Gustave Le BonBorn 7 May 1841; died 13 Dec 1931 at age 90. French social psychologist best known for his study of the psychological characteristics of crowds, The Crowd, Study of Popular Mind. In this early effort to explain group behavior, Lebon's gave two propositions: that people in groups adopt a group mind, and that groups are emotional and irrational. He theorizes that in the right situations, the emotions of one person spread through the group like a cold through a schoolhouse. Control mechanisms such as values, ethics, and learned social rules are broken down and forgotten for the time. He was also the author of a number of works on social psychology, in which he expounded theories of national traits and racial superiority. |
