djcurlys Blog

Recently in class, Dave [Hamilton] mentioned that he had been surprised to finally read Heider in grad school because he realized how much modern empirical work was based on this man's "armchair theories". I had a similar experience tonight when reading an account of Le Bon's work (as written in Reicher, Spears & Postmes, 1995). Le Bon, writing in 1895, appears to have talked about immersion in the group (really, the crowd) as causing an increased vulnerability to emotional (and behavioral) contagion! I ***must*** read this and other intellectual grandfathers of my work to appreciate a full understanding of the questions I pose in my research. Otherwise, I feel like I'm playing a bad game of 'telephone' with these theorists on the other side of a long string of players...