Group norms

Although factors such as anonymity are widely held to increase antisocial behaviour and aggression, not all research findings support that view. Zimbardo found that soldiers gave electric shocks of shorter duration when they were deindividuated in the style of clothing he used in his earlier study. The American psychologists Robert Johnson and Leslie Downing adopted a similar paradigm but dressed female participants in either Klan-style clothing or nurses’ uniforms. The participants who were dressed in the nurses’ outfits were significantly less aggressive.

Those results suggest that aggression and antisocial behaviour are not inevitable by-products of deindividuated situations. In some cases in which norms and standards promote aggressive behaviour (e.g., soldiers dressed in uniform may trigger norms associated with fighting and aggression), aggression and antisocial behaviour may result. However, when norms and standards instead promote positive nonaggressive behaviour (e.g., nurses dressed in uniform may trigger norms associated with caring and helping), the resulting behaviour may be far from negative. In other words, deindividuated behaviour increases adherence to the salient norms of the situation. The Austrian-born psychologist Gustav Jahoda pointed out a real-life example of this effect of deindividuation. In some Islamic countries, women wear the full-length dark-coloured chador, which, instead of allowing them to engage in antinormative behaviour, implies a strong system of norms of behaviour to which women adhere.

Following that line of reasoning, some critics of traditional deindividuation theories argue that while group membership can have both prosocial and antisocial consequences, those consequences should not necessarily be attributed to a loss of individual selfhood. The British psychologists Steve Reicher, Russell Spears, and Tom Postmes argued that the notion of a loss of selfhood relies, inaccurately, on an individualistic conception of the self; rational action is equated with the individual self, and group membership is equated with the loss of identity and of rationality. According to Reicher and his colleagues, that position limits understanding of deindividuation phenomena.

Drawing on social identity theory and self-categorization, Reicher and his colleagues proposed that group membership does not automatically entail a loss of self. An individual has many levels of self. The self is not only the individual’s personal identity, or what separates that individual from other individuals. The self also encompasses a range of possible social identities related to group memberships and properties that are shared with others, such as race, gender, and age. When people feel part of a group, they will be attuned to the norms of that group. For that to occur, people do not need to be physically present with the group or to be physically marked as a group member in any way. In turn, knowledge of the group’s norms will guide people’s behaviour. Reicher and his colleagues argued that those social identity principles determine how people will behave in deindividuated situations.

Revisiting Zimbardo’s paradigm in which participants were asked to wear Klan-style hoods and cloaks, Reicher and his colleagues argued that asking people to wear such garments should have different effects on behaviour depending on the salient social identity and what is happening in the deindividuated context. They argued that manipulating deindividuation by immersion in a group should reinforce the salience of a prominent social identity at the expense of personal identity. So if personal identity is salient, wearing Klan outfits may increase personal focus, and people will rely on their own individual norms to guide their behaviour. But if a group identity is salient, the deindividuation manipulation is more likely to have the effect of promoting behaviour consistent with the norms of the group that people feel part of at the time, whether they are prosocial or antisocial.

Computer-mediated communication

Deindividuation phenomena in action can be seen in computer-mediated communication (CMC—for example, Twitter, e-mail, blogs, social networking sites, or chat rooms. People can use CMC, unlike many other media, to communicate anonymously if they so wish. Just as traditional research on deindividuation predicts, CMC is often characterized by hostile negative interactions (known as trolling or flaming) and increased levels of personal disclosure.

Theorists typically attribute such behaviour to the physical anonymity afforded by CMC. It is argued that the anonymity of CMC frees people from normal constraints on behaviour, allowing people to behave impulsively and often antisocially. However, some research shows that, although the deindividuated context of CMC blurs people’s individual characteristics, an important consequence is that it also enhances the salience of groups and their associated norms.

Accordingly, some research shows that people who are deindividuated by being anonymous on the Internet often adhere more closely to the norms of their groups than they do when they and others are identifiable. For example, research by Spears and his colleagues showed that group polarization, or the heightened expression of attitudes consonant with in-group prototypical norms, occurs under anonymous CMC conditions. People’s views, expressed anonymously, become more grouplike and therefore more normative than antinormative. This is increased further if group identity is made salient.