Wit and Humor: A Neglected Aid in Crowd and Mob Control

This paper presents background information and theories which suggest the use of humor to reduce tensions between control forces (notably the police) and the masses during demonstrations, marches, and other crowd actions. Because the basic responsibility for preserving order belongs to the police, this paper presumes that most planned attempts at humor to reduce tension will be theirs.

No attempt has been made to relate the use of humor to the rightness or wrongness of the primary issues in a demonstration since the only type of humor effective in crowd control is irrele vant to the primary issue and directed at preventing and control ling secondary antagonisms. Humor as a technique of social control is only likely to help when the objective of the control forces is to preserve the peace and to discharge duties with a minimum of unnecessary antagonsim. Humor should not and probably could not becloud the primary issues of a confronta tion. Guidelines for the use of humor are proposed.