The Psychology of Crowds

Gustave Le Bon makes an unflattering claim: put a hundred brilliant professors in a room and you get a caveman. Writing in 1895, as trade unions and mass strikes announced an age of crowds, he argued that a crowd becomes an impulsive new being, capable of lynching and of the Crusades with equal ease. Sigmund Freud built on it, and Edward Bernays turned it into public relations. Mental contagion, prestige and the leader's formula of affirmation, repetition and contagion explain why crowds demand illusions, never truth.

You'll learn:

- Why vague words like Liberty move masses most

- The single quality that makes crowds obey leaders

- How anonymity dissolves responsibility in the boardroom