Randip Singh ji and others,
Studies in red, are discussed in the video in the first post.
Deindividuation, as described by Leon Festinger and colleagues in 1952, is the situation where anti-normative [uninhibited] behavior is released in groups in which individuals are not seen or paid attention to as individuals. Simply put, deindividuation is immersion in a group to the point at which the individual ceases to be seen as such.
Contents
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- 1 History
- 2 Perspectives
- 3 Classic research
- 4 Real-life instances
- 5 Everyday examples
- 6 Reducing deindividuation
- 7 Research
- 8 References
[edit] History
Festinger was the first to examine deindividuation in 1952. He saw anonymity as the central antecedent to the state of deindividuation. He also included reduced public self-awareness and self-evaluation as major contributors to the state of deindividuation. Later, Jerome E. SingerPhilip Zimbardo introduced his theory in which he outlined his model for deindividuation, which was based on his follow up studies to the Stanley Milgram experiments. His model explained deindividuation in terms of a kind of recipe. Deindividuation was created through a series of input variables (or “antecedents” as Festinger categorized them) which created a kind of inferential subjective change in the individual. After those changes occurred, the final product was the behaviors experienced by individuals in the group acting as an immersed member of the group.
The most recent model of deindividuation, the Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE), was developed by Russell Spears and Martin Lea in 1994. They outlined their model by explaining that social identity performance can fulfill two general functions:
conducted a follow-up study in 1965 examining uninhibited and aggressive behavior in visually anonymous situations. He found that in those types of situations, people were more violent and aggressive, to which he attributed those actions to deindividuation. In 1970,
- Affirming, conforming, or strengthening individual or group identities.
- Persuading audiences into adopting specific behaviors.
This model attempts to make sense of a range of deindividuation effects which were derived from situation factors such as group immersion, anonymity, and reduced identifiability. Therefore, deindividuation is the increased salience of a group identity that can result from the manipulation of such factors. The SIDE model is in contrast to other deindividuation explanations which involves the reduced impact of the self. Further explanations by Reicher and colleagues state that deindividuation manipulations affect norm endorsement through not only their impact on self-definition, but also their influence on power relations between group members and their audience.
Currently, a more integrated model is more widely accepted as the model for deindividuation. This model begins with the presence of a group. Most researchers agree that true deindividuation cannot develop without the presence and influence of a group. The group presence is then coupled with physical anonymity and social arousal. Social arousal refers to the situation surrounding the group, or the external cues to which people are responding (e.g.: a high stress or high anxiety situation, ambiguousDiffusion of responsibility, another key element, occurs when the diminishing of self-awareness occurs to the point of where an individual no longer feels responsible for their own actions due to the fact that there are other group members they can share or place the blame and responsibility. It is at this point that deindividuation occurs where the individual is totally immersed within the group and no longer functions as an individual but as a group entity. This increases responses to the situation and leads to a loss of normal inhibition of behavior which may cause a person, acting with the group, to engage in anti-normative behaviors. situations, etc.) The decreased self-awareness is a rather large component of deindividuation because the individual is no longer thinking of their own actions and how those actions fit into their self concept, but rather focus on the group and how to fulfill their role within the group by complying to group norms.
[edit] Perspectives
There are three widely-held perspectives as to how deindividuation affects the group dynamic:
1. Deindividuation weakens people against performing harmful or socially disapproved actions. Essentially, when a person is in the group and deindividuation occurs, the person is no longer acting as the individual. Therefore, what would normally inhibit the actions of a single person acting in a social setting and conforming to social norms is removed. The result is
uninhibited behavior which may be harmful or socially disapproved actions (e.g.: looting, vandalism, gang assaults, etc.)
2.
Deindividuation heightens peoples’ responsiveness to external cues, which may be either positive or negative. This responsiveness refers to the situation. In the case of looting, you may see others stealing desirable items and not receiving any punishment or negative outcomes. This may make you more compelled to join the group and engage in the behavior because you see others getting away with it and you believe you won’t be singled out just like they haven’t. This type of responsiveness may also be positive. For instance, you may walk into a party and see that others are sitting around, watching television, and having a drink. You will probably feel compelled to follow the group by taking a seat in front of the TV and grabbing a drink yourself. This makes you feel more at ease because you stand out less from the group.
3.
Deindividuation increases people’s adherence to norms that emerge within the group. When deindividuation occurs, new norms are set as the standard for the group. This standard pushes people to conform to the social influence of the group instead of thinking individually about how to comply with social norms. This can be exemplified in gang activities such as vandalism. Even though it is against a societal norm (and the law, for that matter) to spray paint walls with offensive terms and symbols, the norm set for the group is that it is a typical and endorsed behavior which switches from “damaging property” to “creating artwork and marking the gang’s territory.” This emergence of new group norms often leads to group think, a phenomenon characterized by faulty decision-making in a group.
[edit] Classic research
- Milgram (1962): Stanley Milgram's study is a classic study of blind obedience, however, many aspects of this study explicitly illustrate characteristics of situations in which deindividuation is likely to occur. Participants were taken into a room and sat in front of a board of fake controls. They were then told by the experimenter that they were completing a task on learning and that they were to read a list of word pairs to the “learner” and then test the learner on accuracy. The participant then read a word and four possible matches. If the confederate got the match wrong, they were to administer a shock (which was not real, unbeknown to the participant) from the fake control panel they were sitting in front of. After each wrong answer, the intensity of the shock increased. The participant was instructed by the experimenter to continue to administer the shocks, stating that it was their duty in the experiment. As the voltage increased, the confederate began to complain of pain, yelled out discomfort, and eventually screamed the pain was too much, even began to bang on the wall. At the greatest amount of voltage administered, the confederate stopped speaking at all. The results of the study showed that 65 percent of experiment participants administered the experiment’s final, and most severe, 450-volt shock. Only 1 participant refused to administer shocks past the 300- volt level. The participants, covered by a veil of anonymity, were able to be more aggressive in this situation than they possibly would have in a normal setting. Additionally, this is a classic example of diffusion of responsibility in that participants looked to an authority figure (the experimenter) instead of being self-aware of the pain they were causing or engaging in self-evaluation which may have caused them to adhere to societal norms.
- Philip Zimbardo (1969): This study prompted Zimbardo to write his initial theory and model of deindividuation based on the results of his research. In one study, participants in the experimental condition were made to be anonymous by being issued large coats and hoods which largely concealed their identity. In contrast, the participants in the control condition wore normal clothes and name tags. Each participant was brought into a room and given the task of “shocking” a confederate in another room at different levels of severity ranging from mild to dangerous (similar to Stanley Milgram’s study in 1961.) Zimbardo noted that participants who were in the anonymous condition “shocked” the confederates longer, which would have caused more pain in a real situation, than those in the non-anonymous control group. This study motivated Zimbardo to examine this deindividuation and aggression in a prison setting, which is discussed in the next study listed.
- Philip Zimbardo (1971): Now a more widely recognized study since the publication of his book, The Lucifer Effect, the Stanford Prison Experiment is infamous for its blatant display of aggression in deindividuated situations. Zimbardo created a mock prison environment in the basement of Stanford University’s psychology building in which he randomly assigned 24 men to undertake the role of either guard or prisoner. These men were specifically chosen because they had no abnormal personality traits (e.g.: narcissistic, authoritarian, antisocial, etc.) The experiment, originally planned to span over two weeks, ended after only six days because of the sadistic treatment of the prisoners from the guards. Zimbardo attributed this behavior to deindividuation due to immersion within the group and creation of a strong group dynamic. Several elements added to the deindividuation of both guards and prisoners. Prisoners were made to dress alike, wearing stocking caps and hospital dressing gowns, and also were identified only by a number assigned to them rather than by their name. Guards were also given uniforms and reflective glasses which hid their faces. The dress of guards and prisoners led to a type of anonymity on both sides because the individual identifying characteristics of the men were taken out of the equation. Additionally, the guards had the added element of diffusion of responsibility (see models above) which gave them the opportunity to remove personal responsibility and place it on a higher power. Several guards commented that they all believed that someone else would have stopped them if they were truly crossing the line, so they continued with their behavior.
- Gergen (1973): In this study, six adult males and six adult females were left in a pitch black room for one hour. For the first 15 minutes "people explored the room, chatting idly to one another". From 15-45 mintues "talk turned to predominantly serious matters". For the final 15 minutes "participants began to get physical; half hugged each other, some became intimate. 80% reported feeling sexual arousal."
- Diener, Fraser, Beaman, and Kelem (1976): In this classic study, Diener and colleagues had a woman place a bowl of candy in her living room for trick-or-treaters. An observer was placed out of sight from the children in order to record the behaviors of the trick-or-treaters. In one condition, the woman asked the children identification questions such as where they lived, who their parents were, what their name was, etc. In the other condition, children were completely anonymous. The observer also recorded whether children came individually or in a group. In each condition, the woman invited the children in, claimed she had something in the kitchen she had to tend to so she had to leave the room, and then instructed each child to take only one piece of candy. The anonymous group condition far outnumbered the other conditions in terms of how many times they took more than one piece of candy. In 60% of cases, the anonymous group of children took more than one piece, sometimes even the entire bowl of candy. The anonymous individual and the identified group condition tied for second, taking more than one piece of candy 20% of the time. The condition which broke the rule the least amount of times was the identified individual condition, which took more than one piece of candy only in 10% of cases.
[edit] Real-life instances
- Abu Ghraib: Accounts of abuse and torture surfaced in 2004 regarding Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Several elements added to deindividuation in this situation. Soldiers initially came into a relatively ambiguous situation, not knowing who was directly in charge of each unit or of the prison as a whole. This made diffusion of responsibility easy and relatively widespread. In fact, as the soldiers stood on trial for their crimes, most claimed that if they had crossed the line, they would have expected a ranking officer to tell them it was wrong or stop them rather than self-evaluating their own behaviors. As Zimbardo also pointed out, there was an element of dehumanization of the prisoners (which was also was present in the Stanford Prison experiment) in that the soldiers stopped viewing them as individual human beings, but rather viewed them as “the enemy,” therefore deindividuating the prisoners. Added to the situation was a strong group dynamic and group cohesion fostered by the military mindset that soldiers act as a group, a family.
- My Lai Massacre: On March 16, 1968 during the Vietnam War, American soldiers were responsible for murdering and sexually assaulting hundreds of civilian men, women, and children, believing that they were sheltering Vietnamese enemy in their homes or in secret hiding places. Similar to the situation at Abu Ghraib, these soldiers experienced deindividuation by the same elements of diffused responsibility and a strong group cohesion. As you can see, there was a creation of a new group norm (killing innocent people) which is in direct violation of a societal norm (killing is immoral and illegal), but that strong group dynamic made adherence to emerging group norms easier to comply with. Additionally, as with Abu Ghraib and the Stanford Prison Experiment, dehumanization of the enemy also created a deindividuated state.
- American racism in the 1960’s: A more obvious example would the racism African Americans experienced during the Civil Rights Movement. Ku Klux Klan members would dress up in robes to hide their identity in order to engage in aggressive group behaviors which would normally be inhibited if performed individually without their identity hidden.
- Nazis during the Holocaust: Yet another clear example of destructive and horrifying acts with which deindividuation plays a part. Aside from the distinct group cohesion, there was also the emergence of hostile group norms, so much so that they became societal norms because of the magnitude of the group. During the Nuremberg Trials, almost every Nazi official stated that they never felt personally responsible for the death and destruction of the Nazi regime because there was always someone above them who gave them orders and was in charge of their actions- an explicit definition of diffusion of responsibility.
... read more at
Deindividuation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
One can explain the mob violence of Anti-Sikh riots through Deindivuation. Yes the Five vices play a role but deindividuation plays a bigger role. At this point kaam, krodh etc doesn't matter to the individual, as he/she is not an individual anymore.
Also, this phenomenon reminds me of some forums...
The above is a long read, I agree but if you don't read it, you won't get it.
Related readings:
