Cover: Standard Ebooks edition cover · CC0 public domain dedication · source
The Crowd
A Study of the Popular Mind
Gustave Le Bon · 1841–1931
Le Bon's argument that a person in a crowd thinks differently — more impulsively, more suggestibly — and that leaders move crowds by affirmation, repetition and contagion. A founding text of social psychology, read since by reformers and demagogues alike; the society reads it to recognise the techniques, not to use them.
- First published
- 1895
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Reading time
- About 4 hours
- Translation
- anonymous (T. Fisher Unwin, 1896)
Reading time: 54,994 words in Project Gutenberg text #445, read at 238 words per minute.
Psychologie des foules, Paris, 1895. English translation, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896.
- crowds
- suggestion
- leadership
- propaganda
- prestige
Where to read it
- Read free — Standard EbooksPublic domain text, carefully proofread and produced. · checked 11 Oct 2026(opens in a new tab)
- Read free — Project GutenbergPublic domain in the USA; check your local law outside it. · checked 11 Oct 2026(opens in a new tab)
Copyright
- Kenya
- Public domain (author d. 1931; anonymous 1896 translation)
- United States
- Public domain
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Questions for discussion
Le Bon's 'affirmation, repetition, contagion' looks a lot like the affirmations of New Thought. Is that a problem?
Where have you seen a crowd — online or in the street — behave as he describes?
Le Bon held views about race and sex that we reject. How should we read a useful book by a prejudiced author?
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