Why is communication important to collective behavior?

Communication is important because people may act together efficiently if they have been prepared for a pattern of behaviour such as a fire drill, but the result is organized rather than collective behaviour. Lacking organization, people must first become sensitized to and begin to communicate with one another. These processes of sensitization and communication have been called elementary collective behaviour.

Collective behaviour, the kinds of activities engaged in by sizable but loosely organized groups of people. Episodes of collective behaviour tend to be quite spontaneous, resulting from an experience shared by the members of the group that engenders a sense of common interest and identity. The informality of the group’s structure is the main source of the frequent unpredictability of collective behaviour.

Included in collective behaviour are the activities of people in crowds, panics, fads, fashions, crazes, publics, cults, and followings as well as more organized phenomena, such as reform and revolutionary social movements. Because it emphasizes groups, the study of collective behaviour is different from the study of individual behaviour, although inquiries into the motivations and attitudes of the individuals in these groupings are often carried out. Collective behaviour resembles organized group behaviour in that it consists of people acting together; but it is more spontaneous—and consequently more volatile and less predictable—than is behaviour in groups that have well-established rules and traditions specifying their purposes, membership, leadership, and method of operation.