Understanding Crowd Behavior for Better Crowd Control

If you’ve ever been to a large-scale public event, such as a concert or music festival, you know what a uniquely magical experience it can be. Enjoying something you love in close proximity to such a massive number of people who love it, too, is a truly powerful experience. But crowds can also be dangerous, largely due to the dynamics of collective behavior.

Approximately 440 incidents involving human stampedes occurred between 1982 and 2022. Collectively, those incidents resulted in 13,700 deaths and over 27,000 injuries. The number of occurrences has also seen a steady rise over the past 120 years, making detailed approaches to event safety more important than ever.

Developing a working understanding of crowd behavior and crowd control psychology is the key to organizing and executing safe events every time. Here, we’ll touch on what you need to know to get started.

Crowd Behavior, Collective Behavior, and Mob Mentality: What’s the Difference?

Crowd behavior, collective behavior, and mob mentality are all phrases you’ll hear thrown around once you start digging into the world of crowd psychology. However, while the three concepts are related, they’re not the same.

• Crowd behavior refers to the unique ways people may act when gathered together in groups. These actions can be calm, emotionally charged, or anything in between.
• Collective behavior is a much broader concept that covers any type of group action where people act as a collective without formal organization. Event-based crowd behavior can be part of this, but so can the behavior of those involved in broad social movements, fads, rumor mills, etc.
• Mob mentality refers to a highly specific form of crowd behavior involving aggressive, impulsive, and often irrational actions. Each individual feels less responsible for their behavior when they become relatively anonymous as part of a large group.

What Is the Psychology Behind Crowd Dynamics?

The psychological dynamics of crowd behavior can both enhance someone’s experience at an organized event and open the door to safety hazards. For example, you want attendees happily singing, dancing, and cheering loudly together for a musician they came to see. You don’t want them stampeding, damaging property, or getting hurt.

Understanding some of the dynamics at play can help you plan a thorough crowd control strategy, which includes choosing the right crowd control equipment.

Extreme emotions

Emotions tend to run high when people gather in large groups, and behavior can shift without warning as a result. Feelings like happiness or victory can escalate and intensify when shared with a large crowd of people, as with the celebration of a sports victory.

But the same phenomenon can find people turning violent and angry at a political protest, rally, or any other large-scale event. 

Group dynamics

People tend to mimic others around them. This can happen even within a small group of friends gathered together, but the effect becomes impossible to miss in large crowds of hundreds or thousands of people. People also respond collectively to outside stimuli, leading to both positive phenomena, like collective celebrating, and negative alternatives, like stampedes.

Contagion theory

During the 1800s, scholar Gustave Le Bon came up with what is now known as contagion theory. Contagion theory argues that people can potentially lose their common sense and ability to think rationally in a crowd. When this happens, otherwise mild-mannered, sensible people can be triggered to act violently.

Need for control

It’s also normal and natural for humans to crave a sense of control over their surroundings and a general sense of well-being. Stress caused by erratic behavior in individuals around them (or sometimes just by the experience of being in a dense crowd in the first place) can lead to heightened focus and a greater likelihood of responding unpredictably to social cues.

Deindividuation

The term deindividuation was coined by American social psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1950s to describe situations in which people cannot be individuated or isolated from others. When any person is part of a larger group, they feel less accountable for their actions as an individual. This can make it easier for people to justify acting in violent, irrational, or otherwise dangerous ways.

Risks and Dangers of Poor Crowd Management

Managing crowds well and taking steps to remove safety hazards leads to memorable events that run smoothly and contribute to everyone present having a wonderful time. But incomplete or poor crowd management can lead to situations like the following:

• Stampedes and crowd crushes
• Physical assaults
• Pickpocketing
• Property damage
• Physical injuries (including death)
• Medical emergencies (including asphyxiation)
• Slip-and-fall occurrences
• Fire hazards
• Heat exhaustion

Well-known examples of deadly crowd management incidents include the infamous Love Parade disaster in Duisberg, Germany, in 2010. Extreme crowd density and poor traffic flow led to the deaths of 21 attendees, as well as 500 injuries.

The Astroworld Festival tragedy in Houston, Texas, is another noteworthy example. When a crowd surged toward the stage during a Travis Scott performance, ten people were killed and hundreds more injured.

Increased pressure on security

One common mistake many event managers and organizers make is assuming that skilled security personnel will manage the crowds once events are underway. However, even the best security teams aren’t a substitute for proper crowd control planning.

Not having an airtight plan in place (including ample crowd control equipment, evacuation plans, etc), needlessly puts increased pressure on on security personnel. The higher the pressure, the higher the likelihood that members of your security team will make a mistake or otherwise fail to keep crowds in order. 

Understanding Crowd Behavior Is Crucial for Professionals

Part of thorough crowd control planning is knowing how to spot potentially problematic crowd dynamics before they get out of control. An understanding of crowd behavior and common crowd dynamics helps security teams anticipate problems before they occur. This helps them to diffuse issues before they can escalate.

That’s where thorough staff training comes in. Ensure this training includes the dynamics of crowd behavior and knowing how to spot the warning signs of an emerging incident.

Include not only your security personnel but your management team, volunteers, etc. Everyone involved in working, planning, or running your event should go into the experience fully trained.

The Role of Crowd Control Equipment in Managing Crowds

The right crowd control equipment is essential when it comes to effectively managing crowds and keeping everyone safe. This includes staff, performers, event presenters, and passersby in addition to your attendees.

Visibility and communication tools

Event workers, security personnel, and other members of your staff can control crowds more efficiently with the right visibility and communication equipment on their side. Here are some prime examples of how:

• High-vis clothing and similar options can help staff members and security officers recognize each other at a distance, as well as make them easily identifiable to attendees.  
• Personal communication devices like two-way radios and walkie-talkies let security personnel inform one another of incidents in progress and other potential hazards in real time so they can act accordingly.

Signage and physical indicators

Crowd behavior issues like stampedes and surges don’t always have single triggers. Sometimes simple panic is enough to touch off an incident or create a hazard. Signage can help attendees feel safe and secure by clearly identifying exits (including emergency exits), help desks, and other essential resources.

Adequate signage, indicators, and other crowd control resources also contribute to safe evacuations in the event of an emergency like a fire, gas leak, or equipment malfunction.

Physical barriers

Physical barriers include examples like concert barricades, temporary fencing, and water barriers. The foremost purpose of these is to prevent crowds and individuals from moving into areas they shouldn’t or encountering hazards.

However, physical barriers also ensure a safe, positive experience for all by directing traffic and helping people find their way around. 

Professional Training in Crowd Management: Why It’s Important and What to Include

Crowd control equipment and techniques are only as good as the training your staff receives on how to properly use them. That’s why a thorough training regime should be required for all event workers, including volunteers.

If everyone involved in your event knows how to spot potential hazards and react to emergencies, you can drastically reduce your incident risk. Here are some basics to include in your own training programs:

• Preparedness and response: Educate all staff members on key concepts like the dynamics of crowd behavior, crowd psychology, and proper group management protocols.
• Conflict de-escalation: Diffusing a situation before it happens is preferable to having to handle a full-blown incident in progress. Trained professionals are better able to recognize the signs of emerging mob mentality and take action before it’s too late.
• Proactive planning: Sit down with your planning team beforehand and come up with a thorough plan for crowd flow and traffic direction. Pre-assess your venue ahead of time to ensure all bases are covered. Devise a communication protocol for staying in touch before, during, and after the event.

Ultimately, fantastic events that play out safely and leave everyone feeling good about the experience don’t just happen. They’re the results of thorough planning, effective crowd management, and implementation of the right solutions.

Ready to discover even more efficient crowd control strategies and solutions like these? Check out our guide to the difference between crowd control and crowd management for some useful insights.