Author(s)

Xinyi Li ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710127, China

Corresponding Author

Xinyi Li

ABSTRACT

In today's society, the study of group phenomenon is reflected in a wide range of fields. When people have the same psychological demands, it is possible to form a group, in which they display psychological characteristics that are not consistent with their individual behaviours. For example, once an individual enters a group, he or she will show psychological characteristics of reduced intelligence, impulsivity and multiplied self-confidence, which makes group behaviour unpredictable and strongly emotionally contagious. French sociologist Le Bon's classic work "The rabble" deeply analyses the psychological phenomenon of groups, which provides a strong theoretical basis for this paper to interpret the group behaviour presented in the animated short film "Runaway Train". Le Bon pointed out that individuals in a group will gradually lose the ability to think independently, increase simple-minded behaviours due to emotional impulses, and blindly imitate the behaviours of others in the group, which may lead to the impairment of individual rational thinking. The animated short film "Runaway Train" vividly illustrates this group phenomenon. The group of diverse group characters that appear on the train display unusual behaviour when faced with a crisis, such as the gentlemen inciting the commoners for their own survival, and the monetary interests that drive each of the commoners to sell their surplus value, which ultimately leads to the eventual destruction of the train due to the mistakes of the conductor and the blindness of the crowd of paupers on the train, as reflected in the film, which is closely related to group theory.

KEYWORDS

Group Psychology, Animation, Le Pen, Social Behaviour, Phenomenon Analysis

CITE THIS PAPER

Xinyi Li, The Runaway Train—An Analysis of the Group Phenomenon in the Medium of Animated Short Films. Applied & Educational Psychology (2023) Vol. 4: 119-124. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/appep.2023.040919.

REFERENCES

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[2] [French] Sage Moscovitch. The Age of Hooligans [M]. Xu Lemin, Xue Danyun, Li Jihong, Translation. Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2003. 3.
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[4] Ola I. From open borders to 'rasisit': libertarianism and populism on the Scandinavian periphery (1980 – 1994) [J]. Journal of Political Ideologies, 2023, 28(3).
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