Join a gang, any gang
Interesting piece of survey research from the University of Sheffield on the newsfeed over the weekend which suggests that young men 19-24 are particularly prone to breaking the lockdown social distancing rules.
Fully half of the young men on the sample claimed to have done so to meet friends, twice as many as their female peers. Of these, one fifth had some sort of interaction with the authorities – being ask to disperse etc.
While the survey itself adds some useful colour to what we know about the mental health of our youth, this nugget – the non-compliance of young men is striking.
Strikingly familiar to anyone who’s gone through male adolescence, for one. “Independent” and “cool” are the epithets that are applied by these youngsters to those running off to meet their mates in defiance of authority.
Strikingly familiar also to those who’ve observed many of our closest cousins: in chimp and gorilla groups, young males are particularly vulnerable to bullying and violence as they propose a threat to those higher up the food chain.
So what do they do?
What any teenage boy would do: seek out the safety of a crowd of their peers. It’s what that rock n roll spirit is based on.
But it’s also ever so human. It’s what we all do in difficult times.
Just read the facebook and twitter threads.
As the late Kurt Vonnegut put it:
Join a gang, any gang
Mob vs Crowd
Great interview today on BBC Radio 4’s Life Scientific with an under appreciated hero of mine, Clifford Stott.
More than just about anyone else, he has helped psychology move on from the tired model of Crowds-as-Mobs, to a more subtle understanding of the psychology of different individuals and groups within a crowd, which doesn’t see them as mindless rioters.
But his work is not simple descriptive: from the start it has had implications for policing and other interventions to manage crowd behaviour, like football matches and political protests.
For too long, the unhelpful and inaccurate map of crowds and crowd psychology that 19th Century writers like Charles Mackay championed (Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds 1841) has been unchallenged. Police and politicians both still like “strong arm” and “military” type interventions (mounted police, baton charges etc) to show crowds who’s boss.
His approach argues for a more cooperative approach (not all crowd members are hell bent on disorder so why treat them all as if they are) and specifically acknowledges the legacy of the historical relationship with authority that might shape the context on any particular day.
I admire the humility with which he acknowledges the difference between knowing the answer and helping people to understand it and its implications (#politicsofknowledge). Good stuff for any scientist or any subject matter expert – it’s not enough to be right (or to correct falsehoods); we have to get our ideas and insights adopted if they are to be worth anything.
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