# The Suggestibility and Credulity of Crowds explained — The Crowd > Chapter companion for The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon. ## What happens This chapter explores how crowds are highly suggestible and credulous, accepting images as reality due to contagion and the loss of critical faculty. It argues that even educated individuals lose their observational abilities in a crowd, leading to collective hallucinations and false testimonies. Examples include the hallucination of a disabled ship by the crew of the Belle Poule, Mr. Davey's spiritualist trickery, and mistaken identifications of drowned children. ## Themes in this chapter ### Suggestibility and Credulity of Crowds The chapter's central theme: crowds are highly suggestible, accept images as reality, and lose critical faculty, leading to collective hallucinations and false beliefs. ### Irrationality and Credulity Crowds are described as deprived of all critical faculty, excessively credulous, and unable to distinguish subjective from objective reality. ### Power of Beliefs and Ideas The chapter shows how a single suggestion can spread through a crowd by contagion, transforming into accepted reality and driving actions. ## Character check-ins ### Crowds Described as perpetually hovering on the borderland of unconsciousness, readily yielding to suggestions, and excessively credulous. ### Mr. Davey A psychologist who demonstrated the power of suggestion by convincing a gathering of distinguished observers that they witnessed supernatural phenomena through simple tricks. ### St. George Mentioned as an example of collective hallucination: St. George appearing on the walls of Jerusalem to all the Crusaders after being perceived by one individual. ### Julian Felix Naval lieutenant who related the collective hallucination of the Belle Poule crew in his book on Sea Currents. ### Filibert Chavandret A boy mistakenly identified as a murdered child by his mother, brother-in-law, schoolmaster, and neighbors, illustrating the power of suggestion in false recognitions. ### M. C⸺ Referenced as the juge d'instruction who accepted the false identification of drowned children based on unanimous witness testimony. ## Key lines > A crowd perpetually hovering on the borderland of unconsciousness, readily yielding to all suggestions, having all the violence of feeling peculiar to beings who cannot appeal to the influence of reason, deprived of all critical faculty, cannot be otherwise than excessively credulous. Crowds exist in a state near unconsciousness, easily swayed by suggestions, driven by intense emotions without reason, and lacking critical thinking, making them extremely gullible. _Summarizes the core argument about crowd suggestibility and credulity._ > From the moment that they form part of a crowd the learned man and the ignoramus are equally incapable of observation. Once individuals join a crowd, both the educated and the uneducated lose their ability to observe accurately. _Highlights the leveling effect of crowds on observational skills._ > The first perversion of the truth effected by one of the individuals of the gathering is the starting-point of the contagious suggestion. The initial distortion of truth by a single person in a crowd becomes the source of a suggestion that spreads contagiously. _Explains the mechanism of how collective hallucinations begin._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_crowd_se/chapters/2-the-suggestibility-and-credulity-of-crowds - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_crowd_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_crowd_se/chapters