Friday, September 29/ 12:00 Noon / Byrd Center for Legislative Studies Auditorium

From Flying Saucers to Bigfoot Collective Hysteria and Mass Delusion

A major sub-discipline of the science of sociology is collective behavior.   This area concerns several phenomena that are not institutionalized; behaviors that are not part of everyday life: and behaviors that are relatively unstructured, spontaneous, temporary, unpredictable, usually irrational and look strange or bizarre when they occur.      One of the several areas of collective behavior is collective hysteria and delusion.   After a set of definitions are discussed, the presentation will focus on a typology of hysteria and delusions created by interrelating three dichotomous variables.   The typology will contain four major types of this phenomenon each with two sub-types.   During the remainder of the presentation each type of mass hysteria and collective delusions will be theoretically and empirically examined.   Outbreaks of such behavior include; satanic panics, satanic cult scares, flying saucer sightings and abductions, bigfoot sightings, cattle-mutilation, phantom gaser phenomena, windshield pitting episodes, outbreaks of sociogenic illness, dancing manias, cultural bound syndromes, Nessie sightings, crop circle phenomena, and other lesser known delusional events.