Deindividuation

Definition

Deindividuation theory was developed to explain the violence and irrationality of the crowd. How does a group of seemingly normal individuals become an unruly mob? According to deindividuation theory, the anonymity and excitement of the crowd make individuals lose a sense of individual identity. As a result, crowd members cease to evaluate themselves, and they become irrational and irresponsible. All of this makes the crowd fickle, explosive, and prone to antinormative and disinhibited behavior.

But, despite a large amount of research, there is little support for deindividuation theory. Alternative approaches suggest that crowd behavior is not due to a loss of identity but to a transition to a collective (social) identity. The remainder of this entry outlines the theoretical evolution of deindividuation theory, summarizes the research to date, and highlights an alternative perspective.

Theoretical Evolution of Deindividuation

Deindividuation theory can be traced back to some of the earliest works of social psychology. In his 1895 book La Foule (The Crowd), Gustave Le Bon described how the crowd psychologically transforms the psychology of its members. Anonymity, suggestibility, and contagion turn a gathering of individuals into a psychological crowd. The collective mind (dominated by primitive instincts rooted in our racial unconscious) takes possession of individuals. As a result, rational self-control ceases, and individuals become unthinking, fickle, and suggestible; that is, they become inferior forms of evolution. The individual submerged in the crowd thus becomes a mindless puppet capable of performing any act, however atrocious or heroic.

Although many have criticized Le Bon's theory and his politics—the two are not unrelated—the influence of La Foule in science and society has been huge. His book is a scientific bestseller. But Le Bon was also controversial. He was popular with politicians of the right, including Benito Mussolini, Joseph Goebbels, and Adolf Hitler. Although one should not blame Le Bon for the atrocities of fascism, his writings did blend science with a shot of far-right politics. His analysis of the crowd was clouded by fears of communism and trade unionism; he also gave race a prominent place in his theory.

As a result of his politics, Le Bon is rarely credited for his contribution to social psychology. But when Leon Festinger, Albert Pepitone, and Theodore Newcomb coined the term deindividuation in 1952, they borrowed core ideas from Le Bon. Their starting point was Le Bon's characterization of the crowd as irrational, disinhibited, and antinormative. What psychological process could explain this? The answer lay in the lack of accountability in the crowd, inducing a feeling among people in the crowd of being unaware of themselves. This process is called deindividuation.

Over the subsequent decades, deindividuation theory was developed and expanded. Interestingly, the psychological process that deindividuation referred to gradually shifted. By the 1990s, deindividuation had become a loss of awareness of the self. But both aspects of what became known as deindividuation (lack of accountability and lack of self-awareness) were processes already identified by Le Bon.

In other ways, deindividuation theory did move away from Le Bon. The most important difference is that deindividuation is defined as an absence of individual identity. Le Bon argued that the crowd replaces individual identity by a collective mind. But the collective mind plays no role in deindividuation theory. In fact, deindividuation theory did not offer any systematic analysis of social influence to explain how the actions of the crowd were guided or controlled.

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