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, they are wearing a uniform or a mask in a crowd. This results in decreased concern about the evaluation of others
Who created the concept of de - individuation and what did he say?
- Gustave Le Bon
- He explained that when we are by ourselves, we can be easily identified by others therefore our behaviour is constrained by social norms.
- However, when we are are in a crowd we lose restraint and have freedom to behave in ways that may not follow social norms
How did Zimbardo differentiate between individuated and de - individuated behaviour?
individuated = Our behaviour is rational and normative
De - individuated = Our behaviour is emotional, irrational, disinhibited and anti - normative
What are the conditions of de - individuation?
- darkness, drugs, alcohol, uniforms, masks and disguises.
- A major factor is anonymity which provides fewer opportunities for us to be judged negatively
What are the two types of self - awareness?
- private self - awareness = How we pay attention to our own feelings and behaviour. This is reduced when in a crowd as our attention is outward on other individuals . We no longer care about how others see us, so we are less attention to our own beliefs and feelings. We are therefore less self - critical
- Public self - awareness = refers to how much we care about what other people think of our behaviour. This is reduced in crowds as we are anonymous and therefore less likely to be judged by others
What was Dodds procedure?
Procedure = He asked 229 undergrad psychology students in 13 classes, ‘ if you could do anything humanly possible with complete assurance you would not be detected or held responsible, what would you do?’
- The students knew their responses were anonymous. Three independent raters who did not know the hypothesis decided what categories of antisocial behaviour the responses belonged to
What were Dodd’s findings?
- Dodd found that 36% of the responses involved some form of antisocial behaviour
- 26% were actual criminal acts like robbery
- A few opted for murder, rape and assassination
- Only 9% of the responses were prosocial and helped people
- This links anonymity, de - individuation and aggressive behaviour
What is a strength of de - individuation?
- Douglas and McGarty looked at aggressive online behaviour in chatrooms and uses of instant messaging.
- They found a strong correlation between anonymity and flaming (posting hostile messages)
- Most pof these messages were sent by those who chose to hide their identity. This shows that there is a link between aggressive behaviour and anonymity
What is a counterpoint of the research support for de - individuation?
- there is evidence that de - individuation does not always lead to aggression. In Gergens study called deviance in the dark, 8 students were placed in a completely darkened room for a hour. They were told to do whatever they wanted but they couldnt identify each other and they would never meet again.
- They very quickly started to kiss and touch each other intimately
- This shows that de - individuation may not always lead to aggression
What is another strength of de - individuation
- De - individuation can explain the aggressive behaviour in baiting crowds
- Leon Mann investigated instances of suicidal jumpers and identified 21 cases where a crowd gathered together to bait a jumper into jumping. These tended to occur in darkness, when crowds were large and the jumpers were relatively distant from the crowd. These conditions predicted by de - individuation theory lead to a state of de - individuation in crowds, which leads to aggressive baiting
- Therefore there is some validity to the idea that a large group can become aggressive in a de - individuated, faceless crowd
What is a limitation of de - individuation?
- One limitation is that de - individuated behaviour is normative rather than anti - normative
- De - individuation theory argues that we behave in ways that are contrary to social norms (disinhibited aggression) when we are less aware of our private identity
- However, Spears and Lea argue that de - individuation leads to conforming behaviour. These may be antisocial norms or prosocial norms.
- This happens as anonymity shifts an individuals attention from his or her private identity to their social identity as a group member
- This suggests that people in a de - individuated state may remain sensitive to norms rather than ignoring them
