De-Individuation & Aggression

• De-individuation (Le Bon, 1895) refers to the tendency for people to lose their inhibitions and their sense of personal identity when they are part of a crowd 
• When someone is part of a group they can become ‘lost in the crowd’ in terms of their self-awareness and sense of autonomy i.e. responsibility for their actions and their moral compass becomes submerged with that of the group 
• People may find themselves behaving more aggressively than usual due to the effects of deindividuation (literally breaking away from the individual self) as it is easier to act with and part of the group rather than standing out as the lone voice of difference in the group (a type of conformity)
• Examples of crowd behaviour linked to deindividuation might include a football fan rioting with fellow fans after a match or a child going along with a gang of bullies who are tormenting another child
• Crowds give individuals anonymity: it is much easier to act against character if someone is hidden in a crowd (this may explain why some people wear masks during riots or other crowd-led aggressive behaviour)
• Key factors which influence crowd-led deindividuation are the wearing of a uniform, acting in darkness, being in an altered state (drugs, alcohol), wearing a disguise

A face mask may help an individual to act ‘outside’ of themselves.

• As cited above, it is the loss of self-awareness that contributes to de-individuation
• A loss of self-awareness brings with it anonymity and it is the effects of anonymity that contribute further to the processes of de-individuation as follows (Prentice-Dunn & Rogers, 1982):
  • Private self-awareness - individuals generally exercise this type of self-awareness as it involves constant self-monitoring i.e. acting according to social/personal/cultural moral codes or norms
  • Public self-awareness - once an individual is part of a crowd their private self-awareness is reduced: they are less likely to be noticed (and thus judged) by others; they can break societal or cultural rules; they stop caring about how their behaviour would be perceived by others (as, presumably, everyone else is behaving badly too)
• Once an individual is not part of the crowd anymore e.g. they have gone home or they see someone they care about watching them then the effects of anonymity wear off and that person may be left with a sense of shame, guilt, even horror at what they have done
• The dawn of the internet has brought with it ample opportunities for anonymity as people ‘hide’ behind usernames, avatars, false identities: being at a distance from people with whom one will probably never meet is akin to the feeling of being part of an anonymous crowd

Research which investigates de-individuation & aggression

• Kugihara (2010) - two different groups - one small, one large - were put in a simulated emergency situation: the degree of aggression used to escape the emergency was much stronger in the large group, ergo, the larger the group the more likely it is that individuals will lose their personal self-awareness and behave aggressively
• Newton et al. (1982) - female students who were either anonymous or identifiable to each other were given the opportunity to administer a loud noise to other students (each group  was designated with either an aggressive or a non-aggressive group norm): anonymous students administered significantly higher levels of noise than identifiable students regardless of whether the established group norm was aggressive or non-aggressive
• Diener et al. (1976) - a naturalistic covert observation of 1,300 trick-or-treating children at Halloween who were assigned to three conditions and given an opportunity to steal sweets and money: significantly more stealing was done by children under conditions of anonymity and who were in a larger group

Surely these little darlings wouldn’t steal from anyone…would they?...

Evaluation of de-individuation & aggression

Strengths

• There is a compelling body of research and anecdotal evidence to support the idea that de-individuation is linked to aggression
• Understanding the processes and mechanisms of de-individuation could be applied to crowd situations in order to defuse tension and avert violence

Weaknesses

• De-individuation does not necessarily lead to aggression e.g. Crossey et al. (2021) used the theory that when people walk in time with each other (in synchrony) it increases good feeling about the group and produces prosocial behaviours: their study asked participants to simply imagine walking synchronously with a crowd which resulted in participants feeling a sense of emotional closeness (affiliation) with the imagined group
• It is difficult to measure de-individuation as the process involves a range of complex, varying feelings and emotional states which are likely to differ from person to person

Link to Approaches:

De-individuation involves a series of shifts in self-awareness so it can be explained using the Cognitive Approach: a person’s self-schema will alter when they are part of a crowd, bringing it with it changing perceptions of self-identity: these are cognitive constructs that draw from social contexts.