Deindividuation+in+Groups



A detailed study of groups would be incomplete if it did not consider the dynamics of larger social collectives. For centuries people have wondered at the seemingly inexplicable actions that people undertake when part of a large mass of humanity. Juries, teams, squads, clubs, and cults are all intriguing, but so are riots and rumors; crowds and crazes; and mobs and movements. Most collectives do not behave in odd, atypical ways. Each day, thousands upon thousands of collectives form and disband around the world and most help rather than hurt their members. But collectives are, at their core, groups, and, like any other group, they can do surprising things.


 * The Theory of Deindividuation **

Zimbardo’s deindividuation theory traces collective phenomena back to deindividuation, which can be broken down into three components—inputs, internal changes, and behavioral outcomes. Inputs, or causes, of deindividuation include feelings of anonymity, reduced responsibility (diffusion of responsibility), membership in large groups, and a heightened state of physiological arousal.

Like Gustave Le Bon—the famous French "physician” who first popularized the study of crowds in his book **Le Foule**--social psychologist Philip Zimbardo believes that in some cases the group can become more powerful than the individual. But Zimbardo did not believe that the group’s power comes from mob mentality or corrupt leadership. Instead, Zimbardo hypothesized that people, when they become too deeply submerged in a group, experience deindividuation: They lose their sense of personal identity and become one with the group. Once deindividuated, they no longer feel compelled to act in accord with social norms. They also lack self-control and self-regulation, so their actions become highly emotional, impulsive, and atypical. While deindividuation may lead to increasingly positive behaviors, it usually leads to “aggression, vandalism, stealing, cheating, rudeness, as well as a general loss of concern for others” (Zimbardo, 1969, 1975, p. 53).

Zimbardo’s theory is an input–process–output model, for it identifies factors that cause deindividuation (inputs), the process of deindividuation itself, and the consequences of deindividuation (outputs). The inputs include situational factors, such as the degree of anonymity and the size of the group, as well as more psychological factors: sense of responsibility, degree of arousal, and altered states of consciousness due to the use of drugs or alcohol. These factors, in turn, lead to deindividuation and irrational, emotional, and impulsive actions (Zimbardo, 1969).


 * The Halloween Trick-or-Treat Study **

Deindividuation is a group-level process. Single individuals may feel unrecognizable or uncertain as to their identity, but Zimbardo considers membership in a collective to be a necessary condition for deindividuation. Social psychologist Edward Diener and his associates (1976) tested this assumption in an ingenious study of Halloween trick-or-treating. Their participants were 1,352 children from the Seattle area who visited one of the 27 experimental homes scattered throughout the city. Observers hidden behind decorative panels recorded the number of extra candy bars and money (pennies and nickels) taken by the trick-or-treaters who were told to take one candy bar each. The children came to the house alone or in small groups (exceedingly large groups were not included in the study nor were groups that included an adult). An experimenter manipulated anonymity by asking some children to give their names and addresses. As expected, the children who were members of groups took more money and candy than children who were alone. So did the anonymous children compared to those children who gave their names. But when these two factors were combined—children were part of a group and they were anonymous—transgressions more than doubled. These findings, which have been supported by other investigations, suggest that the term deindividuation is used most appropriately in reference to people who perform atypical behavior while they are members of a group (Cannavale, Scarr, & Pepitone, 1970; Mathes & Kahn, 1975).


 * Experiencing Deindividuation **

Zimbardo’s deindividuation theory posits that situational variables, such as anonymity and membership in a group, can in some cases combine to induce psychological changes in group members. Deindividuated people, Zimbardo predicted, should feel very little self-awareness, and this minimization of self-scrutiny is the most immediate cause of the atypical behaviors seen in collectives.

Ed Diener (1979, 1980) tested this hypothesis by making use of an Asch-type experimental situation. He created eight-person groups, but he included in each group six accomplices trained to facilitate or inhibit the development of deindividuation. In the self-aware condition, the confederates seemed restless and fidgety. Everyone wore name tags as they worked on tasks designed to heighten self-awareness, such as providing personal responses to questions, sharing their opinions on topics, and disclosing personal information about themselves. In the non-self-aware condition, Diener shifted the participants’ focus of attention outward by having them perform a series of mildly distracting tasks. The problems were not difficult, but they required a good deal of concentration and creativity. In the deindividuation condition, Diener tried to foster feelings of group cohesiveness, unanimity, and anonymity by treating the members as interchangeable and by putting the groups through a variety of arousing activities.

When Diener asked the participants to describe how they felt during the study, he identified the two clusters, or factors, that described the overall deindividuation experience. The first factor, loss of self-awareness, encompasses a lack of self-consciousness, little planning of action, high group unity, and uninhibited action. The second dimension, altered experiencing, is also consistent with the deindividuation theory in that it ties together a number of related processes, such as “unusual” experiences, altered perceptions, and a loss of individual identity. When Diener compared the responses of participants in the three conditions of his experiment, he discovered that (1) deindividuated participants displayed a greater loss of self-awareness than both the non-self-aware and the self-aware participants and (2) deindividuated participants reported more extreme altered experiencing than the self-aware participants.


 * Positive Deindividuation **

Deindividuation usually leads to negative, antisocial behavior, but not if cues that serve to prime aggressive responses are removed from the situation. In such circumstances, people who feel anonymous may act in positive, even prosocial, ways (Johnson & Downing, 1979). Researchers, to examine this possibility, simply placed some groups in totally darkened rooms and other groups in well-lit rooms and recorded how the groups responded. All who participated in the study were anonymous: they were escorted individually to and from the room and were assured that the other participants would not be told their identities. The individuals in the dark room reported feeling aroused, but in no case did they exhibit hostility, aggressiveness, or violence. Rather, nearly everyone felt relaxed and at ease in the darkness, surrounded by strangers. In the words of one participant, a “group of us sat closely together, touching, feeling a sense of friendship and loss as a group member left. I left with a feeling that it had been fun and nice” (Gergen, Gergen, & Barton, 1973, p. 129). Apparently, the situation helped people express feelings that they would have otherwise kept hidden, but these feelings were positive rather than negative