Consider the Following (Edited)excerpt from a James Thurber New Yorker

Consider the following (edited) excerpt from a James Thurber New Yorker piece: "Suddenly someone began to run.It may be that he had simply remembered … an engagement to meet his wife,for which he was now frightfully late.Whatever it was,he ran east on Broad Street....Somebody else began to run,perhaps a newsboy in high spirits....Another man … broke into a trot....A loud mumble gradually crystallized into the dread word 'damn.' 'The dam has broke!' The fear was put into words by a little old lady in an electric car,or by a traffic cop,or by a small boy: Nobody knows who....Two thousand people were abruptly in full flight...." This literary excerpt illustrates the phenomenon known as

A) contagion.
B) conversion.
C) mass hysteria.
D) collective psychosis.
E) obedience.