What does deindividuation mean in psychology?

Deindividuation is when aspects of a situation cause people’s sense of themselves to recede, allowing them to change their behaviour.

Deindividuation in psychology is one of the reasons that people behave differently in a crowd.

When in a crowd people experience deindividuation: a loss of self-awareness.

When deindividuation takes hold people can feel less responsibility and may become anti-social or even violent.

Deindividuation definition

The psychologist Leon Festinger was the first to use the term deindividuation in a 1952 paper.

Festinger wrote that deindividuation in a group or crowd brings about a loosening in people’s behaviour.

People often enjoy being in groups which are deindividuated as they lose their sense of self.

Psychologists have investigated deindividuation in a variety of ways.

One of those is in the context of cheating and how deindividuation affects it.

People will cheat for all sort of different reasons in all sorts of different ways — in love, in their finances and at work — but social psychologists are particularly interested in the general features of situations in which people cheat.

It’s this question that inspired Professor Ed Diener and colleagues in the 1970s to carry out a classic social psychology study of children’s honesty at Halloween.

Trick or treat?

Diener and colleagues monitored 27 houses in Seattle on the evening of Halloween, as kids came trick-or-treating (Diener et al., 1976).

Just inside the door on a table were two bowls, one filled with candy bars, another with pennies and nickels.

As children arrived in their costumes they were told to take one candy bar each, but not to touch the money.

The host then told the children she had to go back to her research in another room.

Actually, though, she was looking through a peep-hole in the door to see how much candy and/or money they would take.

But this wasn’t just a test of the kids honesty, it was a test of how various situational factors would affect what they did.

Before leaving the room, each of the hosts in each of the houses created a number of different experimental conditions.

The three major factors the experimenters wanted to examine were the effect of being in a group, anonymity and shifting the responsibility for any cheating:

1. Groups: children naturally arrived either alone or in groups (so this condition was only quasi-experimental).
2. Anonymity: sometimes the kids were asked by the host for their names and addresses, other times not.
3. Shifted responsibility: sometimes all the children were told that the smallest child the host could see was responsible if any extra candy or money was taken.

Over the night 1,352 children entered the 27 houses across Seattle, some alone and some in groups, many emboldened by their Halloween costumes.

In each house the host, after the experimental manipulation, left the room and watched the children, waiting to see how the anonymity and responsibility shifting would affect whether they cheated, and by how much.

Anonymity and deindividuation

The good news is that overall, across all the conditions, about two-thirds of the children were completely honest and didn’t take even a single extra candy bar or touch the pennies and nickels.

But the effects of anonymity, being in a group and responsibility shifting were dramatic:

As you can see, when children came alone and were identified, only 8 percent cheated.

However when they came in a group, were anonymous and the responsibility for any cheating had been shifted to the smallest child, the average rate of cheating shot up to 80 percent.

The results suggested that each of the factors were not just additive but interacted with each other to encourage an even larger percentage of children to cheat.

The researchers teased out some further intriguing subtleties from the data they collected.

They were also interested in why the children cheated: was it just because they were in a group, or was it also because the leader cheated and the others copied?

Their results suggested there was indeed a modelling effect because in groups where the first child cheated, the other children were also more likely to cheat.

Deindividuation

This experiment is a powerful demonstration of deindividuation: when aspects of situations cause people’s sense of themselves, including their ethical and moral codes, to recede and allow them to be easily influenced by the actions of others.

Deindividuation may be at least partly responsible for social loafing, people’s tendency to slack off when working in a group.

But social loafing is the least of the charges ranged against deindividuation.

The phenomenon has been blamed for all kinds of social disorder, especially the antisocial, destructive behaviour sometimes seen in crowds (although according to some scholars the combustibility of crowds has been exaggerated, cf. 7 myths of crowd psychology).

Whatever the judgement on deindividuation, this classic social psychology study does give us four specific situations which make people more likely to cheat:

• when in a group,
• when anonymous,
• when they can copy someone else
• and when responsibility can be shifted elsewhere.

It also demonstrates that these factors can interact with each other to make it even easier for cheating to occur.

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Have you heard of "mob mentality"? Most people know the phrase but don't know there's a term for it: deindividuation. The term refers to how people in a group can lose their sense of identity and behave in ways they normally wouldn't. Often it's innocent behavior but not always. Deindividuation can be a serious and dangerous issue unless you know what to watch for.

What's Deindividuation?

Before we understand what deindividuation is, we need to understand what it isn't. In the simplest form, your identity is what makes you who you are. It includes your self-awareness, your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. Self-awareness is being aware of yourself in relation to your standards. It's knowing your character, your morals, and your desires. These are things that make you the person you are.

Deindividuation refers to when a person becomes part of a crowd or group and then begins to lose their individual identity. They become less aware of self and who they are as an individual. The more the person becomes involved in the group, the less self-awareness they have, which includes knowing their morals, characters, and beliefs. These qualities start to be replaced by the identity of the group. The individual then begins to take on the morals and character that is held by the group as a whole. Think of being surrounded by fans at your favorite team's home game. Everybody's yelling, some people are thumping their chests, and you're jumping up and down. Most likely, you wouldn't exhibit these behaviors if you were standing there by yourself. But being a part of the crowd carries you away from your personal identity, and you feel free to do things you normally wouldn't.

While it can have a negative impact on you in certain situations (like when you're ganging up on someone), it's something you can learn to overcome. The important thing is learning how to recognize when it's happening and what the dangers are. Then you know what to look for in order to avoid it.

Examples Of Deindividuation

Classic examples include gangs, cults, and large mobs of people. However, there are many other examples, including the military. In fact, not all deindividuation is bad. Studies have found that at large charity events, when people feel they are part of the group, they tend to donate and raise larger sums of money. The large donations inspire others to do the same.

Or, when training with a military unit, people are more likely to push themselves harder. They have taken on the identity of the group, which has made an impact on their behavior and what they believe they are capable of.

Deindividuation also occurs when people are wrapped up in a hobby or activity. For example, when people are in a mosh pit at a concert, they're punching the air and shaking their heads frantically-behaviors they wouldn't engage in if they weren't a part of a crowd.

Real-Life Examples

In 1971 a psychologist by the name of Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment to test the impact of deindividuation. In one of his experiments, he split up a group of male students from Stanford University. Half of them were to act as prisoners and the other half were to behave as guards. The experiment was to last for two weeks and everyone was told to play the role in their assigned group. However, the time frame had to be cut short and the experiment stopped after only six days. As a group, the guards were treating the prisoners so badly that they could not continue on with the activities. There has been a lot of discussion lately about the validity and replicability of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Some of that discussion revolves around who would have natural, bigger “buy in” to their group.

There are also many historic examples of mass looting. Take for example when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. The devastation shut down the city, and mass looting followed. And it wasn't just essential supplies-videos from helicopters captured people walking out of stores carrying televisions and just about everything else you can think of. Most people wouldn't normally engage in such activity, but during this crisis, it became common. People didn't feel they would be held responsible for their actions, so they crossed a line they might not have otherwise.

The Dangers Of Deindividuation

While there are some positive situations with deindividuation, it can often be dangerous. As people become part of a group, they begin to lose their moral compass. They become willing to do things they would normally believe to be wrong. But why do people engage in behavior they know is wrong?

• People loosen up their self-restraint. They get caught up in the crowd mentality and begin to act in the way the crowd is acting. They are not choosing to focus on the right or wrong of the situation. Studies have found that groups will take things further than they would if everyone was all acting individually.
• There is a sense of anonymity. When acting as a crowd, people feel they cannot be found. This feeling gives them a sense of freedom to act in ways they might not normally act.
• There is diffused responsibility. When acting as a group, people get the feeling that responsibility is shared. This makes them take less responsibility for their own actions. They don't believe that the consequences will be as drastic, because they will be shared by all involved.

Bad Decisions Are Made

When people act as a group, they often get caught up in the emotion of the crowd and they cross lines they would not normally. For example, studies have suggested that when a large group watches a person standing on a windowsill of a tall building and the effect of deindividuation is strong enough, the participants of that group are more likely to encourage the person to jump.

Let's look at gangs as another example. When someone enters a gang, they take on the identity of that gang. They wear certain colors, might go by a different name, and lose the sense of what they consider right from wrong. They give up their individual identity to belong to this group, and that means crossing lines they wouldn't cross on their own. For example, there is usually an initiation that is completed to become a part of the gang. This act is meant to show that you are willing to do what the group does and that your individual identity and values will not hold you back.

How To Reduce The Effects Of Deindividuation

Know Who You Are

The first step in reducing deindividuation is to help people be and remain self-aware. If you are going to be going somewhere with a large group of people, think through what your morals and values are. Know what you stand for and where the line is you are unwilling to cross. If you are in a situation and feel yourself starting to get caught up in the energy of the crowd, remove yourself from the situation before you start to change your behavior. Remind yourself that you are responsible for your behavior regardless of how many other people are doing the same thing. Avoid drinking, as this lowers your ability to remain self-aware.

Focus OnThe Individual

If you are trying to help reduce the effects of deindividuation on someone else, then focus on helping them see their individual identity. Talk directly to them and address them by name. Look for ways that make them more self-aware. Talk to them about their specific activities and what they're doing. Talk about their actions’ impact on other people. Try to help them see their actions.

Therapy

If you believe you're struggling with deindividuation, working oneonone with a therapist can help you get to the place where you have more self-awareness and discover who you are. A therapist can also help you to forgive yourself and take correct steps to move forward from any past behaviors done as a result of deindividuation.

Online Therapy WithBetterHelp

It is easy to think that this is a small problem when you hear the stories of sporting events and the military. But this is an important issue needing to be addressed in society. The longer someone lives a deindividualized life, the harder it is for them to regain their sense of true identity. If you or someone you know is struggling with this, seek the help of a trusted professional. BetterHelp has online therapists ready to help you regain your awareness of self and keep control of it, even when in a large crowd.

Online therapy has become increasingly popular over the last few years, but researchers have been looking at how effective it is for some time. Veterans are actually one of the most common populations to have been studied. The New York Times recently ran an article about online therapy and cited two different studies where veterans were split into two groups: one group did traditional in-person therapy, the other group did online therapy. Both studies found that both types of therapy are equally effective.

There are some other benefits to online therapy that you may want to consider. One is that you can get therapy no matter where you live. If you live in a rural area, there’s no need to make a long drive, and if you live in a busy city, no need to battle traffic. You can contact your counselor anywhere you’re comfortable as long as you have a secure internet connection. Another great benefit is that online therapy tends to be less expensive than traditional therapy.

You can read reviews of BetterHelp counselors below from people experiencing similar issues.

Counselor Reviews

"Christina has been so extremely helpful for me. She has guided me to better myself, to build a strong foundation, helped me know my self-worth, and to know that I am an individual and strong by myself. She has helped me process and move past my traumas. Because of her guidance, I am a 10x better version of myself."

"Her advice is sound as well as thought-provoking. I will continue to have contact with her on a regular basis to maintain good mental health because this is just as important as taking care of my physical health needs. I feel she can help me be a better person, accomplish more out of life, and reach higher levels of self-awareness."

Conclusion

Knowing who you are and what matters to you are important parts of not getting caught up in deindividuation. Therapy can help you avoid the dangers that come along with it. Take the first step today.