Social Neuroscience, Communication and Collective Behavior: Thinking About the Psychic Causation After L’Aquila Earthquake

Originally developed within the “traditional” forms of intersubjective relationship (complicity in a crime, criminal association phenomena, etc.), the study of the psychic interactions between individuals has been focused, in relatively recent times, on new themes almost unknown to classical criminal law. First of all, there is the topic of the analysis of collective psychic effects causally related to the mass communication. An exemplary case is the well-known trial that involved some members of the Italian “High Risk Commission” (“Commissione Grandi Rischi”) who has met in L’Aquila in 2009. According to the indictment, the “reassuring effect” of their statements would have induced a part of the population to not adopt the usual precautions during the earthquake occurred a few days later, in which many people died. The present article will focus on the analysis of various neuroscientific theories about the “mass panic” and “crowd behavior” phenomena, with particular reference to social attachment and propagation of information within groups of individuals under environmental stress. In conclusion, I will try to highlight, in the aforementioned case, the cons (and risks) linked to the adoption of a causal explanation model of psychic causality based on a linear input-output relationship between communication and collective behavior.