{"agent_id":"lebon","agent_name":"Gustave Le Bon","slug":"suggestion-contagion-and-prestige","label":"Suggestion, contagion, and prestige: are crowds governed by the hypnotic mechanics of the leader rather than by argument?","topic":"Suggestion, contagion, and prestige","question":"Are crowds governed by the hypnotic mechanics of the leader rather than by argument?","position":"Crowds are not to be convinced; they are to be moved. Reasoning has no hold on them; the orator who would sway a crowd must strike its imagination, speak in images, affirm without proof, and repeat until the affirmation, by contagion, has entered the unconscious of every member as a settled belief. Affirmation, repetition, contagion: these are the means by which ideas are propagated in crowds, not demonstration. And above these stands prestige — the mysterious domination exercised by a man, a work, or a doctrine, which paralyses the critical faculty and fills the soul with astonishment and respect. The leader (the meneur) rules by prestige; he is himself possessed by the idea he propagates, and it is his conviction, contagious as a fever, more than any argument, that gives him his power. He gives the crowd not truth but the illusions it craves, for whoever can supply a crowd with illusions is easily its master, and whoever tries to destroy its illusions is always its victim. This is not a recipe I invented; it is the mechanism I observed. That it can be used for good or ill is not the psychologist's concern; his task is to describe how, in fact, crowds are led.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Crowds are not to be convinced; they are to be moved.","n":[]},{"t":"Reasoning has no hold on them; the orator who would sway a crowd must strike its imagination, speak in images, affirm without proof, and repeat until the affirmation, by contagion, has entered the unconscious of every member as a settled belief.","n":[]},{"t":"Affirmation, repetition, contagion: these are the means by which ideas are propagated in crowds, not demonstration.","n":[]}],[{"t":"And above these stands prestige — the mysterious domination exercised by a man, a work, or a doctrine, which paralyses the critical faculty and fills the soul with astonishment and respect.","n":[]},{"t":"The leader (the meneur) rules by prestige; he is himself possessed by the idea he propagates, and it is his conviction, contagious as a fever, more than any argument, that gives him his power.","n":[]}],[{"t":"He gives the crowd not truth but the illusions it craves, for whoever can supply a crowd with illusions is easily its master, and whoever tries to destroy its illusions is always its victim.","n":[]},{"t":"This is not a recipe I invented; it is the mechanism I observed.","n":[]},{"t":"That it can be used for good or ill is not the psychologist's concern; his task is to describe how, in fact, crowds are led.","n":[1,2,3]}]],"texts":"The Crowd (1896), Book I ch. 3 and Book II (the leaders of crowds and their means of persuasion — affirmation, repetition, contagion; prestige). Reception: the twentieth-century science of propaganda and public relations (Bernays, Ellul); the study of charismatic leadership (Weber's charisma is a parallel); the documented use of Le Bon's manual by interwar propagandists and dictators; modern persuasion and social-influence research.","works":["The Crowd (1896), Book I ch. 3 and Book II (the leaders of crowds and their means of persuasion — affirmation, repetition, contagion","prestige)"],"reception":"the twentieth-century science of propaganda and public relations (Bernays, Ellul); the study of charismatic leadership (Weber's charisma is a parallel); the documented use of Le Bon's manual by interwar propagandists and dictators; modern persuasion and social-influence research.","status":"This is Le Bon's most influential and most secure practical legacy. The analysis of crowd persuasion by affirmation, repetition, and contagion, and of leadership by prestige and contagious conviction, founded the modern understanding of propaganda, advertising, public relations, and charismatic mass leadership; Edward Bernays and the propaganda theorists built on it, and it runs parallel to Weber's concept of charisma. Its notoriety is that the same analysis served as a working manual for twentieth-century propagandists and dictators. Modern social-influence and persuasion research confirms much of the mechanism (repetition effects, source credibility, emotional and image-based appeals, social contagion) while embedding it in a more differentiated psychology. The mechanism stands; its moral neutrality is exactly what makes it dangerous.","era":"1841-1931","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Become a popular truth the idea returns, as it were, to its source and exerts an influence on the upper classes of a nation. In the long run it is intelligence that shapes the destiny of the world, but very indirectly. The philosophers who evolve ideas have long since returned to dust, when, as the result of the process I have just described, the fruit of their reflection ends by triumphing. 3. Prestige.","label":"The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind"},{"n":2,"work":"The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Contagion is the cause of the contempt in which, at a given period, certain works are held — the example of \"Tannhauser \" may be cited — which, a few years later, for the same THE LEADERS OF CROWDS. 131 reason are admired by those who were foremost in criticising them.","label":"The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind"},{"n":3,"work":"The Psychology of Peoples","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The essential elements of the mechanism of persuasion must not be sought for in the value of a demonstration. Ideas can be enforced either by the prestige of the promulgator or by an appeal to the passions, but no influence is exerted by appealing solely to the reason.","label":"The Psychology of Peoples"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-collective-mind","label":"The collective mind: does a crowd become a single psychological being unlike the individuals who compose it?"},{"slug":"the-inferiority-of-the-crowd","label":"The inferiority of the crowd: is the collective mind intellectually lower and more primitive than the individual — 'like women, savages, and children'?"},{"slug":"the-era-of-crowds","label":"The era of crowds: is the rise of mass democracy, socialism, and revolution the leveling triumph of the collective mind over civilization?"}]}