de-individuation Flashcards
what is de-individuation?
a psychological state in which an individual loses their personal identity and takes on the identity of a social group when, for example, in a crowd or wearing a uniform. the result may be decreased concern about the evaluation of others.
who proposed the concept of deindividuation?
Le Bon
how does deindividuation occur in crowd behaviour?
when we become part of a crowd, we lose restraint and have the freedom to behave in ways which we wouldn’t otherwise. we lose our senses of individual self- identity and responsibility for our behaviour. we disregard norms and even laws.
responsibility becomes shared throught the crowd, so we experience less personal guilt about directing harmful aggression at others.
what did Zimbardo say our behaviour was like in an individuated state?
rational and normative (it conforms to social norms)
what are our behaviours like in a de-individualised state?
they are emotional, impulsive, irrational, disinhibited and anti-normative.
we lose awareness, stop monitoring and regulating our own behaviour as well as ignoring social norms
what are the conditions of de-individuating which promote aggressive behaviour?
•darkness
•drugs
•alcohol
•uniforms
•masks and disguises
-anonymity (larger crowd, more anonymous we are)
who proposed the types of self awareness?
Prentice-Dunn and Rogers
what are the two types of self awareness?
-private self awareness
-public self awareness
what is private self awareness?
concerns how we pay attention to our own feelings and behaviour. this is reduced when we are part of a crowd. our attention becomes focused outwardly to the events around us, so we pay less attention to our own beliefs and feelings. we are less self critical and less thoughtful, which promotes a de-individuated state.
what is public self awareness?
refers to how much we care about what other people think of our behaviour. this is also reduced in crowds. we realise that we are just one individual amongst many, we are anonymous and our behaviour is less likely to be judged by others. we no longer care how others see us, so we become less accountable for our aggressive actions
what was Dodd’s procedure?
•asked 229 undergraduate psychology students ‘if you could do anything humanly possible with with complete assurance that you would not be detected or held responsible what would you do?’
•the subtends knew their responses were completely anonymous.
•the independent raters who did not know the hypotheses decided which categories of antisocial behaviour the responses belonged to
what were Dodd’s findings?
•he found that 36% of the responses involved some form of antisocial behaviour
•26% were actual criminal acts, the most common of which was to rob a bank
•only 9% were prosocial behaviours (such as helping people)
•this study demonstrates a link between anonymity, de-individuating and aggressive behaviour
4 evaluation points
+ research support
(-counteracting research)
+ real world examples
- role of norms
- nurture and nature
what was Douglas and McGarty’s study?
•they looked at aggressive online behaviour in chatrooms
•they found a strong correlation between anonymity and posting hostile messages
•they found that the most aggressive messages were sent by those who chose to hide their real identities
strength: research support
•Douglas and McGarty
•supports a link between aggressive behaviour and anonymity, a key element of deindividuation
what is the counterpoint to research support?
•there is also evidence that de-individualisation does not always lead to aggression
•Gergen’s ‘deviance in the dark’ study placed participants into a completely dark room for an hour
•they were told to do whatever they wanted to and that they could not identify eachother and would never meet again
•they quickly stopped talking and started kissing and touching eachother intimately
•in a repeated study where he told participants they would come face-to-face after, the kissing was much lower
•therefore de-individualism may not always lead to aggression
strength: real world deindividuation
•the deindividuation explanation can explain the aggressive behaviour of baiting crowds
•Mann investigated instances of suicidal jumpers
•he identified cases where a crowd gathered to ‘bait’ a jumper (encorage them)
•these incidents tended to occur in darkness, the crowds were large and the jumpers relatively distant from the crowd
•these are conditions which lead to de-individualisation in crowds
•therefore there is some validity to the idea that a large group can become aggressive in a de-individualised ‘faceless’ crowd
limitation: role of norms
•deindividualised behaviour is normative rather than anti-normative
•the theory argues that we behave in way which are contradictory to social norms when we are less aware of our private identity
•however in the social identity model of de individuation, Spears and Lea argue that DI actually leads to behaviour that conforms to group norms.
•there nah be antisocial norms but there could equally be prosocial norms
•this suggests that people in a DI state remain sensitive to norms rather than ignoring them
nurture and nature
DI highlights factors related to neither in aggressive behaviour. these include anything that reduces private and public self- awareness. people who would not usually behave aggressively do so when part of a crowd
however, we have seen on previous spreads that nature plays an important role in causing aggressive behaviour. the causes are genetic, ethological and evolutionary. this approach suggests that people are aggressive in crowds perhaps because the situation makes you feel stressed
