24 / 24
Page 79
Notes:
conferenceseries
.com
Volume 8, Issue 4 (Suppl)
J Health Med Inform, an open access journal
ISSN: 2157-7420
Medical Informatics 2017
August 31- 01 September, 2017
August 31- 01 September, 2017 | Prague, Czech Republic
5
th
International Conference on
Medical Informatics & Telemedicine
J Health Med Informat 2017, 8:4 (Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2157-7420-C1-019
‘BEATLEMANIA’ AND MASS HYSTERIA – STILL A MUCH NEGLECTED RESEARCH
PHENOMENON
Antony J W Taylor
a
a
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
P
ointers 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.