zoffmann is right in her analysis there is likely to be many more riots in future.

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