Deindividuation (AQA GCSE Psychology)

Crowds & antisocial behaviour

• When someone is part of a crowd they may behave differently from how they would behave when they are alone or when their behaviour is in ‘full view’ as it were

  • Being in a crowd means that individuals are less likely to be noticed

• Le Bon (1895) claimed that people lose their inhibitions and their sense of personal identity when they are part of a crowd

  • This is called deindividuation

• When someone is part of a crowd their sense of right and wrong may be lost as they are less likely to feel responsible for their actions (see Milgram’s agency theory covered here)

• Crowds give individuals anonymity:

  • It is much easier to act against your own character and beliefs if you are hidden in a crowd 

  • Anonymity may explain why some people wear masks during riots or other crowd-led antisocial behaviour

• Examples of crowds and antisocial behaviour are:

  • A football fan rioting with fellow fans after a match in which their team lost

  • A child going along with a gang of bullies who are tormenting another child

• People who behave in an antisocial manner as part of a crowd are generally not violent, aggressive or law-breaking types

  • It is the anonymity and freedom from social norms offered by the crowd situation that ‘releases’ these negative behaviours

Crowds and antisocial behaviour diagram

Individuality gets swallowed up by a crowd.

Deindividuation as a social factor of collective behaviour

• People may find themselves behaving aggressively due to the effects of deindividuation:

  • Deindividuation means breaking away from the individual self

  • It is easier to act according to group behaviour rather than standing out as the lone voice of difference

    • This is a type of conformity)

• Key factors which influence crowd-led deindividuation are:

  • Wearing a uniform

  • Darkness/cover of night

  • Wearing a disguise e.g. a mask, hood, dark glasses

• Zimbardo conducted a great deal of research (some of it quite controversial) in the 1960s and 70s on the effects of deindividuation on behaviour:

  • Zimbardo (1969): It was found that deindividuated participants (whose identities were partially concealed by a large coat and hood) delivered more (fake) electric shocks to another student and for a longer duration than participants wearing their normal clothes

  • Zimbardo (1973): Male students were randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment with the result that both prisoners and guards became deindividuated

    • The guards became brutal and aggressive while the prisoners lost all sense of autonomy

Zimbardo's prison experiment diagram

Zimbardo’s prison experiment resulted in deindividuation for both prisoners and guards.

Evaluation of deindividuation

Strengths

• Understanding deindividuation has good application: 

  • It could be used to help control football fan violence

  • It could be used to monitor and manage demonstrations and protests

  • It could be used to prevent prison riots

• Zimbardo’s prison experiment led to raised awareness of the deindividuation of prison life on both guards and prisoners with calls for reform of the prison system following the study’s publication

Weaknesses

• Some examples of deindividuation do not necessarily lead to antisocial behaviour (a nurse or priest’s uniform may encourage prosocial behaviour instead)

• Research by Baggio et al. (2020) found that violence was higher when prisons were overcrowded which means that deindividuation is not the only explanation for crowd antisocial behaviour