Deindividuation Flashcards
What is deindividuation?
Where a person loses their individuality, and take on the ideals of the group. This makes people act in ways which is in direct conflict with their own morals and values, making them violent or antisocial. Gustav LeBon (1895): wrote about the idea of a 'collective mind' lead in to each individual losing their own autonomy.
What are the three conditions in which deindividuation occurs?
Anonymity - unidentifiable can let people act in ways they wouldn’t otherwise, since they would be negatively evaluated by others. This can occur through the presence of large crowds and uniforms.
Suggestibility - you are ready to take on suggestions and the influence of others. Normative or informational social influence.
Contagion - where a behaviour or mindset spreads like a contagious disease amongst a crowd.
How did Zimbardo further the concept?
By suggesting that altered consciousness can also play a role eg. Through drugs or alcohol. He also claimed it could be a force for good.
Supporting evaluation
Being anonymous increases the likely hood of aggressive behaviour.
Zimbardo (1969): retake of milgrams study. Group A dressed with no name tag and group B given a name tag and could meet person before. Group A were more likely to shock the victim. Limitation was that there were only four participants.
Zimbardo (1973): participants put in uniforms (eg reflective sunglasses) and acted in an aggressive manner if put in guard role. Limitations include investigator bias (guards were encouraged). Therefore the study is limited in its use for evidence of this theory.
Rehm (1987): two teams, one wore the same shirts throughout each game and the other didn’t. First team were more aggressive.
Mann (1981): newspaper articles studied. In 10/21 of incidents there was evidence of ‘baiting crowd’. More likely when dark to encourage people to jump.
Watson (1973): war habits if tribal warriors studied. Found those who changed appearance were more aggressive (less identifiable).
Evaluation against
Spivey and Prentice Dunn (1990): large crowd behaviour can be prosocial. Depends on factors. If there is a prosocial model then large crowds will be more prosocial. Therefore deindividuation increases responsiveness to situational norms.
Cannavale (1970): males respond to deindividuation more then women. This theory is androcentric, so is incomplete in explaining human aggression.
How did Zimbardo introduce the theory?
Zimbardo put people in a situation when part of a relatively anonymous group, lose their personal identity and hence their inhibitions about violence.
What has the deindividuation theory been used to explain?
The collective behaviour of violent crowds, mindless hooligans and social atrocities, such as genocide. In some countries, deindividuation has been accepted as grounds for extenuating circumstances in murder trials (Colman).
How is the deindividuation theory based?
On the classic crowd theory of Gustav Le Bon, who described how an individual was transformed when part of a crowd, the combination of anonymity and contagion mean that a collective mind takes possession of the individual. As a consequence, the individual loses self control and becomes capable of acting in a way that goes against personal or social norms.
Who found evidence for the nature of deindividuation?
Festinger described deindividuation as a psychological state in which inner restraints are lost when individuals are not seen or paid attention to as people. However, it was Zimbardo who developed the theory more fully.
How did Zimbardo develop the nature of deindividuation?
He believed that being in a large group gave people a ‘cloak of anonymity’ that diminished any personal consequences for their actions. Factors that contribute to this state of deindividuation include anonymity and altered consciousness due to drugs or alcohol.
What is the process of deindividuation?
People normally refrain from acting in an aggressive manner because there are social norms (such as uncivilised behaviour) and partly because they are easily identifiable. Being anonymous (and effectively unaccountable) in a crowd has the psychological consequence of reducing inner restraints and increasing behaviours that are usually inhibited. These situations can also be used for prosocial behaviour, but therapy is almost exclusively on antisocial behaviour.
What did Zimbardo argue about the process of deindividuation?
Being part of a crowd can diminish awareness of our own individuality. In a large crowd, each person is faceless and anonymous-the larger the group the greater the anonymity. There is a dismissed fear of the negative evaluation of actions and a reduced sense of guilt. Conditions that increase anonymity also minimise concerns about evaluation by others, and so weaken the normal barriers to antisocial behaviour that are based on guilt or shame. Research has demonstrated that individuals who believe their identities are unknown are more likely to behave in an aggressive manner.
What is the key study on deindividuation?
Zimbardo: groups of four female undergraduates were required to deliver electric shocks to another student to aid learning. Half of the participants wore bulky lab coats and hoods that hid their faces, sat in separate cubical and were never referred to by name. The other participants wore their normal clothes, were given large name tags to wear and were introduced to each other by name. They were also able to see each other when seated at the shock machines. It was found that participants in the first condition were more likely to press a button that they believed would give shocks to a victim in another room. They held the shock button for twice as long as did identifiable participants.
Evaluation: gender differences
Cannavale et al found that male and female groups responded differently under deindividuation conditions. An increase in aggression was only seen in the all male groups and not in all female groups. This was also the finding of Diener et al who found greater disinhibition of aggression (removal of the normal inhibitions that prevent aggression) in deindividuated males than deindividuated females.
One possible reason for these gender differences is that males tend to respond to provocation in more extreme ways than do females and that these tendencies are magnified under deindividuation conditions.
Evaluation: anonymity and deindividuation
Rehm et al found support for Zimbardo’s deindividuation concept through an investigation of the effect of increased anonymity on aggressive behaviour in sport. They observed 30 games of handball in three German schools. One team in each game wore the same bright orange shirts, while the other team wore their own different coloured shirts. Researchers found that the uniformed teams showed significantly more aggressive acts during the game than did the teams without uniforms. The results support the claim that deindividuation through increased anonymity leads to more aggressive acts.
