4304482
Description
Flashcards by chloe.brandon, updated more than 1 year ago
|
Created by chloe.brandon
about 10 years ago
|
|
| Question | Answer |
| What is the deindividuation theory based on? | the crowd theory of Gustave Le Bon (1895) |
| What did Le Bon describe? | An individual is transformed when part of a crowd through a combination of anonymity, suggestion and contagion causing a 'collective mind' to take possession of them |
| What happens as a consequence of this? | The individual loses self control and this results in their capability to act against personal or social norms |
| What is deindividuation characterised by? | it's a psychological state characterised by lowered self-evaluation and decreased concerns about what others think of them |
| What could this lead to? | An increase in behaviour which would normally be inhibited by personal or social norms |
| When does this particular psychological state tend to be aroused? | when individuals join crowds or large groups |
| What are the contributory factors? | altered consciousness due to drugs or alcohol and anonymity |
| Who described deindividuation like this? | Zimbardo (1969) |
| Does the psychological state of deindividuation always lead to antisocial behaviour? | It can lead to prosocial behaviour |
| Give an example of prosocial behaviour | crowds at music festivals or large religious gatherings |
| Why do individuals refrain from acting aggressively? | seen as uncivilized by society and they are identifiable when acting alone |
| How does anonymity come into play? | when part of a crowd it is harder to identify them and therefore they can act aggressively without the fear that they could individually be held responsible |
| What did Rehm et al (1987) investigate? | the effects of wearing a sports team uniform on aggressive behaviour |
| What did they do? | German school children were randomly assigned to handball teams of 5 with half of them wearing the same orange shirt and the other half in their normal street clothes |
| What did they find? | the children wearing orange (who were harder to tell apart) consistently played more aggressively than those in everyday clothing |
| What does this demonstrate? | how when an individual is harder to identify and is more anonymous, they can act more aggressively |
| What is the next element in the process of deindividuation? | the idea of a faceless crowd which is closely related to anonymity |
| What did Mullen (1986) do? | analysed newspaper cuttings of sixty lynchings in the United States between 1899 or 1946 |
| What did they find? | the greater the size of the mob, the greater the savagery in which victims were killed |
| What does this research illustrate? | the negative effects of a large crowd and its power in making individuals act more aggressively when they believe they are faceless |
| What is an alternative perspective to the importance of anonymity in deindividuation? | reduced self-awareness |
| Who offered this perspective? | Prentice-Dunn et al (1982) |
| Give an example of how reduced self-awareness can lead to deindividuation | an individual who is self focused tends to focus on and act according to their internalised attitudes and moral standards, which in turn will reduce the likelihood of antisocial behaviour |
| What may happen when an individual is submerged in a group? | they may lose this focus, becoming less privately self-aware and therefore less able to regulate their own behaviour |
| What can this further lead to? | an increase in aggression proving that other factors alongside anonymity come into play |
| What was the research support for? | the link between deindividuation and increased aggression |
| Who provided this support? | Zimbardo (1969) |
| What did he do? | groups of 4 female undergraduates were required to administer electric shocks to another student to 'aid learning' |
| What were the conditions for the undergraduates? | half of them wore bulky lab coats, hoods that hid their faces, were sat in separate cubicles and were never referred to by name. The other half wore their normal clothes, wore large name tags and were introduced by name and also able to see the person they were administering shocks to |
| What was the purpose of this? | the hooded condition had their identity removed, increasing their anonymity, whilst the normal condition were easily identifiable |
| What were both sets of undergraduates told? | that they could see the person being shocked |
| What did they find? | participants in the deindividuated condition shocked 'the learner' for twice as long as the identifiable participants did |
| What does this therefore support? | the belief that deindividuation, particularly the anonymity aspect has a considerable effect on aggressive behaviour, with the anonymous participants acting two times more aggressively |
| What did Cannavale et al (1970) find? | gender bias as male and female groups responded differently under deindividuated conditions |
| What does this imply? | that we cannot generalise the theory of deindividuation to everyone |
| What did Diener et al (1973) find? | an increase in aggression was only obtained in the all-male groups |
| What did they additionally discover? | greater disinhibition of aggression in males |
| What does this evidence indicate? | males may be more prone to disinhibition of aggressive behaviour than females when individuated |
| Who offered up an alternative idea? | Johnson and Downing (1979) |
| What did they explore? | whether any behaviour could be a product of local group norms as opposed to deindividuation automatically increasing the incidence of aggression |
| What experiment did they do? | the same experimental conditions as Zimbardo |
| What was the difference between this experiment and Zimbardo's? | the participants were made anonymous by clothing reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan or nurses' uniforms |
| What did they find? | the participants shocked more than those in the control condition when dressed as the KKK, but shocked less than the controls when in the nurses' uniform |
| What does this illustrate? | individuals respond to normative cues associated with the social context in which they find themselves. In this study participants dressed as the KKK evidently felt as though aggressive behaviour was more appropriate than did the participants dressed as nurses |
| What are the real world applications related to? | the faceless crowd element of the deindividuation theory |
| What does this further support? | Mullen's 'mob' findings |
| What did Mann (1981) do? | used the concept of deindividuation to explain a collective behaviour known as the 'baiting crowd' |
| What study did he do? | analysed 21 suicide leaps reported in US newspapers in the 1960s and 70s |
| What did he find? | baiting (urging the individual to jump) had occurred in 10 of the 21 cases when a crowd had gathered to watch |
| When did these incidences tend to occur? | at night when the crowd was large and a significant distance from the person being taunted |
| What did these features do? | these features combined produced a state of deindividuation in the members of the crowd and increased antisocial behaviour |
| What was the dramatic support for? | the deadly influence of deindividuation |
| Who was it provided by? | anthropologist Robert Watson (1973) |
| What did he do? | he collected data on the extent to which warriors in 23 societies altered their appearance prior to going to war and the extent to which they killed, tortured or mutilated their victims |
| What did they find? | those in societies who used methods such as war paints and tribal costumes to change their appearance, acted more destructively towards their victims compared to those who didn't alter their appearance |
| What does this therefore support? | the idea that by changing the way an individual looks and removing their individuality, the potential for aggression increases |
| Who provided contradictory evidence? | Postmes and Speares (1998) |
| What did they report? | a lack of support for deindividuation as the evidence for it is mixed |
| What did they do? | conducted a meta-analysis of 60 studies of deindividuation |
| What did they conclude? | there is insufficient support for the theory's major claims |
| What did they find in addition to this? | disinhibition and antisocial behaviour are not more common in large groups and anonymous settings |
| What did they also find? | there was little evidence that deindividuation is associated with reduced self-awareness, or that reduced self-awareness increases aggressive behaviour |
| Where can support for the prosocial effects of deindividuation be found? | online |
| What did Francis et al (2006) find? | adolescents reported feeling significantly more comfortable seeking help with mental health problems under the deindividuated circumstances of internet chat rooms, in comparison to the individuated circumstances of a personal appointment with a health professional |
| What does this demonstrate? | most research tends to focus on the negative effects when in fact it appears as though deindividuation can have positive effects |
Want to create your own Flashcards for free with GoConqr? Learn more.