Triggers of Aggression in Crowds; The Milieu of High School Football

Over the course of a season, observations were made of eight teams from eight different schools on the island of Oahu. The attempt to capture aggression triggers in crowd derived three concrete themes: 1) Cohesion is a tangible entity that can be identified and is possibly the spark in group aggressive behavior, 2) Voluntary and involuntary conditioned response are spurred by unscripted activities taking place during the games, 3) Schools that utilized structure did so deliberately to avoid or diffuse aggression in crowds. In pursuit of aggressive triggers the overarching lessons illuminated, the context drives the impression of the severity and validity of the aggression observed. Impressively there are those who are adept at facilitating the context with the triggers of aggression, and conversely there are those who blindly fall into the movement of the crowd as aggression turns contagious.