Large diffuse crowds often turn to violence and property damage. One explanation of this phenomenon offered in the book is that in a crowd, people experience a sense of deindividuation—a sense that they are not accountable for their own actions—and it is this deindividuation that accounts for the violent turn of events. Yet many large diffuse crowds rarely if ever turn violent—like the crowds going to work in most large cities. What makes some crowds turn violent while others don’t? List several explanations for this discrepancy.
