Classroom Observation Paper

For this experiential report I will be discussing the collective behavior that was observed and experienced while at a high school football game. The number of people in the audience was impacted by the fact that it was youth night, in which children involved in the youth sports program for football and cheerleading attended the game with their parents. This additional factor increased the size of the collective, by how much cannot be determined with certainty; however, the total number of people would be estimated at 400 people. The circumstance that brought me to be a part of this collective group was that of being a parent to one of the children in attendance for the youth night. According to Forsyth on p. 575, this collective would be

I was proud of my child and her peers when they were recognized on the field at halftime, as I observed in other parents that had clustered together as their children were recognized. I was not in any way self-conscious or felt that I was being singled-out. If anything I felt like a part of the smaller group of parents that were there for the youth night but I still felt as if I was a part of the larger collective watching the high school football game. Relatively unidentifiable would be partly true because I was there watching and reacting with the large collective but I could be identifiable as a member of the smaller group of youth parents. This event occurred about two months ago and the memories of the event are still clear in my mind. I have been able to recall with certainty the timing and feelings that I felt and observed in the collective at the event. My actions at the event were relatively consistent with my usual behavior at a sporting event. I will say in self-reflection/ observation due to the concept of contagion my verbalizations were a bit more intense than they normally would have been at a smaller event, such as my daughter’s elementary aged sporting