Collective Emotions

Conference organized by Guillaume Dezecache (Universities of Neuchâtel and Portsmouth), Julie Grèzes (Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris) and Gretty Mirdal, director of the Paris IAS, with the support of the Department of Cognitive studies (ENS) and the École des Neurosciences de Paris Ile-de-France.
  

Presentation
 

Since the writings of the first social psychologists and sociologists of the 20th century, collective behavior has continuously been perceived as a fundamental threat to social and political order. When immersed in large groups, individuals are thought to lose any capacity of self-evaluation and to show anti-social behavior. In crowds, the increased sensitivity to others’ emotions – whose power of contagion was long thought to be as intense as that of infectious diseases – is supposed to turn a reunion of perfectly rational humans into a group of violent rioters. Furthermore, the primordial role of mass movements during the era of totalitarianisms has, without any doubt, reinforced the idea that collective emotions are essentially harmful, for both individuals and communities.
 
Recent collective movements, such as Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Springs, have however shed light on a different aspect of collective behavior. Rather than being deleterious in essence, emotional collective movements are above all sources and mechanisms of social changes. They may also constitute a fundamental step in the process of community resilience, as seen in the spontaneous mass demonstrations organized in Paris following the attacks in Paris in 2015. The idea that the collective is a source of both individual and collective achievement is at the heart of the modern social psychology of crowd behavior.
This essential tension at the heart of collective behavior – a source of both individual and collective achievements but also a factor of potential escalation of violence and conflict, in particular towards the out-group – is still persistent in contemporary debates. Mass movements are once again becoming major political actors, and the development of new information technologies (such as the online social networks) has largely increased the communities’ reactiveness and ability to mobilize. It thus appears urgent to call for a scientific meeting on the topic of collective emotions, their causes and consequences for both individuals and communities, and their very dynamics, in the past as well as nowadays, in the digital era.
 
Seven fundamental themes will be explored: (1) what does it mean for emotions to be collective rather than individual?; (2) how has collective behavior classically been perceived since the nineteenth century?; (3) what role do emotions play in the emergence and consolidation of mass political movements?; (4) how is group behavior structured and sustained?; (5) what are the individual and collective psychological consequences of the participation to emotional collective movements?; (6) how can political institutions react to and cope with mass movements (collective and individual responsibility)? ; (7) finally, what role do online social networks play in the mobilization of the masses?

PROGRAM

Day 1 (April 14th)

9.00 – Participants welcome
9.30 – Introduction (Gretty Mirdal & Guillaume Dezecache)
 
9.45 – Session 1: When emotions become collective
Chair: Elisabeth Pacherie (IJN - Paris)
9.45 – What are collective emotions? Philosophical perspectives
Mikko Salmela (University of Helsinki)
10.30 – Psychosocial Effects of Collective Emotional Gatherings
Bernard Rimé (Louvain Catholic University)

11.15 – Coffee break
 
11.30 – Session 2: Collective behavior: social and historical representations
Chair: Laura Spinney (Paris)
11.30 – Imagining the Worst: the black legend of collective revolt in the 19th century France, c. 1840 - 1895
Robert Tombs (University of Cambridge)
12.15 – TBA
Simon Wessely (Psychiatrist, King’s College London)

13.00 – Lunch break
 
14.00 – Session 3: Mass gatherings: emergence, dynamics and social control
Chair: Gloria Origgi (IJN - Paris)
14.00 – From Social Emotions to Collective Emotions: Public Events as Emotional Tests
Laurence Kaufmann (University of Lausanne)
14.45 – Digital enthusiasm and the formation of online crowds
Paolo Gerbaudo (King’s College London)

15.30 – Coffee break

15.45 – A social identity model of cognition, emotion and action in crowds
Steve Reicher (University of St Andrews)
16.30 – On the role of a social identity analysis in articulating structure and collective action: the 2011 riots in Tottenham and Hackney
Clifford Stott (Keele University)

 
Day 2 (April 15th)

9.00 – Session 4: The social psychology of social emotions
Chair: Gavin Brent Sullivan (Coventry University)
9.00 – Beyond "contagion"? Social identification as boundary condition and mechanism in involuntary influence of aggression
John Drury (University of Sussex) & L. Verlander, Steve Reicher, Clifford Stott
9.45 – Understanding Collective Emotions: Theory and Related Evidence
Christian von Scheve (Free University of Berlin)
10.30 – Individual and collective reactions to threat during the attacks in Paris (13-11-2015)
Guillaume Dezecache (Universities of Neuchâtel and Portsmouth)

11.15 – Coffee break
 
11.30 – Session 5: The cognitive neuroscience of social emotions: pleasure, fear and anxiety
Chair: Etienne Koechlin (LNC - Paris)
11.30 – Empathy in music and dance: the role of pleasure and emotion
Morten L. Kringelbach (University of Oxford)
12.15 – The social function of emotional displays of fear and anger
Julie Grèzes (INSERM U960 - Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris), Marwa El Zein (LNC, ENS), Emma Vilarem (LNC, ENS) and Guillaume Dezecache (Universities of Neuchâtel and Portsmouth)
 
13.00 – Lunch break
 
14.00 – Session 6: Modelling collective behavior
Chair: Guillaume Dezecache (Universities of Neuchâtel and Portsmouth)
14.00 – The Hive: Experimenting with the Group Mind
Daniel C. Richardson & Jorina von Zimmerman (Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London)
15.00 – Collective emotions: conceptual and empirical issues exemplified by collective pride research
Gavin Brent Sullivan (Coventry University)

15.45 – Coffee break
 
16.00 – Session 7: Far from the madding crowd: the psychology and neuroscience of exclusion and social pain
Chair: Julie Grèzes (INSERM U960 - Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris)
16.00 – Behavioral and emotional consequences of social exclusion in Human and rats
Philippe Fossati & Anna Fall (ICM Paris)   

17.00 – Concluding remarks and final discussion