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Recommended: The effect of peer pressure

The Salem Witch Trials were an event where Americans were at their lowest. Whenever someone could be accused of being a witch and was guilty until they were proven innocent. The Crucible is a play written about this time frame where it really shows the mob mentality that everybody can have. The accusation of “witchcraft” spreads through this village putting peoples’ lives at stake just to cover up what some girls are afraid to confess to. Because of the fear through the village of witchcraft, it is believed to be true and people begin to be put on trials. The way the mob can affect a community can be overwhelming to the people in the town and could even tear it apart. Just because of one group of people, it can become chaos. Groups of people are unpredictable and can turn into mobs because people act differently in crowds, one person can affect everybody, and with more people, more things are going to happen.
Whenever somebody is by themselves they are a lot less likely to act out in an absurd way. This is actually true the other way around. In groups people “experience a loss of self awareness” (Donley). This means that people are more likely to do things in large groups than they would do just by themselves. In The Crucible if there was only one person that seeking out witchcraft it would not have been nearly as big of a deal as it was. Because the whole town was out for it they had an “emotional excitement” (Donley) just because they were in a group with each other. All the people may vote for the person to hang and watch it, but “people believe they are not responsible for the violence that goes on in a mob” (Donley). They will all just sit back and see it as it is on the executioner or the judge over themselves.
Groups o...

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...om large groups of people, feeling more comfortable with their actions, and because one person can change the whole outlook within the crowd. This is shown through all the big impact groups that have made a difference through violence and error. In the Salem witch trials many people were killed but there were no witches that were killed. The type of events that happened in The Crucible can be learned from and applied to crowd control today. If we cannot learn from history then it is bond to repeat itself.

Works Cited

Donley, Megan. “Examining the Mob Mentality.” South University. Web. 3 December 2013.
Hughes, Jill. “The Effects of Mob Mentality on Crowd Control.” Pheonix.edu 17 October 2011

Web. 3 December 2013.

James, Wendy. “The Psychology of Mob Mentality and Violence.” Dr Wendy James. 18 July

2013 Web. 3 December 2013.

Miller, Arthur “The Crucible”

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