Baron Vaughn Quotes

A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence.

Unorganized masses … are highly unpredictable in character

People influence each other, so one screening will be filled with laughs while another is dead silent.

Besides, hysteria is only possible with an audience.

Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: It is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them.

Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass.

A crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile. Like a savage, it is not prepared to admit that anything can come between its desire and the realisation of its desire.

I detest audiences - not in their individual components, but en masse I detest audiences. I think they're a force of evil. It seems to me rule of mob law.

The psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual

Crowds create illusions.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

As soon as a certain number of living beings are gathered together ... they place themselves instinctively under the authority of a chief. In the case of human crowds the chief is often nothing more than a ringleader or agitator, but as such he plays a considerable part.

In wartime the herd instinct rise …

… a crowd is more than the sum of the individuals who compose it. The collective body thinks and acts in ways which the component units thinking and acting for themselves would never sanction and would often reprobate. In general the action of the crowd is more emotional and less intellectual than the action of an individual. The nerve counts for more, the brain for less. Waves of sentiment or cruelty pass through the collective body with a force which the individuals who compose it find it difficult to comprehend, when they are removed from the contagion of their neighbours…

A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought.

Showing 'Get Out' to a room full of strangers and having them react lets them be introspective and see the way certain images affect other people.

A crowd is always impressed by the sum of its own number.

When a film is released, anywhere in the country, exactly in the same place people laugh, cry, get bored, what is that, but commonality.

The crowd is a performer. En masse, a crowd has its own personality, its own character. And there are going to be nights when the crowd delivers a great performance. And there are going to be nights when the crowd bombs.

Trends suck you in, anywhere in the world, patterns you don't even see. It's so easy. Look at Wall Street - look at any sports team in the world - there are trends. Look at exercising. Nothing but patterns and trends, and that's what I started to see. Like a flock of birds all flying in one direction.

Online, you're trying to appeal to everyone and people who you don't know at the same time. So I think, as a side effect, it amplifies the desire for groupthink.

... there is a particular propensity in the world for people, wherever they appear in great numbers, to permit themselves collectively everything that would be forbidden them individually.

The sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.

how impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others.

I think of people as members of an audience. But an audience acts independently of every individual. It's an organism on its own. I focus on that living hydra in the dark.