AO3

• Diener (1976) - On Halloween concealed raters observed 1300 child trick or treaters under different conditions: one condition of anonymity, one of non-anonymity, and then conditions of being alone or in a group. The children were given the opportunity to steal sweets and money. Those children who were in a group and anonymous were the group who stole the most at 57%, compared to 21% in the group that were identifiable. This research demonstrates that when anonymous and in a group, children are more likely to behave in a socially deviant way, therefore supporting deindividuation theory
• Diener (1976) conducted a natural experiment examining the effects of deindividuation on aggression.
• There is real world application to deindividuation

  • Mann (1981) has used the concept of Deindividuation to explain a particular form of collective behaviour.  “The baiting crowd” the notion of the crowd as a mob.  Mann analysed 21 incidents of suicide reported in American newspapers in the 60s and 70s.  He found that in 10/21 cases where a crowd had gathered baiting (encouraging the individual to jump) were recorded.  This tended to occur at night, when the crowd was large and when the crowd was some distance away from the jumper – creating a state of deindividuation
• A criticism of deindividuation is that it only considers the crowd

  • Research that has shown that there are other major factors which also affect aggression.
  • We know that noise and heat is produced from crowds, which causes stress, through activation of our HPA and SAM pathways and the release of adrenaline and corticosteroids to be released. This results in fight or flight reaction. But since it is hard to flee a big crowd, it becomes much harder to resist the urge to fight.
  • So the criticism is that deindividuation doesn’t take into account biology. Therefore causality cannot be proved