Deindividuation

11 Key excerpts on "Deindividuation"

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  Social Psychology

  Core Concepts and Emerging Trends

  • Daniel W. Barrett(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Imagine you were a manager at a small store or restaurant. What concrete steps could you take to prevent social loafing among your employees?

  Losing Oneself in The Group: Deindividuation

  At the outset of this chapter, we described instances in which soccer fans displayed surprising, atypical, and violent behavior at the conclusion of high-stakes matches. These incidents both shock and puzzle many observers, especially because the individuals involved are normally law-abiding citizens. Aspects of the situation interact with features of the person, and the result is that some individuals appear to feel free to disregard social norms regarding sportsmanship and the humane treatment of others. In these cases, the boundary between individuals and groups is temporarily dissolved, such that the individual no longer feels as if she exists separate from the group. Social psychologists refer to this state of immersion in a group as Deindividuation, which is defined as a psychological state characterized by loss of self-awareness and the sense of personal responsibility (Zimbardo, 1969). Deindividuation is likely to occur when people are anonymous, experience a reduced sense of individuality, and do not feel personally accountable for their behavior; it has been primarily associated with negative, often violent, behavior (Hughes & Louw, 2013; M. Levine & Cassidy, 2010; Staub, 2003; Zimbardo, 1969).

  In one fun study of 1,352 Halloween trick-or-treaters mentioned in Chapter 1 , Diener and his colleagues measured how much candy children took from houses under a variety of conditions (Diener, Fraser, Beaman, & Kelem, 1976). The experimenter posed as the homeowner and told the children to take one piece of candy from a bowl on the porch while he left them alone by going back into the house. Before disappearing into the house, the experimenter randomly asked some children their names and where they lived but asked nothing of the remaining children. The researchers unobtrusively counted how many extra pieces of candy children took either when they were alone or in a group, and found that those who were both anonymous and in a group grabbed the most (See Table 12.2

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  Encyclopedia of Social Psychology

  • Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, Roy Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Insights from this research have had a major impact on public order policing in Europe, and these new strategies seem to pay off—“football hooliganism” has declined consider-ably in recent international matches. These new insights have also been tested in exper-imental research of Deindividuation effects. Results are broadly consistent with field studies of crowds and historical evidence. Thus, the settings which were originally thought to “deindividuate” participants were actually making them more responsive to situa-tional norms. For example, making participants anony-mous by dressing them in cloaks and hoods leads to greater aggression. But dressing them in nurses’ uni-forms reduces it. Anonymity does not render people unthinkingly violent. Rather, anonymity increases their responsiveness to the normative cues present in their immediate environment. Put together, experimental and field research sug-gest that crowd behavior is guided by a collective identity that emerges in the crowd. This common identity may become accentuated or polarized if an opposing group (such as the police) acts upon the crowd as if it were one, for example, by deploying indiscriminate tactics of crowd control. It is this collective identity which normatively regulates the actions of individuals in the crowd and which gives them a common goal. In conclusion, social psychologists’ understanding of Deindividuation has advanced enormously. Contem-porary studies of collective action have moved away 234 ——— Deindividuation from the assumption that crowd members lose their identity. Instead, collective action is explained as the result of “normal” processes of social influence and intergroup relations. In this contemporary perspective, Deindividuation is the transformation of a collection of distinct individuals into a group with a collective identity.

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  Psychology of Group Influence

  Second Edition

  • Paul B. Paulus(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Consider, for example, one of the most prominent theories of hypnosis (Hilgard, 1977). Viewing hypnosis as a state that differs from ordinary waking consciousness, this neodissociative interpretation combines earlier dissociative explanations with newer evidence on divided attention, brain functioning, and information processing. The hypnotized person has increased suggestibility, enhanced imagery, decreased planning for the future, and a reduction in reality testing. These characteristics are almost identical to those describing the Deindividuation. It is intriguing to speculate that hypnosis may also be explained by the breakdown in negative feedback loop at the highest levels of control; in short, a sort of Deindividuation outside of the confines of a group. Similarly, solitary religious experiences, alcohol effects (Hull, 1981), and even ordinary daydreaming (Fromm & Shor, 1979; Hilgard, 1979) may be related to Deindividuation.

  Deindividuation: Avoided or Sought?

  Humanistic theories in psychology have long emphasized the individual's fundamental need to maintain a separate identity from other people. Dipboye (1977) employed the term "identity seeking" to describe the actions that are instrumental to such separateness. Indeed, many thinkers (e.g., Fromm, 1965; Laing, 1960; Maslow, 1968) have equated the loss of self-awareness with mental illness. By extension, the experience of Deindividuation is seen as distinctly aversive, leading to vigorous attempts to regain the lost self-awareness that makes each of us unique.

  According to Snyder and Fromkin (1977, 1980) people react negatively to the perception of being highly similar or highly dissimilar to others and thus strive to maintain a moderate degree of uniqueness. Maslach and her colleagues (Maslach, 1974; Maslach, Stapp, & Stantee, 1985) used the term "individuation" to describe the individual perception of relative distinctness from other persons (Ziller, 1964). Although the public-private dimension is recognized, the individuation term employed by Maslach has centered on impression management concerns and thus is not a direct opposite of our Deindividuation. Nevertheless, the assumption in the aforementioned research has been that Deindividuation will lead to reassertion of one's individuality.

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  Encyclopedia of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations

  • John M Levine, Michael A. Hogg, John M. Levine, Michael Hogg(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  This is increased further if group identity is made salient. Investigating the effects of anonymity on behav-ior in CMC is currently an active area of research in psychology. Therefore, a long tradition of research dating back to the 19th century continues today as individuals and groups find new ways to interact with each other. Karen M. Douglas See also Computer-Mediated Communication; Crowds; Depersonalization; Deviance; Group Mind; Self-Categorization Theory; Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects; Social Identity Theory; Stanford Prison Experiment Further Readings Diener, E., Fraser, S. C., Beaman, A. L., & Kelem, R. T. (1976). Effects of Deindividuation variables on stealing among Halloween trick-or-treaters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 33 , 178–183. Festinger, L., Pepitone, A., & Newcomb T. (1952). Some consequences of Deindividuation in a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 47 , 382–389. Le Bon, G. (1947). The crowd: A study of the popular mind. London: Ernest Benn. (Original work published 1895) 195 Delphi Technique Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (1998). Deindividuation and anti-normative behavior: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin , 123 , 238–259. Reicher, S., Spears, R., & Postmes, T. (1995). A social identity model of Deindividuation phenomena. European Review of Social Psychology , 6 , 161–197. Zimbardo, P. G. (1970). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus Deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. In W. J. Arnold & D. Levine (Eds.), Nebraska symposium on motivation 1969 (pp. 237–307). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. D ELPHI T ECHNIQUE The Delphi technique is a structured forecasting and decision-making method that assesses and summarizes the individually held opinions and judgments of group members with little or no discussion or deliberation among the members.

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  The Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technology

  • S. Shyam Sundar(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Deindividuation is a concept that had been developed to explain antisocial behavior in the crowd and was inspired by the writings of Gustav Le Bon (1895/1995) in the previous century. He had argued that people lose their individual rationality in the crowd, reverting to the baser animal instincts. Although these ideas were considered speculative, even in their day, they had an enormous influence on attempts within psychology and sociology to explain crowd behavior in the following century. Le Bon’s ideas were picked up in the early days of experimental social psychology (Festinger et al., 1952) and were further developed over three decades (Diener, 1980; Prentice-Dunn & Rogers, 1989; Zimbardo, 1969). The core idea in this modern research on Deindividuation relied heavily on Le Bon: anonymity in the mass promotes a loss of self-awareness, which reduces inhibitions and increases the likelihood of antisocial behavior. One theme in the early models of behavior in CMC was that, although this context would seem to be very far from the madding crowd, the anonymity of this situation could have similar disinhibitory effects. As well as making sense of flaming, this also resonated with early evidence that group decision making in CMC could result in polarized or extreme decisions compared to face-to-face groups (e.g., Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & McGuire, 1986).

  As we will explain in more detail, the social identity approach facilitated a very different understanding of Deindividuation phenomena and rejected the Deindividuation explanation of crowd behavior inspired by Le Bon and continued by Deindividuation researchers. For the moment, we can state that a key difference is that Deindividuation theory proposes a loss of identity and/or a consequent deregulation of social behavior via self and social norms when immersed in (anonymous within) the group. By contrast, the social identity analysis (see e.g., Reicher, 1987) suggests that such conditions in the group actually lead to an increase in the salience and role of social factors (social identities and associated social norms). In short the social identity analysis of “Deindividuation effects” is a departure from Deindividuation theory. In fact, we make the opposite prediction to Deindividuation theory in at least one key respect: we propose that behavior becomes more social or socially regulated, not less so. Hence, when we refer to “Deindividuation phenomena” and “Deindividuation effects,” we refer to a cluster of specific phenomena and effects that need to be explained (i.e., the effects of group immersion and anonymity) because classical Deindividuation theory fails to do so adequately.

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  Impression Management Theory and Social Psychological Research

  • James T. Tedeschi(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  (b) Diener, E., Dineen, J., Endresen, K., Beaman, A. L., & Fraser, S. C. Effects of altered responsi-bility, cognitive set, and modeling on physical aggression and Deindividuation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 31, 328-337. Diener, E., Fraser, S. C, Beaman, A. L., & Kelem, R. T. Effects of Deindividuation variables 220 Svenn Lindskold and L. Rebecca Propst on stealing among Halloween trick-or-treaters. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-chology, 1976, 33, 178-183. Diener, E., Lusk, R., DeFour, D., & Flax, R. Deindividuation: Effects of group size, density, number of observers, and group member similarity on self-consciousness and disinhibited behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1980, 39, 449-459. Diener, E., & Srull, T. K. Self-awareness, psychological perspective, and self-reinforcement in relation to personal and social standards. Journal of Personality and Social Psychol-ogy, 1979, 37, 413-423. Diener, E., & Wallbom, M. Effects of self-awareness on antinormative behavior. Journal of Research in Personality, 1976, 10, 107-111. Diener, E., Westford, K. L., Dineen, J., & Fraser, S. C. Beat the pacifist: The deindividuating effects of anonymity and group presence. Proceedings of the 81st Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, 1973, 8, 221-222. (Summary) Dion, K. L. Determinant of unprovoked aggression (Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1970). Dissertation Abstracts International, 1971, 32, 534A. (University Microfilms No. 71-18, 716) Dipboye, R. L. Alternative approaches to Deindividuation. Psychological Bulletin, 1977, 84, 1057-1075. Duval, S. Conformity on a visual task as a function of personal novelty on attitudinal dimen-sions and being reminded of the object status of the self. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1976, 12, 87-98. Fenigstein, A. Self-consciousness, self-attention, and social interaction. Journal of Personal-ity and Social Psychology, 1979, 37, 75-86.

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  The Psychology of the Social Self

  • Tom R. Tyler, Roderick M. Kramer, Oliver P. John(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  the me I was yesterday as opposed to the me I am today. Personal identity, self-definition as an individual in contrast to other individuals, is only one level among many. It is precisely the fact that social identities also exist and under certain conditions work to attenuate the effects of personal identity on self-perception that enables us to make sense of group processes and collective behavior.

  People do not have social and personal identities in a fixed, static sense as part of their individual identity. Variation in the level of self-categorization is seen as normal and ever present, as a function of perceiver and contextual factors. Self-conception is a dynamic process in which enhanced relative salience of one or another level actively changes self-perception and consequent behavior. Depersonalization is not Deindividuation, not loss of self, but change in the level and content of self.

  The depersonalization hypothesis is consistent with the discontinuity hypothesis (in fact, it is an explanation of discontinuity). Much evidence from research on group processes supports the idea that perceptions of group identity mediate such processes. Researchers have explored the role of depersonalization in group behavior in the areas of group cohesion, social cooperation, social influence, crowd behavior, Deindividuation, the perception of ingroup and outgroup homogeneity, and intergroup biases (e.g., Anastasio, Bachman, Gaertner, & Dovidio, 1997 ; Brewer & Schneider, 1990 ; Haslam, Oakes, Turner, & McGarty, 1996 ; Hogg, 1992 ; Morrison, 1995a , 1995b ; Reicher, 1987 ; Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995 ; Turner, 1984 , 1991

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  Social Influence

  Direct and Indirect Processes

  • Joseph P. Forgas, Kipling D. Williams(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  The effects of this Deindividuation manipulation were not strong or general across conditions in this study. However, there was some evidence that when group boundaries were clear (high group salience), and people were anonymous in their group, this led to more social influence in a group normative direction (specifically for the science students). The argument here is that anonymity enhances the salience of group identity by depersonalizing self and social perception, thereby stimulating group related behavior (see also Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995). Science students therefore became more provivisection (a science norm) when group identity was salient and they were anonymous.

  This point was important because it was the first study to question the accepted wisdom of previous Deindividuation research. Rather than behavior becoming deregulated under Deindividuation conditions, it seemed to be highly socially regulated, and indeed normative at the group level (see footnote 1). Although some conceptual and methodological question marks have been raised about this study (see Spears, Lea, & Lee, 1990), it motivated a reappraisal of apparently robust evidence for Deindividuation effects. A meta-analytic review of the Deindividuation literature (Postmes & Spears, 1998b) provides support for a SIDE analysis of the effects produced in this literature. This meta-analysis showed that; 1) there is little or no evidence for "anti-normative" behavior increasing as a function of Deindividuation conditions as predicted by Deindividuation theory, and 2) classical deindividuating conditions (group immersion, anonymity, group size) lead to increased conformity to local group norms when these norms are measured and coded. In short, evidence from Deindividuation studies provides strong indications that the SIDE analysis of social influence has some validity in this domain.

  We have subsequently formalized the theoretical framework that developed out of the crowd and the CMC research relating to the cognitive components of the model (Spears & Lea, 1992). Specifically, we propose that the effects of anonymity within the group will tend to deflect attention from individual differences, thereby depersonalizing perception and rendering the relevant group identity more salient and influential (Reicher et al., 1995; Spears & Lea, 1992). Anonymity in the group therefore emphasizes a common group self-categorization at the expense of other identities (e.g., personal identity, or superordinate identities). However, as we show in more detail below, if personal identity is salient a priori, the effects of anonymity may be further able to reduce the salience of group distinctions based on category membership (see also Reicher, 1984). In short, contextual features such as anonymity, can serve to vary the salience of the group self, thereby affecting the strength of group influence.

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  Encyclopedia of Identity

  • Ronald L. Jackson II, Ronald L. Jackson(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Although this particular approach to understand-ing the term dominates current discussions, a wider understanding that includes a philosophical perspective, including the organizational dynamics of the marketplace, contributes to a more holistic conception of the term. The work of Jürgen Habermas provides a philosophical understanding of individuation as it occurs through socialization and firmly places this concept within the public sphere of society. Typically there are three phases that a person will experience as he or she moves toward indi-viduation. Phase 1 is when a person joins or enters a group and has his or her individuality eclipsed by the larger group or society with which he or she takes part. To move beyond this phase, a person must recognize that the organization or group pre-existed his or her individual involvement and there-fore must submit to the dominant practices of the group. Phase 2 occurs as a person is socialized into, and situated within, the larger group or society as he or she internalizes the implicit or explicit expec-tations and converts them to appropriate habits and actions. Within this phase, the person begins to sense that he or she is “one of them,” and the mem-bers of the group begin to regard him or her as “one of us”; although this is a necessary stage to pass through to fully achieve individuation, some may never move beyond this point. Failing to move beyond this point can have a negative impact upon a person’s ability to productively interact and con-tribute to the larger whole. Phase 3, the achieve-ment of individuation, takes place as the individual is firmly established within the organization. The person’s identity emerges as a by-product of engage-ment with those who are part of the group, not by placing the focus of attention upon the self but by actively contributing to the common purpose of the group.

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  Personality and Social Behavior

  • Frederick Rhodewalt(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Depersonalization is not the same as dehumanization or Deindividuation (contrast Zimbardo, 1970, with Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995). It does not refer to behavior in which people behave impulsively, antisocially or aggressively; rather it refers to a phenomenon where we represent and experience ourselves and others as relatively “interchangeable” members of a collective, rather than as unique separate individuals.

  As with the earlier social identity research, most self-categorization research focused on group and collective phenomena such as stereotyping (e.g., Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994), group cohesion and solidarity (e.g., Hogg, 1993), crowd behavior (e.g., Reicher, 1984), Deindividuation phenomena (e.g., Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995), and conformity and normative behavior (e.g., Abrams & Hogg, 1990). However, self-categorization theory left the door open for more serious attention to be paid to the study of individuality in the context of group life.

  There were a number of reasons for this, all hinging on the new, more inclusive focus on group behavior as a whole rather than just intergroup behavior between large social categories. For example, when you study social identity processes in small interactive groups, you immediately confront the fact that although social identity processes play out in the usual way, individuality, personality, and interpersonal processes are also very obvious (Hogg, 1996; Hogg, Abrams, Otten, & Hinkle, 2004). The family is a good example—clearly a group, but also very clearly a context for personality and interpersonal processes.

  Another example is the study of group norms and social influence in groups (Turner, 1991; also see Hogg & Smith, 2007). Although norms emerge to characterize a group as a whole in distinction to specific outgroups, there is absolutely no doubt that some individuals are more influential than others in shaping the group’s norm. This suggested that social identity theory needed to properly consider the role of individual differences in the context of group life. As we shall see below, the problematic of relative influence was addressed, not in terms of idiosyncratic personality or individuality, but in terms of relative group prototypicality (e.g., Abrams & Hogg, 1990; Hogg, 2005; Turner & Oakes, 1989). This was the foundation of the social identity theory of leadership (Hogg, 2001b; Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003) and social identity analyses of deviance (e.g., Marques, Abrams, Páez, & Hogg, 2001; Marques, Abrams, & Serôdio, 2001).

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  The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization

  • Maria Kronfeldner(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Self-perceptions. Most psychological research on dehumanization has examined perceptions of other individuals or groups, but a growing body of work suggests that under some circumstances people may experience an attenuated sense of humanness in themselves.Although there is some evidence that people normally see themselves as embodying humanness more than other individuals (Haslam et al. 2005), they may feel a loss of humanness when socially excluded or ostracized (Bastian & Haslam 2010) or when participating in violent interactions (Bastian, Jetten & Radke 2012). Recently, Kouchaki, Dobson, Waytz & Kteily (2018) have shown that people feel less human when they have behaved immorally and are also more likely to behave immorally when they self-dehumanize (see Demoulin, Maurage & Stinglhamber, this volume). These fndings point to the possibility of intrapersonal and interpersonal cycles of dehumaniza-tion in which the person’s own antisocial behavior or another person’s maltreatment of them promotes further dehumanization and destructive behavior. Other targets of dehumanization. Although most social psychological research on dehumanization has studied perceptions groups based on ethnicity or race, religion, gender, or disease, or on perceptions of the individual self, researchers have recently explored dehu-manizing perceptions of a broad range of other targets. Recent studies have investigated perceptions of violent criminals and pedophiles (Bastian, Denson & Haslam 2013), people Nick Haslam from low social class backgrounds (Loughnan, Haslam, Sutton & Spencer 2014), short people (Kunst, Kteily & Thomsen 2019), romantic partners within couples (Pizzirani & Karantzas 2019), and partisan political opponents (Cassese 2019), among others.This work demonstrates the versatility of psychological concepts, theories, and measures of dehumanization, and its ever-expanding feld of vision.

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