In this video I describe how crowds can encourage behaviors that individuals might not engage in alone. Part of the explanation for the emergence of behaviors like looting, theft, destruction, and violence in crowds in deindividuation. Deindividuation refers to a reduced feeling of individuality and a reduced sense of responsibility for one’s actions. Physical anonymity can increase feelings of deindividuation and encourage transgressions that are less likely to occur when identified and alone, as demonstrated by Diener et al’s observation of children trick-or-treating on Halloween.
Leon Mann (1981) The Baiting Crowd: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7…
Diener, Fraser, Beaman, & Kemel (1976) https://eddiener.com/articles/1044
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Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Michael Corayer and this is Psych Exam Review. In the previous video we looked at group polarization; this tendency for groups to adopt more extreme positions than the positions of the individuals who initially made up the group. So as soon as we get together into a group, this group now tends to move towards opinions and decisions that the individuals would not have moved to on their own. In this video we’re going to consider how groups can move towards behaviors that the individuals would not move to on their own. This brings us to consider crowd behavior.
So occasionally when people get together in very large groups and crowds, they can form a mob that then engages in behaviors that the individuals would probably not have engaged in on their own. These include things like overturning cars, looting stores, or engaging in acts of property destruction, or even violence. So what causes this madness of crowds? What is it that brings out these behaviors that the individuals probably would not have done if they were alone? Well one way we can think about this is to consider the physiological effects of being in a large crowd of people. This actually stimulates the nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system; it increases our level of physiological arousal. But of course, this increased arousal is not enough on its own to explain the emergence of these behaviors.
So other factors are also involved and one study investigating these other factors was conducted by Leon Mann. And it was an archival study where he looked at newspaper accounts of situations where there was a “jumper”; someone who was contemplating committing suicide by jumping off of a building, a ledge, of a bridge, or some other structure. What Mann found was that in some cases where a crowd formed to see what was going to happen with this jumper, sometimes people would begin chanting or yelling and encouraging the person to jump. This crowd would bait the jumper and encourage this act, which is a horrible antisocial thing to do; to encourage another person to end his life. So what factors seem to cause this baiting of crowds? Well, one factor that Mann found was that it was more likely to occur if the size of the crowd was very large. This didn’t usually happen in smaller crowds. It was also more likely to occur at night rather than in broad daylight, and it was more likely to occur if the crowd was farther away from the jumper. If the crowd was closer to the jumper it was less likely to occur.
So what do all these factors have in common? Well, they all relate to a feeling of deindividuation; they make people feel less like individuals. So this experience of deindividuation is where we don’t feel like we’re an individual, we feel like we’re part of a group and we feel a reduced sense of responsibility for our actions. We feel like the group or the crowd is responsible for our behavior. We’re not responsible as individuals and so we can see that if we’re in a very large crowd, we feel more like part of the crowd and less like an individual who’s making choices. If it’s dark and we can’t be seen very clearly, we’re more physically anonymous. This can reduce our feelings of responsibility and if we’re farther away then we can’t be identified as easily. It’s unclear who it is that’s yelling or chanting or baiting the jumper and so that means we feel less responsibility for those actions.
Now this idea that physical anonymity plays an important role can also be seen in the occurrence of deindividuation when people are wearing costumes. And this brings us to a study by Ed Diener and colleagues conducted in 1976, where they looked at theft of candy by children on Halloween. So what Diener and colleagues did was they used dozens of homes in the Seattle area and over the course of one Halloween night they observed over 1300 children and they manipulated the level of anonymity that the children experienced while they were trick-or-treating. The way that they did this was they would arrive at one of these homes and the host would ask the children who they were and where they lived. So in some cases the children would come into the house and they’ds say “oh who is that behind the mask there? In which which house do you live in the neighborhood?”. So the children would no longer feel so anonymous.
And in other cases they wouldn’t be asked these questions; they would remain anonymous. They’re wearing costumes and they’re not being asked about who they are. Then the researchers also considered whether the children were alone or in a group. And then the children had an opportunity to steal some additional candies. They were told that the candy that they could take was in a bowl in the other room and they were asked to follow a “one candy rule”; just take one piece of candy. Then the researchers surreptitiously observed whether or not the children actually followed this rule or if they violated it.
And what they found is that the violations of this one candy rule were lowest when the children were not anonymous; when they were identified, they were asked their name and where they lived and they were alone. So in that case only about 7.5% of the children took more than one candy. But in the anonymous group of children, so if the children were in a group with others and they weren’t asked any details that would identify them, then the additional taking of candy, the theft of this extra candy, was highest at about 57%. And this shows how our level of physical anonymity can influence our feelings of responsibility over our actions and might encourage us to do things we wouldn’t otherwise do if we were alone and if we were easily identifiable. I hope you found this helpful, if so, please like the video and subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks for watching!
