Psych 135 5-6 Lecture

3rd option of escaping objective self awareness: 

  • Escaping the self through distraction:




We spend a lot of time and money trying to escape the self, thinking about ourself is an aversive experience, we often realize were not living up to the expectations of the generalized other



Ways to escape the self

  • Movies, tv, video games

  • Sex drugs rocknroll

  • Meditation skiing reading

  • Escape the pressure of life’s standards



What is deindividuation: 

  • Gustav le bon 1895: when an individual is placed in a large crowd, the unconscious mind of each individual emerges and creates a “collective mind” that is primitive in nature and causes uninhibited behavior

  • Loss of awareness, individual identity and thus individual accountability 



What conditions cause deindividuation? 

Phil Zimbardo 1969

  • Anonymity 

  • Lack of accountability

  • Arousal

  • Large group

  • Sensory overload

  • Altered states of consciousness (drugs, alcohol, lack of sleep



What deindividuation does to our minds:

  • Minimizes self awareness

  • Minimizes concern for social evaluation

  • Time distortion

  • Only now, no past or present

  • No subject object dichotomy ?? 

  • Uninhibited impulsive behavior

  • Behavior is not guided by the generalized other

  • Behavior of nearby others in contagious

  • Reduced memory for actions



A theoretical model of deindividuation 


Crowd induced impulsive behavior



What type of behavior does deindividuation lead to?

  1. Positive behavior

  2. Negative behavior

  3. a Dionysian state

  4. More automaticity, less reflection

  5. All of the above 

Answer: all of the above



Deindividuation = less apollonian and reflective → more dionysian 

Does losing self-awareness (deindividuation) cause socially deviant behavior

Ex: eagles fans after a big win, people tore down lamposts, set fires → they simply follow desires without thinking long term



How do researchers deindividuate subjects:

  • No names

  • smocks/hoods



Moral depravity that follows anonymity

Participants were asked to describe pornography and deindividuated/anonymous participants used a significantly higher amount of taboo language compared to individuated non anonymous participants 

same seen in participants asked to administer shocks to others, deindividuated participants give significantly more shock intensity



Deindividuation and transgression

Another halloween study

  • Individuals vs groups of kids

  • Anonymous or not

  • Kids either gave their name and address or not

  • Repeated kids name for extra emphasis




Anonymous kids in groups were much more likely to take more candy and transgress 




Is losing self awareness and self control always bad? NOPE 

Ex: social media has us constantly worrying about how we are perceived and its bad



Chiefs fans superbowl win: everyone sings and cries, whatever the group norm quickly decides on is what spreads, impulsive behavior whatever the first people do sets a norm for how others will follow




Something about being in the dark makes people let their guards down more 

Ex: deindividuation in the dark study




Flow:

  • Complete immersion

  • No self evaluation 

  • Positive experience

  • Engaged in the moment, more than happy, fully engaged in living in the moment 

  • When ur skills match with the task ur doing, its not too challenging where you get frustrated but not too easy where you get bored

  • In control without exerting control

  • Automaticities match behavioral demands 



Flow is what happens when self consciousness gets out of the way and skill takes over 



Loss of self awareness:

  • The context matters more

  • Tend to do what others are doing

  • Tend not to think about what others think of what you are doing 

  • Can be “good” or “bad” depending on the context and who is evaluating you

  • Flow vs deindividuation




Deindividuation vs flow:  comparing two ways of escaping the self 




Self as impulse vs self as institution 1976

  • Are we most ourselves during self control or when we lose control?

  • Is the self the controller or the controlled in “self-control”



  • Do our impulses define us bc they really come from within

  • Dyonisian 



  • Does our ability to control our impulses and be a constructive member of society define us? 

  • Apollonian