Hitler Understood Crowd Theory and Emotional Contagion and used the mob to energize his speeches.
Crowd theory states that in crowd the individual identity and the capability to control behavior disappears and people are open to contagion. They are unable to resist any passing idea, and because intellect and rational thought can be obliterated, any passing emotion. They catch it like a cold and they go to the primitive limbic brain and have the spontaneity and the potential violence and enthusiasm of primate beings. That's why we so easily roar and cheer at football games.
Hitler was familiar with this and new you could take advantage of crowd mentality and manipulate a crowds to his own ends. He would have a stage in the middle of a town square, have marching bands push people tightly together to the center square from all the outlying streets, stir the crowd with marching music sometimes for as much as three hours before he spoke. He knew you can direct crowd in that primitive emotional state, by simplifying his ideas, Appealing to emotions rather than intellect, exaggeration rather than fact and by repeating the same message over and over again.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
