Let’s take a look at the psychological and emotional aspects of the tragedy at the hip-hop music festival in Houston, at the Astroworld Festival in November 2021, when eight died during a crowd surge. It became apparent that emotion was at a height before and during the occurrence of the crowd surge that apparently caused the deaths. In fact, reports indicate that the surge of emotions started much earlier. Friday’s event was “hectic from the beginning,” according to one concertgoer, Neema Djavadzadeh, as reported in the New York Times[1]. She said that “I got there around 3 and saw people already struggling to stand straight,” she said on Saturday. “There was a lot of mob mentality going on, people willing to do whatever to be in line for merch, food, shows, you name it. A lot of fights broke out throughout the day.” There were rumors that drug overdoses may have been involved. Drug abuse often produces aberrant emotions, heightened or lowered levels of emotion and little awareness of emotional states. Rather, people act out from the emotional state they are in rather than observe them with reflection.
The Times article said that “Travis Scott, the performer, took pauses to point at the crowd to say, like, ‘Go help them — they’re passed out,’” It is quite likely that the emotion became so strong that people lost their awareness and their objectivity and with it were not able to think or move about with awareness of themselves in time and space. They were trapped and pressed by a sea of people and the crowd was surging out of control. Of course the effect of the crowd being out of control is that chaos happens, or had started to happen prior, possibly earlier in the day, starting the lack of control that produced a worsening chaos as it went on.
When people attend concerts they are attracted to the music, which induces an emotional state, often in in a group mentality, or sometimes in a mob mentality. Looking beyond the superficiality of the music to the psychological and emotional factors that lie beneath the actual music, we see that it is the emotion that has the major impact on people and obliterates or removes their thinking capacity for the time during which emotion is heightened. This likely contributed to the overall chaos. Emotions are usually dominant at a time like this and temporarily paralyze the ability of the mind to think. The emotion is transferred to the audience by way of the music and all the strong equivalent effects, the voice, the rhythm, the singing, the various sounds of the instruments, the fast movement, the gyrating, the colors and all that is appealing to the audience. The lights and the sound augment the experience, and make it appealing. It provides an experience which is akin to an emotional experience, an experience that becomes magnetic and hard to resist. People are attracted to the stage, and move forward to the stage quickly and almost magnetically. They are not considering their situation, the environment, the possible risks. Seats have gone by the wayside in most rock / hip-hop concerts. The deaths at rock concerts may be an effect of this, as many people are not prone or even able to enter into the thinking mode when they are in such a strong emotional atmosphere where they were living in the moment in a narrow focus without awareness of their environment. And if many are on powerful drugs, which may have been the case, since there were a few cardiac arrests, they were seeking some rush, which is an emotional high. It is probable that the concert environment is appealing to those with high emotional needs.
This would be true of those with strong emotional needs who are seeking an intense emotional experience and went to the concert seeking this. Many thought this was so because it was “after Covid, after quarantine” and everyone wanted to have fun and let loose, releasing suppressed emotions, those that had been held in check for a year or more, since this was about 20 months after the start of the pandemic. Most people during the pandemic, especially the younger people, have unmet emotional needs. It is very common. It’s ok to have strong emotional needs. Hence the phrase “It’s ok not to be ok.” That means it’s not embarrassing or shameful. But it doesn’t mean it’s ok to act irresponsibly because of them. It’s better to recognize strong emotional needs and find other ways to handle them, like venting, taking up sports, and guarding against being in an unsafe location where you may be prone to act emotionally without thinking.
When people attend concerts they are attracted to the music on the surface but underlying that is the emotional experience transferred to the participant by way of the lights, the color, the sound, the videos, and the crowd. The sound and lights are magnificent and striking, and overwhelm the audience and the sensory experience. Coupled with all the moving around which we know is conducive to emotion, because things move fast, nullifying the effect of any constructive thought, which takes more than a few seconds, it is dwarfed by the whole experience. Think of it, even if you try and add simple numbers in your head, like 7 plus 12 plus 3 we know in a very fast paced atmosphere with overwhelming, magnificent lights, loud music, a lot of quick movement, with people jostling all around us, we could not add those numbers as easily and quickly as we can in a quiet environment. It is sensory overload that causes this. It also produces heightened emotion that is hard to control, and so we see people moving quickly, not having time to think. Plus there is no motivation to resist it since the emotion is very appealing and makes it likely the person will continue the overall emotional experience. Heightened emotional experiences pull people in, especially in a group or even a mob mentality. It becomes “group think,” or, more to the point, “group feel.”. It provides an experience which is akin to an emotional experience that becomes magnetic. People are attracted to the stage, “where the action is” and move forward to the stage quickly and almost magnetically. Seats have gone by the wayside in rock concerts. The deaths at rock concerts may be a side effect of this, as many people are not likely to enter into the thinking mode when they are in such a strong emotional atmosphere. This would be particularly true of those with strong emotional needs who often are guided by emotional experiences, or those who value emotional experiences to a great extent and who come to concerts to have that experience.
It may be that people are in greater need of emotional experiences now than in previous decades. This may reflect a heightened feeling of alienation, perhaps related to family breakdown, as well as an increase of competition and a decrease of cooperation and respect, bringing on depression, anxiety strongly associated with loss or fears of loss of social status. Comparing the audience in the 50,000 rock concert with an audience for Elvis decades ago will reveal crowds standing pressed together without chairs, surging in a mass movement, being unaware of the needs of others, whereas the audience decades ago, although emotional, sat in chairs with some distance between them, standing at times, an in indoor theatre, then in outdoor stadiums as the decades went on, now in open spaces. It can be argued that this difference may be due to the change in culture that permits and condones less personal space between people at present, demanding greater crowds for a greater experience, suggesting the need for emotional closeness is greater in society these days. This is closeness in the physical sense, not the emotional sense, as the experience of emotional closeness does not demand a tender, gentle moment since closeness when examined from the physical realm can include rougher, harder experiences when people are pressed together. The ability to tolerate this suggests the need to experience closeness physically and perhaps even emotionally as audiences have a greater tolerance for such closeness in the current times when compared to decades ago. Even being physically close in a rough hard crowd enjoying an experience together, such as a concert, will provide a type of emotional closeness that some people seem to value, although many do not. It is a type of anonymous closeness, psychologically safe and subconsciously rewarding although physically dangerous, as we saw in Houston.
So it is not just a matter of better crowd control, or more security, although those are both obviously important, it is also a matter of personal and social responsibility, on the part of the organizers, promoters and overseeing bodies. Just giving people what they seem to want on the surface without understanding their motivation and predicting their likely behavior in the scenario they are requesting and providing limits is more likely to result in a disaster. Unfortunately freedom does not mean the participants can police themselves, they need oversight.
[1] Paybarah, A., Moya, M. J., and Khan, A. Crowd Surge at Travis Scott Concert Leaves at Least 8 Dead New York Times, Nov. 6, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/06/us/houston-astroworld-festival