User:The.Filsouf/Deindividuation

Individuals may become deindividuated in crowd situations such as in this demonstration.

Deindividuation theory refers to a state of decreased self awareness and control through reduction in self-evaluation and evaluation apprehension, and becoming capable of violating personal or social norms.

It is the Social Psychological account of individual in a crowd and one of the most widely cited effects of social groups (e.g. crowd). It has also been used by some psychologists in other context such as where individuals feel they have anonymity.

Deindividuation can have very destructive effects, sometimes making people more likely to commit a crime (Diener, 1976), or leading policemen to use excessive force in an arrest. It has been admitted to justify actions in crowd behaviour even in legal context and murder trials.

Deindividuation has been hypothesized as a major cause of rioting, such as the violent rioting occurred in the 1992 riots in south central Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. Because people in a deindividuated mental state lose awareness of themselves, they ignore external evaluation of themselves by other people, and are unrestrained by their normal inhibitions. Deindividuation occurs when one loses one's social identity and behaves in a manner in which one usually would not behave (Nelson, 2005).

Background and development of theory

The contemporary deindividuation theory is an outcome of series of developments since its origin. The theory is largely based on the classic crowd theory of Gustave Le Bon in the 19th century. Le Bon had described that there is a transformation of individuals in the crowd, where "collective mind" of the crowd takes possession of the individual. Le Bon described the crowd as if it has been taken out of the context and analysed in isolation. His account does not include social factors in general and social groups in particular, hence why his take of the individual has been described as a “desocialized” model of the self. His theory focused on loss of internal inhibitions and restraints that makes individuals adhere to normative behaviours, but it largely ignored the effects of this submergence on the individual’s perceived ability to ignore external constraints.

Le bon had an overt political bias because of his background and class, and saw crowds only as emotional, irrational and destructive force. His reporting of historical accounts have also been criticised for taking a very journalistic style. Le Bon’s assumptions have largely been discarded since. However his idea of individuals submerging in to crowds, especially the notion relating to loss of internal constraints remain influential on deindividuation theorists

Classical view

The theory was revitalised half-century later by the Social Psychologist Leon Festinger and his associates Pepitone and Newcomb (1952), who followed Le bon’s idea that individual identity is lost in the crowd and deindividuation process is a reduction of inner restraints. However, he claimed that it is this loss of inner controls that are responsible for individual actions in crowds rather than a "collective mind" which he rejected.

It was however Zimbardo (1969) who presented a theoretical framework and specified various variables that lead to deindividuated behaviours (established norms of appropriateness) such as anonymity, sensory overlord, and conscious altering substances (e.g. alcohol and/or drugs). Zimbardo argues that the deindividuated state minimises self-observation and evaluation and therefore a lowered concern for social evaluation, which then leads to behaviours that are in “violation of established norms of appropriateness”.

However, Zimbardo did not see the concept deindividuation as an exclusively group phenomena as some of the variables he referred to suggest, such as sensory overload and drug-taking. This may be able to explain behaviours such as suicide, murder and personal hostility. Zimbardo carried out a number of very influential experiments which formed the "blue print" of future research in deindividuation. These included series of electric shock experiments by Donnerstein et al (1972), Milgram (1974) and Watson (1973) which all supported the idea that being unidentifiable to a victim can increase the participants’ willingness to deliver electric shock or higher levels of shocks to the victim. However results and conclusions from such experiments remain questionable.

Diener's theory

Ed Diener in the late 1970's reviewed and refined Zimbardo's theory and criticised what he claimed to be inconsistent experimental support and deficiencies in the literature, especially regarding what he saw as the central to the validity of the construct, the internal state of deindividuation.

The first studies that inconsistent with the pattern of support in studies of Zimbardo’s and classical theory of deindivudation were those who demonstrated that deindividuation does not necessary lead to aggressive behaviour and may even lead to increase affection (e.g. Diener 1976, Zabrick & Miller, 1972). Furthermore there were increasing evidence that situational factors are very relevant to behavioural consequences in crowds, unlike what deindividuation theory originally assumed.

Diener admitted influence from the behavioural theories of self-regulation (Badura, 1976; Kanfer, 1977) and the self-awareness theory (Wicklund and Duval, 1972) that “self-aware persons are more likely than non-self-aware persons to behave in accord with personal and social standards”

Diener argued that deindividuation is the result of decreased, and lack of objective self-awareness because of environmental factors which in return would make it less likely for the person to regulate his/her behaviour. When objective self-awareness is high however, the attention is drawn inward and towards the self where active self monitoring and regulation takes place. In crowd setting, the focus of the individual's attention is shifted away from the self, and actions carried out in such context by the individual lack "monitoring and planning" (self-regulation), and therefore not done consciously on purpose. According to Diener the deindividuated individual becomes alert and reactive to immediate stimuli and responds while lacking self-regulation (internal monitoring and evaluating own actions). This is not equivalent to release of anti-social tendencies as Zimbardo claimed, but an inability to respond selectively to a stimuli.

The factors that Diener believed cause lowering of objective self-awareness include perceptual immersion in a group, overloading of processing capacities, outward focus of attention, conceiving of the group as a united whole and relegating decision making in to the group.

Diener emphasized less on the anonymity aspect of group membership as cause of deindividuation, and instead stressed on group cohesiveness, uniformity, group activity and outward focus of attention. His definition of deindividuation was “[people in a group who are] blocked from awareness of themselves as individuals and from monitoring their own behaviour” (1979, p. 210)

There are a number of well know research carried out by Diener and his associates, who tried to study deindividuation in a more realistic and naturalistic setting than what had been done previously. These include the "beat the pacifist" (1973) and "trick-or-treat" (1976) paradigms.

Contemporary view

Prentice-Dunn and Rogers (1982, 1989) claimed that there are inconsistent results between reduced self-awareness and antinormative behaviour, therefore they proposed an extension to the theory, the Differential self-awareness theory. This theory distinguished between two routes that lead to disinhibited collective behaviour.

The deindividuation route reduces private self-awareness through 'accountability cues' (anonymity and diffusion of responsibility) which causes an internal deindividuated state that decreases self-regulation for appropriate behaviour. The other reduces public self-awareness through attentional cues (group cohesiveness and physiological arousal) that results in decreased interest and concern with evaluation of own behaviour by others.

This new trend taken in the contemporary approach to deindividuation is the elimination of conscious accountability associated with the fear of sanction present in work of Festinger and Zimbardo.

Alternative Explanations

The Social Identity Theory (SIT) and the Social Categorization Theory (SCT) are closely related theories and their similarities and differences are used to better study individuals and groups in group and crowd situations.

SIT is used to understand behaviour of individuals in groups (in intergroup context), and the motivation that drives such behaviours.

SCT explores cognitive mechanisms that make people to act as both individual and group members, at different times respectively. It does this by further investigating group behaviour in general and the involved cognitive issues such as self definition, perception, and categorisation.

Social Categorization Theory (SCT)

Individual turning in to a group member

Main article: Social Categorization Theory

The Social Categorisation model argues that we use cognitive labels for our group memberships. These labels we use are referred to as self-categories or self-concepts to define who we are. These concepts are often in contrast to other labels of equivilent class, such as British as opposed to French.

Self categories and concepts may vary in two main ways, in their content and inclusiveness, and in their meaning of content (as part of context).

Self categories vary enormously in their level of inclusivity, or abstraction, as well as their levels (interpersonal and intergroup). This refers to how much is included for example at interpersonal level it can include only "me", while at intergroup level people can percieve themselves as "us" veruses "them". Individuals may have sub-ordinate self concepts such as "real self vs ideal self" and also have super-ordinate categories such as "humans vs monkeys".

They can mean different things in different context, for example being a "student vs teacher", or "student vs local resident", each imply different sets of normative expectations (norms and stereotypes).

Salience

Every individual may categorise him/her self in various categories, with the functioning category at any moment reffered to as the salience category or identity. Salience is determined by two factors: accessibility (readiness of perceiver to use a certain category) and fit (how well and accurate the category fits to the social situation).

There are two aspects of fit - the comparative, how well and accurate the category captures the social situation, and the normative, how stereotypical the behaviour is.

When a group identity becomes salient, the individual self-perception becomes depersonalized. This is because people will perceieve themselves more in terms of the "shared social stereotypes" that define their category than their individual differences.

Self-definition and Self-Stereotyping

SCT argues that this the vital process that turns individuals into group members. This is not a loss of self (deindividuation), but shift in self-definition. This is in contrast to the Social Identity Theory that views the shift from interpersonal to intergroup dimension as the vital process.

The shift in self-definition results in self-stereotyping where people act and think more in terms of the self stereotype as well as stereotype others more.

Evidence supports that individuals stereotype themselves in inter-group condition (Hogg & Turner, 1989), but it also showed that in-group favouritism and self-esteem are dependant on other variables such as the group's relation to society.

Social identity model (SIDE)

Main pages: Social identity and User:The.Filsouf/Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects

Since the 1990's, the Social identity theory has been applied by some researchers such as Reicher and Spears as an alternative explanation to deindividuation, using what they call the Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE).

Reicher, Spears and Postmes in their introduction of the model criticised the traditional theory of deindividuation for being incapable of accounting for the result of its own procedures, and being far from being a basis for explaining how crowds behave. They believed SIDE theory unravels the complex events in collective actions by taking account of two dimensions, the social nature of self, as well as strategic relations between self and others.

SIDE takes the position of an extension to the SCT. It claims that SCT can be criticised for being ‘overly cognitive’ and although it takes the account of which self arises in particular social context, it does not investigate the way in which social identities are deployed and acted in specific social relations. SIDE states that in order to get around this problem, it integrates both strategic considerations of which self is salient (active self-concept) as well as the presentational concerns that govern the expression of this social identity.

It claims that what had confused deindividuation theorists before was that there are a number of variables (such as group involvement and anonymity) that affect both aspects of self-concepts: cognitive and strategic effects, therefore deindividuation theory had previously taken a far more simplistic view of crowd behaviour.

SIDE explains deindividuation through group conformity and the behaviour reinforcement that are associated with groups and their identity and norms. It argues that combination of variables such as group cohesiveness and anonymity reinforce the group salience and group conformity. Although SIDE model makes predictions opposed to both classical and contemporary deindividuation theories, the focus on anonymity makes the theory compatible with the classical theory of deindividuation.

Elaborated Social Identity Model of crowd behaviour (ESIM)

See also

• Contrasted with individuation
• Depersonalization
• Dehumanization
• Objectification
• Risky shift

External links

• http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/deindividuation.htm