de individuation

Crowd behaviour

Behave in ways we wouldn’t usually.

Exprerience less personal guilt about aggression

Zimbardo

In individuated states our behaviour is rational and normative, when de individuated behaviours are emotional, impulsive and anti normative.

Conditions of de individuation which promote aggressive behaviour

Darkness

Masks

Drugs

Alcohol

Annonymity

Dixon & mahendran

Annonymity shapes crowd behaviour, the larger the crowd, the more anonymous we are

Dunn and Roger’s two types of self awareness

Private self awareness- how we pay attention to our own feelings and behaviour, reduced when we are in a crowd.

Public self awareness- About what other people think of us, less accountable for aggressive behaviours.

Dodd research on de individuation

If you could do anything humanly possible with the assurance that you would not be detected or held accountable what would you do?

229 undergraduate psych students in 13 classes

Responses were anonymous

36%- antisocial behaviour

26%- criminal acts most common was rob a bank

9%- pro social

Few were rape, murder and assassination

Reasearch support Douglas and Mcgarty

Looked at aggressive online behaviour in chat rooms

Strong correlation between Annonymity and flaming.

Supports link between aggressive behaviour and Annonymity

Counter of research support

Gergen et al

Does not always lead to aggression.

Deviance in the dark

8 strangers in dark room for an hour

Told to do what they wanted, could not identify each other and would never meet again.

Stopped talking and started touching and kissing each other intimately.

In second study, he told participants they would come face to face afterwards, amount of kissing and touching was much lower.

Real world application

Mann

Suicidal jumpers

21 cases of crowd baiting were found in US newspapers.

Tended to occur in darkness and large crowds

Shows validity in aggressiveness in faceless crowds.

Extra evaluation nature vs nurture

Approach does not take into account genetic, ethological and evolutionary factors.