As I stated in my previous posts, The Atlas of
Social Complexity is comprised of several content themes.
The first major content theme in The Atlas of
Social Complexity is Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness. This first theme
includes six chapters, which I have so far blogged on. Chapter
6 addresses autopoiesis. Chapter
7 turns to the role of bacteria in human consciousness. Chapter 8 explores how the
immune system, just like bacteria and cells, is cognitive – and the
implications this has for our wider brain-based consciousness. Chapter
9 explores a complexity framing of brain-based cognition, emotion and
consciousness. Chapter
10 explores the complex multilevel dynamics of the Self. Chapter
11 is about human-machine intelligence.
The second major content theme in The Atlas of
Social Complexity is The Dynamics of Human Psychology. So far for this
theme, I’ve given a basic overview, found here. I then moved on to the first theme, Human psychology as dynamical system (Chapter 13). From
there I reviewed Chapter
14: Psychopathology of mental disorders ; Chapter
15: Healing and the therapeutic process; and Chapter
16: Mindfulness, imagination, and creativity.
The third major theme is living
in social systems (Chapter 17). The first chapter in this section it Complex
social psychology (Chapter 18) The focus of
this post is the first chapter in this theme, Chapter 19: Collective behaviour,
social movements and mass psychology.
OVERVIEW OF CHAPTER 19:
HAVE
WE GONE MAD?
Our
Globalised World. 2025 C.E. We are presently living
in troubled times, where the collective psychologies of cultural groups and
social movements are up against the stone-cold truths of the global social
problems we presently face, and with the economic and public health
consequences of globalization, the COVID pandemic, and global warming and the
environment being the biggest threats, along with what appears to be a
self-defeating inability to work together to solve our common problems. It is
as if the world is at each other’s throats.
Post-truth
society, climate denial, the alt-right, neoliberalism, anti-elitism, political
correctness, the particularism of liberal identity politics – the social
psychology of our troubled times has led to a resurgence of interest in fields
of social inquiry that focus on the dynamic between the human psyche and
collective behaviour. These are usually grouped under the header of collective
behaviour, mass or collective psychology, and the study of social or political
movements.
A QUICK SURVEY OF
THE LITERATURE
Despite
recent renewed interest in these topics, they have a longstanding history
within political science and, more specifically, political psychology,
as well as social psychology,
organisational studies
and social movement theory.
The study of collective behavior has a
rich intellectual lineage, tracing back to foundational works like
Machiavelli’s The Prince and Hobbes’s Leviathan, which linked the
human psyche to societal dynamics. Hobbes famously described the human
condition as one of war, while later thinkers such as Marx explored ideology
and class consciousness. Pareto’s Mind and Society and early political
behavioralists like Merriam and Lasswell added depth to this field,
particularly in the study of politics and psychopathology.
Gustave
Le Bon’s The Crowd (1895) remains a seminal text, introducing contagion
theory and the idea of crowd-driven “hive minds” that are emotionally charged
but intellectually weak. Freud, influenced by Le Bon, offered a more nuanced
view in Civilization and Its Discontents, arguing that individuals
resist social obligations despite their potential to secure happiness. Freud’s
psychoanalytic insights significantly shaped early 20th-century social
theorists like Adorno, Fromm, and Arendt, as well as political psychology
pioneers such as Reich.
Post-World
War II, social movement theory evolved, with scholars like Habermas, Smelser,
and Touraine examining global protests and worker movements. Complexity science
also engaged with these topics, blending cybernetics, systems theory, and
second-order cybernetics. Key contributors included Bateson, Wiener, and later
Castells, whose Networks of Outrage and Hope exemplifies modern
approaches to understanding collective behavior in complex, interconnected
societies.
Where are we now?
While
systems theory has influenced the study of collective behavior and social
movements, its impact remains limited, particularly in English-speaking
contexts. Over the past two decades, psychology and collective behavior have
expanded into areas like public policy (e.g., nudge theory), evolutionary
psychology (kin selection, cultural evolution), behavioral economics (bounded
rationality, prospect theory), cognitive science (group think, belief bias),
and public health (theory of planned behavior). Yet, these fields lack
engagement with the complexity sciences, leading to a diminished “social
complexity imagination” and insufficient integration with sociological social
psychology.
Ironically,
systems theory’s insights into collective behavior are also marginalized within
the complexity sciences, which often prioritize computational modeling and
psychological reductionism. This reductive focus overlooks critical lessons
from political psychology, organizational studies, and social movement theory.
When these fields are engaged, their approaches are often simplified into
quantifiable models, as seen in the field of opinion dynamics, further diluting
their sociological depth.
THE DEFIANCE OF GLOBAL COMMITMENT: A COMPLEX SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY
In The
Defiance of Global Commitment, I explore a social complexity theory of
collective psychology and social movements, drawing from Freud’s Civilization
and Its Discontents while integrating insights from complexity sciences.
Revisiting Freud’s work critically and figuratively, I focus on the dynamic
unconscious—concepts like the id, ego, and superego—to delve into how human
behavior is shaped by the tension between individual desires and societal
expectations. For me, Freud’s superego offers a relatable metaphor for
understanding moral development, grounded in emotions like guilt, shame, and
love, which are essential to civil society.
I
move beyond traditional functionalist models, adopting Sylvia Walby’s concept
of domains as self-organizing patterns of behavior. Unlike rigid subsystems,
domains reflect the flexible and emergent nature of social institutions. My
analysis of social movements, from the Arab Spring to #MeToo, underscores their
dynamic, multi-level, and self-organizing character, driven by the interplay of
in-group/out-group dynamics and identity formation. These movements exemplify
the emotional and cognitive biases that influence collective behavior, as well
as the power dynamics that shape their trajectory.
Through
this lens, I explore “negative collective psychologies,” such as revolting
elitism, which undermines civil society, and contrast them with “collective
adjacent possibles,” like ecofeminism, which promote global commitments. Using
a configurational approach, I examine how these psychologies coexist and
compete within the broader social landscape.
My
work situates collective behavior within social practice theory, emphasizing
the relational interplay of structure, pattern, and process. I highlight how
power, conflict, and emotional biases impact social movements and collective
psychologies. By framing these dynamics as feedback loops between individuals
and larger social systems, I aim to offer a nuanced understanding of how we
navigate the tensions between resistance, cooperation, and social change in an
increasingly complex world.
Cottam, Martha L et al. Introduction to political psychology.
Routledge, 2022.
Gamson, William A. "The social psychology of collective
action." Frontiers in social movement theory 1 (1992): 53-76.
Klandermans, B. The Social Psychology of Protest (Blackwell Publishers, Oxford
1997).
McAdam, Doug, and W. Richard Scott. "Organizations and
movements." Social movements and organization theory 4 (2005).
Buechler, Steven M. "New social movement theories." Sociological
Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1995): 441-464.
