Group Influences: Deindividuation

GROUP INFLUENCES

Members: Analyn CañaMirasol MadridMark Luigi MiraPatricia Ocampo

NATURE OF GROUPS

Mirasol S. Madrid II-9 BS Psychology

What is a Group?GROUP • two or more people who interact and influence one another. (Shaw, 1981)

• Involves interaction of the members• Perceives themselves as “us” in contrast to “them”. (Turner, 1987)

• Note: A group exists when two or more people interact for more than a few moments, affect one another in some way, and think of themselves as “us.”

DEINDIVIDUATIONMirasol S. Madrid II-9 BS Psychology

People may commit acts that range from a mild lessening of restraint (throwing food in the dining hall, snarling at a referee, screaming during a rock concert) to impulsive self-gratification (group vandalism, orgies, thefts) to destructive social explosions (police brutality, riots, lynchings).

How?When they are provoked by the power of the

group. Groups can generate a sense of excitement, of being caught up in something bigger than one’s self. In group situations, people are more likely to abandon normal restraints, to lose their sense of individual identity, to become responsive to group or crowd norms—in a word, to become what Leon Festinger, Albert Pepitone, and Theodore Newcomb (1952) labelled deindividuated.

Deindividuation

Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension; occurs in group situations that foster responsiveness to group norms, good or bad.

What circumstances elicits this psychological state?

Group SizeA group has the power not only to arouse its members but

also to render them unidentifiable.


In an analysis of 21 instances in which crowds were present as someone threatened to jump from a building or a bridge, Leon Mann (1981) found that when the crowd was small and exposed by daylight, people usually did not try to bait the person with cries of “Jump!” But when a large crowd or the cover of night gave people anonymity, the crowd usually did bait and jeer.


Brian Mullen reported a similar effect associated with lynch mobs: The bigger the mob, the more its members lose self-awareness and become willing to commit atrocities, such as burning, lacerating, or dismembering the victim.


From these examples, we can infer that people’s attention is focused on the situation, not on themselves. And because “everyone is doing it,” all can attribute their behavior to the situation rather than to their own choices. Bigger crowd > DeindividuationSmaller crowd < Deindividuation


Physical AnonymityIn Philip Zimbardo’s deindividuation research, anonymous

women delivered more shock to helpless victims than did identifiable women. Anonymous women pressed the shock button twice as long as did women who were unconcealed and wearing large name tags.


The Internet also offers similar anonymity. In several recent cases on the Internet, anonymous online bystanders have egged on people threatening suicide, sometimes with live video feeding the scene to scores of people.

Ed Diener’s research team cleverly demonstrated the effect both of being in a group and of being physically anonymous.


Halloween Experiment - Children were more likely to transgress by taking extra Halloween candy when in a group, when anonymous, and, especially, when deindividuated by the combination of group immersion and anonymity.



Does being anonymous always unleash our worst impulses? Fortunately, no. Tom Postmes and Russell Spears (1998; Reicher& others, 1995) analysed 60 deindividuation studies and concluded that being anonymous makes one less self-conscious, more group-conscious, and more responsive to cues present in the situation, whether negative or positive.


Arousing and Distracting ActivitiesAggressive outbursts by large groups often are preceded by minor

actions that arouse and divert people’s attention. Group shouting, chanting, clapping, or dancing serve both to hype people up and to reduce self-consciousness.

There is a self-reinforcing pleasure in acting impulsively while observing others doing likewise. When we see others act as we are acting, we think they feel as we do, which reinforces our own feelings (Orive, 1984).

Diminished Self-awareness

Ed Diener (1980) and Steven Prentice-Dunn and Ronald Rogers (1980, 1989)’s research revealed that unself-conscious, deindividuated people are less restrained, less self-regulated, more likely to act without thinking about their own values, and more responsive to the situation.

Diminished Self-awareness

When a person is self-aware about his or her actions, his or her behaviour is more calculated and regulated. Deindividuation decreases in circumstances that increase self-awareness: mirrors and cameras, small towns, bright lights, large name tags, undistracted quiet, individual clothes and houses (Ickes & others, 1978).

Parting words

Enjoy being with the group, but be self-aware; maintain your personal identity; be wary of deindividuation.

Education

Group Influences: Deindividuation