In Zimbardo's (1970) elaboration of this thinking, he stressed that prosocial, loving, and creative behavior as well as undesirable and anti-social behavior can be inhibited but released when deindividuated. He specified the behavior as not only unrestrained and impulsive, but unresponsive to external cues, beyond cognitive control, and self-maintaining and self-intensifying as the person yields to strong impulse. He offered a list of external and internal factors presumed to foster the state: anonymity, diffused responsibility, group size, intensity of involvement in group activity, altered time perspective, arousal, sensory input overload, physical involvement in the act, reliance on noncognitive interactions and feed-back, novel or unstructured situations, and altered states of con-sciousness. Only some of these are group-based. The others imply loss of a sense of identity and loss of self-consciousness because of the level of ac-tivity and the narrowing of perspective, whether others are present or not.
These latter factors depart from our present social orientation and become matters for individual, rather than social, psychology. However, the strictly social factors are assumed to have an impact on such internal qualities as unresponsiveness to external cues, loss of cognitive control, and so on. This makes the inferred internal state more complex than merely a reduction of restraints and a feeling of attraction for the group, as earlier stated.
Following Zimbardo's highly speculative paper, empirical work intensified. After a number of years, Diener (1977) reviewed the evidence for various deindividuation effects and for the inferred processes and found it to be inconsistent and inconclusive. Anonymity, for example, though a presumed antecedent of deindividuation, is not identical with the state; and the experimental effects of anonymity appear inconsistent with any deindividuation analysis. Diener (1979a), therefore, attempted to restrict the concept, and he defined it in terms of the person who is experiencing it, so that a deindividuated person is one who is prevented from being self-aware by factors in the situation. Awareness of self as an individual separate from the group is blocked as is monitoring of one's own behavior. Such terms as prevent and block are taken to be relative, not absolute. They suggest an environmental deterministic orientation rather than surrender to impulses and unresponsiveness to stimulus control as Zimbardo (1970) emphasized. That is, self-awareness is "pre-vented" because the group, not the individuals in it, is the focus of attention and because attention is away from self due to a heavy load on "conscious processing capacity," because of involvement in the action, and because of having surrendered decision making to the group. Thus, when self-monitoring and self-reinforcement are reduced, there is an absence of reference to social and personal standards of behavior, a greater responsiveness to cues and emotions, an absence of planning and foresight, and a reduced concern for punishment and the evaluation of others.
Uniqueness and Social Identity
Ziller (1964) took another tack, somewhat anticipated by Festinger et al. (1952), in discussing deindividuation (see also Dipboye, 1977). Ziller describes the individual as being in tension between the need for individuation and an ego identity and the need for deindividuation by submersion in and identification with the group. Individuals will swing with this pendulum depending on their unique ego identity needs and environmental contingencies. Each individual strives to develop an optimal balance between deindividuation and individuation so that both ego identity and group affiliation needs are met.
Having experienced situations involving both individuation and deindividuation, persons make choices and adopt strategies. They learn, for example, that special rewards go to specific persons in school, at work, etc., so they try to appear unique in a potentially rewarding situation but not when punishment is forthcoming (Maslach, 1974). When punishment is in the offing, persons may strive for deindividuation so that it is difficult to single them out.
With Ziller's (1964) analysis, it is clear that there are times when a person will wish to recede into the group and be comforted by being deindividuated. Yet, the primary emphasis is on satisfactions derived through establishing identity and self-definition. As Ziller points out, those leaders who give recognition are liked, as are those groups where individuation is fostered through selective rewards. This is a reversal of deindividuation theory as stated in the preceding section in which deindividuation is assumed to be satisfying and promotive of group attraction.
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DARKNESS
We have already noted that Singer et al. (1965) found time of day to be an environmental factor affecting the subjects' behavior. In a somewhat related study, Gergen, Gergen, and Barton (1973) had groups of college students, four males and four females, spend an hour in a room with the lights on or in total darkness. It was assumed that the latter subjects would be anonymous; however, some of the findings are damaging for that assumption. Not only did subjects in the dark room converse at a high rate during the first 30 min, 92% reported they introduced themselves by their first name (Braun & Linder, 1979, p. 29). The instructions were that they were free to relate in any manner they wished, and they were told to remove shoes, watches, earrings, rings, glasses, and the con-tents of their pockets. It can be argued that during the early part of the session a norm gradually emerged in the dark room that specified behavior not typical of a lighted room. The instructions certainly must have contributed to defining what was expected. Observations showed that all subjects touched another in the dark room and only 16% reported that they prevented touch. More specifically, 100% touched accidentally and 88% touched purposely, and very little contact was repelled. That is, moving about, touching, and hugging (48%) were cued, initiated, and ac-cepted in the dark room. There was only 5 % accidental touching and no purposeful touching reported in the lighted room. The dark room situation certainly was an unusual one for a subject reporting for an experiment on "environmental psychology." Persons in unusual situations have to figure out, with the help of others, how to respond. The emergent norm and contagion brought about behavior that certainly was different from what went on in the orderly lighted room, but it is difficult to say if it went against usual restraints because we do not know what restraints are usual in such an unusual situation. Gergen et ah reported that when other groups were run in the dark room for an additional 30 min, even more of the "unusual" behavior was observed. That is, they observed what the situation did to the participants; they did not observe every variety of unfettered behavior (no assaults or aggression) that a collection of individuals might unleash.
These studies of cues suggest no real loss of self-awareness or lack of conscious regulation of behavior. Though the results have been offered as evidence for deindividuation, they seem rather to evidence concern regarding proper (or, at least, approved) behavior in a complex, contrived situation. Any evidence of enjoyment or discomfort appears to relate to external features of the environment.
Svenn Lindskold and L. Rebecca Propst
Deindividuation, Self-Awareness, and Impression Management
In:
Impression Management Theory and Social Psychological Research
Edited by JAMES T. TEDESCHI
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