Deindividuation in the crowd

One of the first researchers to emphasize the role of emotional factors was Gustave Le Bon, a French writer with conservative views, whose contempt for the masses was reflected in his theory of crowd behavior. According to Le Bon, people in a crowd become wild, stupid and irrational, and begin to behave based only on their natural instincts and impulses. Nothing forces them to suppress their emotions anymore. Their emotions spread in the crowd through a certain kind of infection and become more and more heated as more and more people are involved in the progressive emotion. So, for example, fear becomes terror, hostility transforms into a desire to kill, a man from the crowd becomes a cruel barbarian.

Social psychologists have tried to translate some of Le Bon's ideas into modern scientific language. In their opinion, the crowd is always led by deindividuation, a state of a person in which he completely loses himself as a person and as an individual. The likelihood of such a condition is more likely if anonymity is present in the crowd, and arousal increases greatly. Deindividuation releases previously inhibited impulses, and people begin to behave in a way they would never behave if they were alone. At the carnival, people in masks and fancy dress can take part in the wildest orgies, in the crowd they will lynch, torture and kill their victim.
To study deindividuation experimentally, the behavior of children during the Halloween holiday was analyzed. Some children went home alone, while others went in groups. When they entered the house, the adults sometimes asked what their names were, and sometimes they did not ask. All the children had the opportunity to steal a coin or a piece of candy when an adult, under some pretext, left the room for a while, leaving the children alone. It turned out that children were much more likely to do this when they came in a group or did not give their names. Thus, the reason for the bad behavior was that the children did not have an updated idea of themselves as individuals – that is, they were in a state of deindividuation and as a result could dare petty theft. However, there may be a simpler and more rational reason: the children were not afraid of punishment because no one knew their names. Sign up using the 1xbet promo code to get a bonus up to 100 EUR on first deposit today! Bonus code is valid for new players from India, Bangladesh and more. Redeeming your 1xBet bonus and claiming the welcome offer seems easy enough, especially compared with the process at other top betting sites. It just involves creating a new account and entering the code.