L7 Social Psychology - Deindividuation

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Deindividuation

When the presence of others can influence us in multiple ways.

- Deindividuation can inhibit or facilitate ceratin behaviour when in large groups.

- E.g. When a crowd watches someone attempt suicide individuals often taunt the suicidee

What does being in a crowd do to people to make them act so differently from their everyday selves?

- Crowd behaviour = mass madness

- People in crowds give vent to their primitive impulses. Le Bron believed that emotion spread through crowds as a contagion.

- The key to crowd behaviour is deindividuation where an indvidual looses awareness of herself as a separate individual. This is likely to occur when there is high arousal and anonymity

- deindividuation tends to release impulses that are usually under restraint, the impulses depend on the group.

- deindividuation makes it easier to let us give in to our impulses cued by situation and the nature of those impulses depend on the circumstances.

- deindividuation is a result of being part of a big group, anonymity, and taking on a role.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

-Phillip Zimbardo

-Study had to be terminated early because of the inhumane behaviour shown by the guards.

- Being in a group often influences us negatively/for the worse

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