Research into Crowd Mentality and Deindividuation

"Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology that is generally thought of as the losing of self-awareness in groups"

As part of my early research into the slasher genre, and in particular home invasion movies, I wanted to research into the idea of herd mentality/collective behaviour etc. to investigate what makes people act in a certain way when they are part of a group. One particular instance I wanted to look into was the Salem Witch trials.

In 1692 the Salem Witch Trials took place. It truly epitomizes what can happen when religious extremism and mobs collide. In the beginning a couple of girls started acting weird (having fits, diving under furniture, contorting in pain, etc.) and claimed witches were responsible for their “sickness.” They pointed fingers at specific women in Salem, and after the doctor confirmed the girls were possessed, the town went berserk. Salem officials started arresting suspected witches based on ridiculous evidence and the town went along with the whole thing, in the end 19 were hanged and 5 died in prison.

Another example was clear from Zimbardo's prison experiment in 1971:

• "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.
• 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."

-Wikipedia

In TV I found the example of an episode of Black Mirror called 'White bear':

In this episode, a woman wakes up in a chair, completely confused and unable to remember anything about her life. Leaving the house, the woman sees people constantly recording her on their phones. When asking for help and shouting at the people to stop recording her, a man wearing a balaclava with the symbol on it pulls up in a car, takes out a shotgun, and fires at Victoria (pictured above). This gave me the idea about crowd mentality and anonymity, which is clearly displayed in this episode of black mirror. They combined the idea of us living in a completely technological age and the constant need for entertainment, whatever the cost.

I also watched Derren Brown's TV show 'The Experiments: The game show' for more of an insight. In this episode Brown sets up a fake game show where the audience are in complete control of what happens to an unknowing man, who earlier signed up to be part of some kind of experiment. Throughout the show, the audience decides his fate whilst wearing anonymous masks, to shield their identity. It turned out that the audience voted for the man to have have drinks spilled down him, arrested for shoplifting, lose his job, get his TV smashed up etc. Would they still have voted for these horrible things to happen to the man if they were not masked? This helps me further understand the idea of deindividuation.