Social Psych - Deindividuation Flashcards
Deindividuation
A psychological state in which an individual loses their personal identity and takes on the identity of the social group.
Crowd Behaviour
Le Bon explained deindividuation through crowd behaviour. When a person is in a crowd, they become anonymous, losing their sense of self identity. Responsibility becomes shared throughout the group, leaving the individual free to act in ways that would usually be constrained by social norms. This means that less guilt is experienced for aggressive behaviour.
Anonymity
Zimbardo stated that individuated behaviour is usually rational and normative (conforms to social norms) whereas deindividuated behaviour is emotional, impulsive, anti-normative and disinhibited.
Anonymity is the major factor that shapes crowd behaviour. This is because being anonymous (i.e. unaccountable) reduces self-awareness and the fear of retribution. Therefore deindividuation makes aggression more likely.
Conditions of deindividuation which promote aggressive behaviour include:
Anonymity
Altered consciousness (e.g. drugs and alcohol)
Uniform
Self-awareness
Prentice-Dunn and Rogers stated that aggression is not due to anonymity directly, but to the consequences of anonymity:
Private self-awareness (how we pay attention to our own feelings and behaviour) is reduced when we are part of a crowd. We are less self-critical which fosters deindividuation.
Public self-awareness (how much we care about what other people think of our behaviour) is also reduced in crowds as our behaviour is less likely to be judged. This means we become less accountable for our aggressive actions.
+ P - Research support
E - Dodd asked 229 psychology students the question: “If you could do anything humanly pissoble with complete assurance that you would not be detected or help responsible, what would you do?”. He asked 3 independent rafters who didn’t know the hypothesis to decide what category the responses belonged to.
E - He found that 36% = some form of antisocial behaviour, 26% = criminal acts and 9% = pro social behaviour.
L - This suggests that there is validity in the link between anonymity, deindividuation and aggressive behaviour.
- P - Contradictory research
E - Gergen et al places groups of 8 participants in a completely dark room for one hour and told them to do whatever they wanted to, with no rules to stop them. It was impossible for the participants to identify each other and were given the guarantee that they would never encounter each other again.
E - It was found that the participants quickly began to kiss and touch each other intimately. When the study was repeated, but the participants were told that they would come face-to -face with each other after the hour, the amount of kissing and touching declined dramatically.
L - This suggests that, while deindividuation may lead to disinhibition, it will not always cause aggressive behaviour.
+ P - Deindividuation can be pro social
E - Johnson and Downing found that female participants dressed in a KKK outfit gave more shocks to a confederate than a control group who wore their own clothes. This supports the idea that anonymity-based deindividuation causes aggression.
E - However, the nurses gave fewer and less intense shocks than the control group and were more compassionate towards their victim, in line with the pro social role associated with a nurse’s uniform.
L - This suggests that contextual norms and values would actually appear to have more influence on aggression than deindividuation.
