BEATLEMANIA AND MASS HYSTERIA - STILL A MUCH NEGLECTED RESEARCH PHENOMENON

5^th International Conference on Medical Informatics & Telemedicine

August 31- 01 September, 2017 | Prague, Czech Republic

Antony J W Taylor

Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Health Med Informat

Abstract :

Pointers from a study of crowd behavior and audience arousal were re-visited in 2014, following an inquiry from a journalist in London about the interviews the author conducted 50 years earlier with John Lennon during the Beatles� visit to New Zealand. Interviews with Lennon, direct observation of crowd behavior, and psychometric testing of target groups had led to the elimination of clinical hysteria and delinquent proclivities as key elements of the extraordinary social rumpus. Rather, youngsters still at the immature stage of personality development were primarily those who broke conventions. The study attracted widespread attention at the time, with the editors of two leading journals declaring solemnly that more studies of the kind should be conducted. However, no other researcher heeded the call: hence the one mentioned here remains the first and only data-based study of audience arousal on record.