Lecture on 'crowd behaviour, conflict between groups'

Professor Stephen Reicher of Scotland's University of St Andrews has said understanding crowd behaviour provides a basis for understanding the nature of social determination and social change, and crowds should not be seen and taken as a problem but an opportunity.
In his lecture on "crowd behaviour and conflict between groups" at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology at the New Campus on Friday. The lecture was arranged by the Punjab University Directorate External Linkages.
He said four practical principles could be helpful in dealing with the crowd. First, education, which includes understanding social identities, goals and perceiving different groups in the crowd, second facilitation, includes priority on helping groups in achieving their (legitimate) goals, third communication which means how to explain to crowd members how actions are intended to help them in achieving their goals and fourth, differentiation which includes points and levels of practice and distinguish between different groups in the crowd.
Quoting Kierkegaard, Professor Reicher said if you want to know what to do, just look at the crowd - and then do the opposite. He said crowds as negative as mindless as irrational that is, as fundamentally a social. He said that practically, crowds provide an arena in which to address seemingly intractable social conflicts - they should be seen as an opportunity not as a problem.
He said many special characteristics of crowds, such as their impulsivity, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement and of the critical faculty, the exaggeration of emotions, and others besides, can equally be seen amongst inferior forms of evolution such as savages and children.
He said crowd events are typically inter group encounters but crowds themselves are heterogeneous, typically involving multiple social groups. The challenge is to understand how the relative influence of groups within the crowd is affected by how the crowd is treated by outsiders (the police and other law enforcement agencies).
Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Mujahid Kamran said it was really an enthralling lecture especially under the prevailing circumstances in the Pakistan. He said the lecture was especially meant for the young people and students learnt a lot from it.
He hoped that such an important lecture would lead to a lasting collaboration between PU and University of St. Andrew. He said that there are some principles of crowd behaviour, which is general all over the world. He said that crowd behaviour is related to the cultural nature of the people because cultural nature is a sort of second nature.
Dr Mujahid Kamran told Stephen Reicher that he had learnt by heart the four principles to deal the crowd. A question-answer session later came and students and teachers asked questions, especially with relevance to the current situation in Pakistan.