"Crowds", an exhibition to understand everything about our group behavior

Laure Dautriche 8:30 a.m., October 24, 2022

Everyone has a good or a bad experience of the crowd, in transport, in a station, in a stadium or in a concert hall.

An exhibition has just opened in mid-October at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris, called

, a sociological and scientific analysis of crowd phenomena.

Harmonization of crowds

The crowd is treated as a scientific object: how does it behave, how does it act?

For example, it does not travel in the same way in France and abroad.

In France, very often pedestrians overtake on the right.

"Often when we drive on the right, we also avoid each other on the right and vice versa", explains Mehdi Moussaïd, researcher specializing in crowd behavior.

"But there are exceptions! In the heart of London, pedestrians avoid each other on the right while motorists drive on the left. London being a bit landlocked in Europe which drives on the right, pedestrians are more European than English," he said.

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The crowd can be awkward, sometimes oppressive, but there are also moments of collective intelligence.

For example, when we start singing together, explains Dorothée Vatinel, curator of this exhibition.

"We realize that when the singers sing together it is often better, especially when they are bad singers. Finally, this crowd sings just because when we sing with others we tend to adjust our note to that of our neighbour,” she explains.

"Our brain also corrects when the grades aren't very good."

Advice is also given on not panicking when you find yourself in the middle of a dense crowd, such as identifying the exits and letting yourself be carried away by the movements of the crowd.

The exhibition is to be discovered at La Villette until August 2023.