An ambiguous, unconcretized threat fragments rather than unites a crowd.

Evidence

More recently, a case study of a major false alarm incident, when thousands of people thought they were under attack from terrorists, enabled us to look in depth at the conditions under which a sense of common fate fails to develop across a crowd (Drury et al., 2023). Unlike in the case of the 2005 London bombings where there was a clearly visible common threat, in the false alarm in Oxford Street, London, in 2017, there was no shared understanding of what the threat was or where it was coming from, and some people could quite easily believe that the strangers near them could be the terrorists. Rather than a shared perspective or experience, therefore, there was a highly fragmented perspective across the crowd. Consequently, we only found clear evidence of shared social identity (i.e. a sense of unity with strangers) in pockets, rather than across the crowd. The behavioural response was similarly fragmented, with competition in evidence as well as cooperation. — John Drury and Evangelos Ntontis, A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF COLLECTIVE…, 27

Categorization

• XREF: Crucial qualifier for the reader’s thesis: it is a clearly visible common threat (shared understanding) that drives solidarity — an amorphous ‘enemy’ no one can locate fails to produce unity. — connects to: Without a perceived shared threat, crowds fracture into antagonistic competitors for space. — John Drury and Chris Cocking and Steve Reicher, Everyone for themselves? A comparative…, 74; A psychological crowd forms from mere co-presence under shared threat. — John Drury and Chris Cocking and Steve Reicher, Everyone for themselves? A comparative…, 104; Uncertain, unfamiliar, low-power settings maximize perceived outgroup threat. — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 270 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Does this imply solidarity requires a positively shared object (the mutual project) rather than mere threat, or just a legible one? Fine-grained threat just shifts unification to ‘could be any of us’.

Related

• A psychological crowd forms from mere co-presence under shared threat. (similarity 0.84)
• Facing a shared threat transforms individuals into a psychological crowd with emergent shared identity (similarity 0.83)
• Shared identity with a crowd converts density from threat into safety (similarity 0.81)
• Without a perceived shared threat, crowds fracture into antagonistic competitors for space. (similarity 0.81)
• Crowds turn psychological when members share perceived antagonism. (similarity 0.80)
• Shared social identity is the causal variable predicting solidarity among disaster strangers. (similarity 0.80)
• Shared danger of death heightens unity among strangers in an emergency. (similarity 0.80)
• Greater perceived threat of death produces more solidarity among strangers, not more competition. (similarity 0.79)
• The emergency itself, not an outgroup, can define group boundaries (similarity 0.79)
• Shared identity turns crowds from irrational mobs into solidarity-based adaptive resources (similarity 0.79)
• Shared identity with a crowd increases helping and decreases pushing others aside. (similarity 0.78)
• Uncertain, unfamiliar, low-power settings maximize perceived outgroup threat. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Uncertain, unfamiliar, low-power settings maximize perceived outgroup threat. #expands (0.72) — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 270