Deindividuation

Question 1

What is deindividuation?

Answer 1

People, when part of a relatively anonymous group lose their personal identity and in doing so their inhibitions about violence (Zimbardo)

Question 2

Diener states it can lead to..

Answer 2

• poor self monitoring of behaviour
• reduced need for social approval
• reduced inhibitions
• reduced rational thinking

Question 3

Being part of a deindividuated crowd can..

Answer 3

Diminish awareness of individuality, which minimises a person’s need to be accepted by others and weakens the barriers to anti social behaviour

Question 4

Support comes from Zimbardo

Answer 4

Prison experiment. Normal men were given a uniform and a role to play and may have acted differently due to deindividuation. Found progressive increase in guards aggression, expectations of role influenced actions of both guards and prisoners and guards acted similarly to eachother

Question 5

Evaluation of Zimbardo

Answer 5

• extreme ethical issues
• gender bias (perhaps men are more likely to be aggressive in deindividuated conditions?)
  ^^ supported by Cannavale who compared females and males and found only the males reacted more aggressively

Question 6

Zimbardo gender bias

Answer 6

Used female students some who wit their own clothes and some who wore white hoods and cloaks in a Milgram type experiment. The participants wearing the hoods gave much higher levels of shocks than those wearing normal clothes

Question 7

Weakness of Zimbardo gender study

Answer 7

• students (low external)
• beta bias
• ethics
• low mundane realism
• demand characteristics (low internal)

Question 8

Cultural research

Answer 8

Watson collected data in 23 societies before they went to war and found that those who changed their facial appearance were more likely to torture or kill their victims

Question 9

Criticising study of Watson

Answer 9

Spivey and Prentice-Dunn found that when environmental cues are present deindividuation can actually cause fewer antisocial acts and also can cause pro social behaviour. Therefore deindividuation does not always cause aggression

Question 10

Real world applications

Answer 10

Mann analysed 21 suicide leaps and found that in 10 of these a crowd had gathered and baiting had occurred. This tended to occur when it was night time and the crowd was some distance from the jumper. This was potentially aggression due to being in a deindividuated crowd

Question 11

Conclusion

Answer 11

Further research into deindividuation needs to focus on the differences between genders. It needs to look at why males appear to be more prone to aggressive behaviours when deindividuated than females