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This study examines the place which observation of group behavior holds in demonstrations of the integrationist effect of mass gatherings. Since Durkheim and his notion of social effervescence, such demonstrations are based on an apparently obvious thought process, which however raises many problems in the analysis of crowds. This interpretative logic assigns to observable emotions the beliefs which individuals must harbor for having adopted the observed behaviors. Scholarly commentary does not differ in that matter from ordinary discourse, whether political, journalistic or from the police. The two essential characteristics of the operation (its natural character and its reductionism) are discussed. The study concludes that even though this interpretative sliding from bodies to states of mind is deeply natural (which explains the extraordinary social efficiency of the operation in constructions of social aggregates) it must be discarded as an explanatory principle. Providing proof of the causal link between states of mind and behavior is totally illusory concerning collective behavior observed at a distance, since the conditions under which the proposition that « a person who applauds believes » is valid can be multiplied infinitely.