Deindividuation Flashcards
What is deindividuation?
The psychological state of loosing our sense of personal identity and becoming less aware of our responsibility for our own actions
What occurs when someone is in a deindividuated state?
-They will act more aggressive due feeling reduced responsibility and guilt for their actions. The social norms usually followed are forgotten.
What does the role of a crowd have on deindividuation?
-Individuals feel less identifiable in a group, so the normal constraints that prevent aggressive behaviours may be lost this is due to anonymity increasing and the perception that responsibility for aggressive actionS are shared among the group reducing individual guilt.
What role does anonymity have on deindividuation?
What can increase anonymity?
-The perception of feeling like the consequences of their own actions are faced decreases therefore aggression increases.
- Uniform
- Fake identity
- Social media
- Group size
What factors can cause Deindividuation to occur?
- Anonymity
- Crowd
Zimbardos factors:
- Reduced responsibility
- increased arousal
- Sensory overload
- Altered consciousness (due to alcohol or drugs)
What two types of self awareness affect deindividuation and who developed this idea?
Public self awareness
Private self awareness
Prentice-Dunn and rogers
What is public self awareness?
- The individual no longer cares how others see them.
- So they become feel less accountable for their aggressive and destructive actions
What is private self awareness?
-Individuals no longer care and is less self critical, less thoughtful and less evaluative of their own actions
What happens to private and public self awareness when we are in a group?
-They reduce
Outline aim of zimbardos study?
Aim: To investigate the role of deindividuation in total institutions (where people are removed from their normal environment, and stripped of their individuality)
Outline the method of Zimbardos study
24 male patients were recruited and randomly assigned the role of a guard and a prisoner
Guards and prisoners were deindividuated to become anonymous members of their group:
Prisoners: They were arrested from their homes, stripped naked on arrival to stanford universities basement, given loose fitting smock with an ID number printed on and were referred to by number and not their name.
Guards: Wore military Khaki uniforms and silver sunglasses (so eye contact was impossible). They carried clubs, whistles, handcuffs and keys.
Findings and conclusion of Zimbardos experiment
Despite being in a simulation, the guards created a brutal atmosphere, acting aggressively towards prisoners such as pushing the prisoners into urinals and making them do pushups.
Conclusion: Deindividuation leads to a lowered sense of personal identity and a host of disinhibited antisocial behaviour such as physical and psychological aggression. Situational factors such as uniform lead to deindividuation
DEINDIVIDUATION AO3
- Silke Northern Ireland 41%
- Mann (Suicide)
- Gender differences
Outline Manns research
Man investigated how mob behaviour and groups increased the likelihood of being in a deindividuated state.
He revised 21 incidents of suicide jumps reported in newspapers during 1960’s and 1970’s.
In 10 of them he found that incidents of baiting occurred in the crowd at night when the group size was large.
Mann claimed the darkness and the group size increased anonymity and the likelihood of being in a deindividuated state. Which resulted in aggressive behaviours towards the suicide victim.
Outline Silke Northern Ireland research
Silke found that people who were disguised perpetrated 41% of violent assaults in Northern Ireland.
The more severe the assault, the more likely it was that the attacker was disguised.
-This suggests that disguises and anonymity increase the likely hood of people being in a deindividuated sate which makes them act aggressively due to reduced feelings of guilt and punishment.
