Deindividuation+Theory+&+Social+Identity+Theory


 * Explanation of Social Identity Theory**

Investigating Social Dynamics: Power, Conformity, and Obedience
 * Basic need to belong, to associate with, and be accepted by others
 * Peer pressure is a social force that makes people, especially adolescents, do strange things to be accepted
 * Group influence: Most often indirect, simply modeling the normative behavior that the group wants us to imitate and practice
 * Authority influence: More often direct and without subtlety. Because the command is open and bold-faced, one can decide to disobey and not follow the leader

Investigating Social Dynamics: Deindividuation, Dehumanization and the Evil of Inaction
 * Are we born evil and transformed by society into decent humans, or born good and corrupted? Are we all capable of being a saint or a sinner.
 * Anything that makes people feel anonymous reduces their sense of personal accountability, thereby creating the potential for evil action.
 * If the situation or some agency gives them //permission// to engage in antisocial or violent action against others people are ready to go to war.
 * If the situation conveys a reduction of self-centeredness with anonymity and encourages prosocial behavior, people are ready for love.
 * The sense of a lack of personal identifiability can induce antisocial behavior
 * Deindividuation creates a unique psychological state in which behavior comes under the control of immediate situational demands and biological, hormonal urges

__War__
 * A key ingredient in transforming ordinarily nonaggressive young men into warriors who can kill on command is first to change their external appearance
 * Military uniforms, masks, hair cuts, face paint

= Evidence (specific studies and findings) =
 * **Studies on Group Influence**
 * Muzafer Sherif, 1935.
 * Solomon Asch, 1955.
 * **Studies on Authority Influence**
 * Stanley Milgram (19 experiments over a year)
 * Ten lessons from the Milgram Studies: Creating Evil Traps for Good People (Lucifer Effect, 273)
 * Milgram Obedience Model (Lucifer, 275)
 * Charles Sheridan and Richard King, 1972

= Explanation of Deindividuation Theory =
 * Deindividuation creates a unique psychological state in which behavior comes under the control of immediate situational demands and biological, hormonal urges
 * Action replaces thought, seeking immediate pleasure dominates delaying gratification, and mindfully restrained decisions give way to mindless’ emotional responses
 * There is no sense of right and wrong
 * Apollonian and Dionysian mentalities
 * Apollo: rationality, order, coherence
 * Dionysus: chaos, disorganization, irrationality, lust

= **Studies on Deindividuation** =
 * Scott Fraser: Schoolchildren on Halloween (Lucifer, 302)
 * Philip Zimbardo: Stanford Prison Experiment
 * Zimbardo created a mock prison environment in the basement of Stanford University ’s psychology building in which he randomly assigned 24 men to undertake the role of either guard or prisoner. These men were specifically chosen because they had no abnormal personality traits (e.g.: narcissistic, authoritarian , antisocial , etc.) The experiment, originally planned to span over two weeks, ended after only six days because of the sadistic treatment of the prisoners from the guards. Zimbardo attributed this behavior to deindividuation due to immersion within the group and creation of a strong group dynamic . Several elements added to the deindividuation of both guards and prisoners. Prisoners were made to dress alike, wearing stocking caps and hospital dressing gowns, and also were identified only by a number assigned to them rather than by their name. Guards were also given uniforms and reflective glasses which hid their faces. The dress of guards and prisoners led to a type of anonymity on both sides because the individual identifying characteristics of the men were taken out of the equation. Additionally, the guards had the added element of diffusion of responsibility which gave them the opportunity to remove personal responsibility and place it on a higher power. Several guards commented that they all believed that someone else would have stopped them if they were truly crossing the line, so they continued with their behavior. Zimbardo's prison study would have not been stopped if Christina Maslach had not pointed it out to him. She was one of Zimbardo's graduate students, and was also intimate with him.
 * Stanley Milgram: 1963
 * Participants were taken into a room and sat in front of a board of fake controls. They were then told by the experimenter that they were completing a task on learning and that they were to read a list of word pairs to the “learner” and then test the learner on accuracy. The participant then read a word and four possible matches. If the confederate got the match wrong, they were to administer a shock (which was not real, unbeknownst to the participant) from the fake control panel they were sitting in front of. After each wrong answer, the intensity of the shock increased. The participant was instructed by the experimenter to continue to administer the shocks, stating that it was their duty in the experiment. As the voltage increased, the confederate began to complain of pain, yelled out discomfort, and eventually screamed the pain was too much and sometimes they even began to bang on the wall. At the greatest amount of voltage administered, the confederate stopped speaking at all. The results of the study showed that 65 percent of experiment participants administered the experiment’s final, and most severe, 450-volt shock. Only 1 participant refused to administer shocks past the 300- volt level. The participants, covered by a veil of anonymity, were able to be more aggressive in this situation than they possibly would have in a normal setting. Additionally, this is a classic example of diffusion of responsibility in that participants looked to an authority figure (the experimenter) instead of being self-aware of the pain they were causing or engaging in self-evaluation which may have caused them to adhere to societal norms.