crowd behavior

the activities or conduct of a group of people who congregate temporarily while their attention is focused on the same object or event. Such behavior may differ depending on the nature of the crowd. For example, an audience tends to be relatively passive (smiling, laughing, applauding), whereas a street or milling crowd typically moves without apparent aim and a mob may act violently. See also collective behavior.

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Psychology term of the day

December 26th 2024

factor method

any means by which latent variables (factors) are extracted or identified in factor analysis. Widely used factor methods include principal components analysis, which seeks to find a set of linear combinations called components that help explain the correlations among variables; and principal-axis factor analysis, in which underlying dimensions or factors are sought to explain the correlations among variables after separating out communality and putting aside the error variance in a set of variables.