Deindividuation essay

Deindividuation is the psychology state where a person shows lowered self-evaluation and decreased concerns about evaluation by others leading to an increase in behaviours that would normally be suppressed. It is suggested that deindividuation is promoted by being part of a big crowd, anonymity and drugs and alcohol. 

According the Zimbardo, being anonymous essentially leads to people feeling unaccountable for their works. Being part of a large crowd is also said to reduce inner restraints and increasing anti-social behaviour. Being part of a crowd leads to everyone in the crowd being anonymous and losing their concerns about evaluation by others as they, essentially, cannot be identified. So there is a reduced sense of guilt. And the larger the crowd the greater the anonimity therefore it can be expected that the more severe the antisocial behaviours may be. 

An experiment by Zimbardo, which consisted of two conditions deindividuated and individuated, was conducted in a laboratory; the task was to deliver electric shocks to "aid learning". Those in deindividuated conditions had large bulky lab coats and hoods that hid their faces and hadn't been introduced to each other. The ones in individuated were introduced to each other and wore normal clothing with large name tags. The results were that on average, the deindividuated group used twice as much electric shocks against the…