May 27, 1987
Crowds cause people to change, and, according to Psychology Today magazine, Brian Mullen, a social psychologist at Syracuse University, has developed a mathematical theory that helps predict how much. Reviewing reports of lynchings that occurred between 1899 and 1946, Mullen devised what he calls the "other-total ratio." By dividing the number of victims by the number of people in the crowd, Mullen came up with what was in essence a brutality index. The greater the ratio, the more brutal was the...