--- title: 'The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study' url: https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/ description: 'The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study by Everett Dean Martin (1920), full text with provenance and rights.' section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-interwar.jpg) [Library](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/) · Book # The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study At a glance A 1920 study of crowd psychology that starts from Le Bon's The Crowd and Freud's psychology of the unconscious. - **Author:** Everett Dean Martin - **Published:** 1920 - **Origin:** United States - **Length:** 68,781 words, 11 chapters Full details - **Edition:** The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1920 (Project Gutenberg's proofread transcription, from a Canadian Libraries scan on the Internet Archive) - **Language:** English - **Text source:** [Project Gutenberg, ebook #40914](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40914) - **Text basis:** Proofread transcription by Project Gutenberg's Distributed Proofreaders. The transcriber's list of corrections to obvious printer's errors is not part of the text. - **Rights:** Published in the United States in 1920, so in the public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Project Gutenberg marks the ebook public domain in the USA. Martin died in 1941. - **Rights checked:** October 2, 2026 On this page - [Read the text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/#read) - [Provenance and rights](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/#provenance) - [Related](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/#related) Everett Dean Martin's 1920 study of crowd behaviour, written in the years after the First World War, which takes up Le Bon's *The Crowd* (also in the Library), remarks that Le Bon's use of the word "unconscious" is loose, turns to Freud's account of the unconscious, and argues in its last chapter that education can change the habit of crowd-thinking. It is the whole book, with the author's foreword of October 1919. ## Read the text - [Foreword](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/01-foreword/) 342 words - [1. The Crowd and the Social Problem of To-day](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/02-the-crowd-and-the-social-problem-of-to-day/) 2,653 words - [2. How Crowds Are Formed](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/03-how-crowds-are-formed/) 8,189 words - [3. The Crowd and the Unconscious](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/04-the-crowd-and-the-unconscious/) 4,892 words - [4. The Egoism of the Crowd-mind](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/05-the-egoism-of-the-crowd-mind/) 4,215 words - [5. The Crowd a Creature of Hate](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/06-the-crowd-a-creature-of-hate/) 9,473 words - [6. The Absolutism of the Crowd-mind](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/07-the-absolutism-of-the-crowd-mind/) 7,845 words - [7. The Psychology of Revolutionary Crowds](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/08-the-psychology-of-revolutionary-crowds/) 11,763 words - [8. The Fruits of Revolution — New Crowd-tyrannies for Old](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/09-the-fruits-of-revolution-new-crowd-tyrannies-for/) 2,990 words - [9. Freedom and Government by Crowds](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/10-freedom-and-government-by-crowds/) 11,121 words - [10. Education as a Possible Cure for Crowd-thinking](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/11-education-as-a-possible-cure-for-crowd-thinking/) 5,298 words [Download as plain text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920/martin-behavior-of-crowds-1920.txt) 68,781 words, with the provenance header above the text ## Provenance and rights - **Edition:** The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1920 (Project Gutenberg's proofread transcription, from a Canadian Libraries scan on the Internet Archive) - **Text source:** [Project Gutenberg, ebook #40914](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40914) - **Text basis:** Proofread transcription by Project Gutenberg's Distributed Proofreaders. The transcriber's list of corrections to obvious printer's errors is not part of the text. - **Rights:** Published in the United States in 1920, so in the public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Project Gutenberg marks the ebook public domain in the USA. Martin died in 1941. Checked October 2, 2026. - **Changes made:** Line wraps rejoined and headings set in title case; the Project Gutenberg licence header and footer removed. Wording, spelling and punctuation are the source's own. The contents list, the index and the transcriber's notes are left out. Double hyphens in chapter titles are set as dashes. Obvious printer's errors corrected by the Project Gutenberg transcribers stay corrected. - **Source file checksum:** `cb8ef61808d57057…` (SHA-256 of the download this text was made from) ## Related - [The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lebon-the-crowd/)