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...