It's No One's Fault When It's Everyone's Fault

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The passage discusses the psychological phenomenon of deindividuation and how it can cause people to lose their self-awareness and inhibitions when in large groups.

Deindividuation is when a person's identity within a group overrides their own identity and self-awareness, causing them to feel less self-conscious and less inhibited by social norms.

Two key factors that contribute to deindividuation are anonymity within a group and diffusion of responsibility. When individuals feel anonymous and do not feel personally accountable, they are more prone to deindividuation.

It’s No One’s Fault When It’s Everyone’s Fault

Shelby Ostergaard

[1] More than 18,000 people were packed outside Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum on
the evening of December 3, 1979. They were excited. They were there to see The
Who, one of the biggest rock bands in the world. Every sold-out show the band held
was greeted by crowds of screaming fans who rushed to get near the musicians. That
night was no different. As the doors opened, fans could hear the band warming up.
The crowd surged forward through the door, moving in human waves, crashing against
the doors like the ocean hits rocks. There wasn’t enough room. But the crowd didn’t
stop. Not even when people began getting crushed.

[2] Eleven people died that night, trampled by the surge. Today, if you were to ask any
of those fans whether a good spot to see their favourite band was worth a human life,
it’s likely they would say no. So, what were they thinking? Psychologists argue that
they weren’t thinking at all, that each individual lost a sense of themselves and became
part of a larger “hivemind,” a collective consciousness. Individuals didn’t kill those
eleven victims that night; a crowd did. This process is known as deindividuation.

What is deindividuation?

[3] Deindividuation, as the psychologist David Myers put it, is “doing together what you
would not do alone.” It takes place when a person’s identity within a group overrides2
their own identity and self-awareness. In short, people lose their self-awareness in
groups; they become less self-conscious and less inhibited.3 Once individuals shed
their inhibitions, the actions of the group can get out of control. People can end up
making decisions that encourage unity within the group but harm others outside of it.
They start to feel the power of the crowd, lose their sense of right and wrong, and are
carried along by the circumstances and their environment. In the crowd, the individual
is gone. They see themselves as part of something bigger. “Everyone is doing it,” the
individual tells themselves, and this gives them more justification for their behaviours.
People in these situations often feel no sense of personal accountability. Blame is
attributed to the group at large. It’s no one’s fault when it’s everyone’s fault.
[4] In 1895, with the publication of The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, the
polymath4 Gustave LeBon described how the “unconscious action of crowds” is
substituted for “the conscious activity of individuals.” He identified two important
factors that are needed in order to create this substitution — anonymity and what’s
come to be called diffused5 responsibility.

Anonymity

[5] Anonymity is present because an individual can hide themselves and their acts
within the larger group. Looking back at the crowd surge at the The Who concert, it is
difficult for authorities to point out individuals or any individual acts that led to the
eleven deaths. In a crowd that size, individuals are largely anonymous.

[6] Here’s another example of the power of anonymity. In the 1970s, a group of
psychologists used Halloween as a controlled study of how anonymity shapes our
behavior. They picked out 27 homes in a Seattle neighborhood to use as makeshift
laboratories. They wanted to see if being in a Halloween costume would affect the
behavior of children. They placed a bowl of candy outside each home. Those young
children who turned up to trick-or-treat at the residences were told by an adult that
they could only have one piece of candy each. The adult would then leave the children
on the doorstep. Half the time, the adult would ask the children to say their names and
where they lived before, they left the children alone on the doorstep. The children were
secretly monitored. If they arrived with adults, they were excluded from the results.
These were the findings: less than 10% of children who turned up alone and told the
adult their name took more than one piece of candy. That number increased to 20%
when they were alone and anonymous. In a group, 20% of those children who revealed
their identity stole the candy. When it was an anonymous group of children, the result
was significantly higher: 60%. The final conclusion was that the kids who felt both
anonymous and protected by the group were the ones most likely to break the rule
and take more candy. The experiment revealed how anonymity influences people to
do things they wouldn’t normally do.
Diffused responsibility

[7] Diffused responsibility works when the individual does not feel responsible for their
actions. In the case of the The Who concert, it would not be surprising for individuals
to feel as if it was not their fault — or at least not their fault alone. It’s likely they would
argue that they were just doing what others were doing, and they were not the person
who crushed one of the victims. Being in a group allows them to feel less responsible.
The principles behind a firing squad work in the same way. When soldiers line up to
execute someone by shooting, one or two soldiers are given a blank cartridge. None
of the soldiers are told beforehand if they are using blank cartridges or live ammunition.
All of the soldier’s fire at the same time, and the blank cartridges reinforce the diffusion
of responsibility. Soldiers can always tell themselves that they might have been the
person who fired a blank round.

What does deindividuation look like?

[8] There are pro-social forms of deindividuation, like losing your inhibitions when
dancing amongst a crowd or being part of a crowd caught up in suddenly looking for
a missing child or pet. But unfortunately, it most often occurs in negative
circumstances and situations. Rioting and mob justice are some of the most common
examples of deindividuation.

[9] Another environment in which deindividuation thrives is during hazing, the ritual act
of putting someone through strenuous7 and often humiliating tasks, as part of their
training or initiation.8 In the case of college fraternities and sororities, for example, the
people carrying out the hazing see themselves as one body. The people who are
“pledging” — attempting to join the group — are viewed as being on the outside, trying
to get in. In these circumstances, the Greek organization often puts the pledges
through degrading9 and dangerous practices, as was the case with Timothy Piazza,
a student at Penn State University, who fatally fell down the stairs at an initiation event
while pledging a fraternity. It is alleged that the fraternity brothers forced Timothy to
“consume life-threatening amounts of alcohol,” which caused him to fall. Many acts of
hazing, which include beatings, forcing others into menial labor, force-feeding
undesirable food, and public humiliation, would likely not be condoned by individuals
in the group. But together, the individuals are swept up in the power and control they
have over new members, as well as the anonymity the group affords them.

[10] Our understanding of crowds and group behavior has grown since Gustave LeBon
wrote in 1895, and though much of his work has been debunked, the fundamentals
and factors that he set out remain. The larger the group, the more anonymous a person
is, and the less responsible they feel for the group action. When both factors occur,
individuals lose their sense of self-awareness and their fear of accountability. They
start to simply follow the crowd. This has had huge consequences around the world.
Lynching’s, wartime atrocities, and genocidal massacres1 1 have all been carried out
under the influence of deindividuation. Today is no different. Sports fans destroy cities
after their team wins big. Groups get together and bully other people; online chat
rooms, comment threads, and message boards are used to terrorize people.

[11] It is easy to judge people for falling victim to deindividuation, and by no means
should we condone negative behaviours that derive from it, but under the right
conditions, we could all be subject to it. A strong desire to identify with a group can
increase a person’s chances of deindividuation. Maybe something happens to us
when we put a mask on at Halloween, when we’re in the stands expressing our
fanatical loyalty to our sports team, or when we’re trolling someone on social media of
whom we don’t approve — there are many circumstances that could leave us
vulnerable. The best way to combat it might be to always keep in mind, when in group
situations, how susceptible we are to groupthink, how both our anonymity and our
environment play a part. The more we recognize this, the more likely we are to hold
on to our personal accountability.

[12] This might be just what’s truly required to stand out among the crowd.

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