Deindividuation: The Cause and Solution of Life's Problems Dr. Sweeney, a brilliant English teacher at Venice Beach High School had become disillusioned lately. One of his brightest students, Derek Vinyard, had organized a local gang of skinheads, called the D.O.C. (Disciples Of Christ). To Dr. Sweeney's dismay, he could be of no help to young Derek; who was given three years in jail for a hate crime in which he shot one, and brutally killed another black man who was trying to steal his car. Three years later, Derek's younger brother Daniel is headed down the same path; consequently, Sweeney designs a special class just for him, American History X. The lives of Derek and Daniel, show the common escalation of prejudice; through extreme categorized thinking, and through the ugly side deindividuation. It is a fact that all humans use categorized thinking, which is not a bad thing. We use these mental shortcuts to define and make sense of the world. Categorized thinking is basically grouping things (both objective and subjective) into groups. We group animals into kingdom and species, thoughts into rational and irrational, and humans into in-groups and out-groups. The problem that arises is, will people let these mental heuristics override their cognitive abilities? Most people can consciously think about their grouping biases, even if they have never studied the subject, but a lack of conscious thinking will result in prejudice, stereotyping, and/or discrimination. An example of categorization can be seen in the sports world. There are wide stereotypes that blacks are faster and stronger than whites, because it seems obvious. Only thirteen percent of Americans are black, but seventy-five to eighty percent of professional basketball players are black! What makes this huge difference? People are quick to say white men can't jump, but this really doesn't make sense. It's like saying only one percent of CEOs are women because women don't have any business sense. A study by Jeff Stone, Zachary Perry, and John Darley, (1997) looked into the stereotypes of black athletes. While listening to an audiotape of a basketball game, subjects where told to rate the play of one particular person. The subjects were given an informational folder of the player, including a photograph. The independent variable was the photograph, which was either of a white basketball player or a black basketball player. The audiotape was the same for both conditions. The dependent variable was the subjects rating of the player's performance. The results were that the subjects who viewed the photograph of a black basketball player rated the player as much better. This is strong evidence showing that stereotypes and categorization can greatly bias our perceptions. (Social Psychology, page 503) The early life of Derek Vinyard is a good example of this. When he first moved to Venice Beach as a child, it was a white middle class neighborhood. His first real life experiences with black people were the street gangs he saw moving in. His category for black people was now of a bunch of drug dealing gang members; he based his entire image of black people on the only small group with which he had contact. Later incidences with black bullies in school and black car jackers would only strengthen his category of them. As a consequence of Derek's limited exposure to black people, his stereotypes where nearly set in stone. Because of his close mindedness, this mindset will continue even in the face of disconfirming information. Members of the D.O.C. believe that all minorities are a burden on the system, a black politician like Alan Keyes would be seen as an exception to the rule; this is know as sub-typing. Several conditions must be met if the subtype is going to be integrated into the major category. First, the information must be moderately, rather than extremely disconfirming. It is a huge blow to the self-esteem to be totally rebuffed; baby steps are easier on the self-esteem. Also, the subtype will not change if the person (the black gangster) is seen to be representative of the entire group and the behavior (gang activity) is perceived as dispersed across many members of the group. For Derek, the conditions for change were not initially met because his only contact with blacks was negative. This is because there are only certain conditions under which prejudice will be reduced by inter-group contact. The two groups must have equal status; there must be personal interactions, superordinate goals, cooperation, mutual interdependence, and favorable social norms. Contact alone will not necessarily lower prejudice, as shown by the slow progress made since desegregation. Coming from segregation, blacks did not have equal status, personal interactions (black/white interactions) were rare, there were few interdependent goals, and the social norms (especially in the south) were unfavorable. Patience was/is needed for the black rights movement, as well as for the skinheads of Venice Beach. The breaking point for Derek was when his father died. He had been putting out a fire in a poor black neighborhood, and ended up being shot by a gang member. Derek then became a hard core skinhead, preaching about supposed parasites of the community; minorities and immigrants. He used a few extreme examples of immigrants and minorities on welfare and immigrant and minority criminals to spread the negative categorization to new people. The only people who would follow him, were people who had somewhat similar extreme categorized thinking, Derek only increased it. The D.O.C. became more populated and more powerful, while the categorized thinking could always be seen. One of Derek and Daniel's friends, Seth, was so prejudiced against black people that he refused to eat black jellybeans. Another member of the gang was criticized for smoking marijuana, which was perceived as a black thing to do. Another example was when Derek was having a so-called intelligent debate with a black man about basketball. Derek claimed that the Celtics were the greatest team ever, while the black man claimed the Lakers were the greatest. It is no coincidence that that Celtics were a mostly white team, and the Lakers were a mostly black team. The best example was when Derek himself was a victim of categorized thinking by being labeled a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was offended by this accusation, but did not see the hypocrisy in himself. The connotation with making groups of "us" and "them" is that "we" will always feel that our group is right or good and they are wrong or bad. This merely goes back to humans' basic need for self-respect; we have the tendency to ignore things that would lower our self-respect. Western civilized people will glorify their tremendous freedom and simply ignore their lack of safety, while eastern civilized people will do just the opposite. This process of forming "us" and "them," and feeling that our group is always correct, helps to form deindivuation. Deindividuation is the "loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people are in a crowd, leading to an increase in impulsive and deviant acts." (Social Psychology, page 337) Deindividuation is a large factor in riots, lynch mobs, cults, and genocide; but it is also a factor in national pride, the spirit of Halloween and Mardi Gras, and sporting camaraderie. It is easy to get caught up in the pride of high school sports, but the same pride causes post game parking lot brawls; the line between pro-social and anti-social behavior is extremely thin. For this reason, it is necessary to differentiate different kinds of deindividuation and look and the precipitants as well. One such precipitant is accountability (amount of anonymity or lack of visibility). If the chances of being caught and punished are decreased, then deviant behaviors will increase. This correlation between accountability was shown to exist in a study by Jerry B. Gulledge, Jr. (December 3, 1996). The title of his creative experiment was, "Victim Visibility as an Inhibitor of Horn Honking Aggression in Traffic." He used visibility as the variable for accountability in this experiment; because if you can't be seen (or be seen as well), you can't be held accountable. Participants were randomly assigned, in that anyone who happened to fully stop behind the experimenters at the specified stoplight became a subject; in all there were sixty-eight subjects. The experiment took place in St Joseph, Missouri, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, during the 2 hours preceding sunset of October and November 1996. The experimenters looked straight ahead and did not move, and always wore casual clothing. The specific times and actions were used to rule out extraneous variables. The experimenters' car was a convertible, which had its top up for thirty-four trials and down for thirty-four trials, this was the definition of visibility. When the light turned green, the experimenter stayed in place, and did not release to break so as not to make it look like a mechanical error. The timer began, and stopped when then car behind honked their horn. The convertible top, whether up or down, was the independent variable in the experiment, the dependent variable was the amount of time that passed before the subject honked his horn. The results were: when the convertible top was up, the average honk came after 6.15 seconds with a standard deviation of 2.28 seconds. When the top was down, the average honk came after 10.75 seconds with a standard deviation of 9.04 seconds. This experiment shows a strong correlation between lack of accountability and aggression. It was not totally perfect, however. The main criticism was that the weather in November was noticeably colder than in October and this variable was not controlled in this experiment. Overall, it was good, and follow up studies have given even more insight. Other factors that lower accountability are: subjects wearing sunglasses, experimenters with tinted windows, experiments who are female, the presence of a gun rack, and the presence of an aggressive bumper sticker. A factor that seemed to raise accountability was the empathy aroused from seeing a man with crutches cross the street. These studies show the subconscious effects of visibility and similar variables, and notes that with our new found knowledge we should try to change the things that cause anti-social deindividuation. (Deaux, K. K. (1971). Honking at the intersection: A replication and extension. The Journal of Social Psychology, 84, 159-160.) Besides, accountability, there are many other factors characteristic of deidividuation. The main factors are attention, arousal, anonymity, external event focus, and group unity. At one point, Derek had assembled a small army of local skinheads to terrorize a local grocery store because they had been hiring illegal immigrants. Derek had all areas of deindividuation covered so as to prevent dissention. First, there was focus on an external event. The group was not thinking that they were hoodlums rampaging without discretion, they were supposedly fighting for the American working class. Second, because of this, the gang had little awareness of themselves. They were members of the D.O.C. with the same ideas and goals, therefore they thought not of what each individual was doing, but rather of what they as a group were doing. This brings us to group unity. The unity they had, caused them to lose self-awareness, and also led to group think and group polarization. Everyone generally had the same ideas, while hearing confirming ideas added to their power. While group think occurred, because not one single person realized that their behavior was not the only or even the best way to promote change. Next, was the factor of arousal. The night began with a group of guys relaxed, making jokes and laughing; and with low arousal. Derek changed this right away, taking charge, giving a powerful anti-immigration speech, and finally giving the signal to charge. Lastly, the scene made for some very anonymous (low accountability) young men. They were dressed in all black, it was late and there were few shoppers, it was dark out, they had masks, and the fact that there were so many of them made it less likely for any one person to be caught. As seen in the destroyed grocery store, deindividuation can have very severe consequences. The above example was of social deindividuation, but there is also the less talked of nonsocial deindividuation. Social Deindividuation is the loosening of normal constraints in a crowd, while nonsocial deindividuation is the loosening of normal constraints while not in a crowd (but still caused by a crowd). Derek had started the D.O.C. in order to provide safety to young men afraid of local gangs. The fact that skinheads could walk the streets by themselves and feel no fear, is a form of deindivuation. On one occasion, Daniel turned in a pro paper for Hitler's Mein Kampf, which he did because of lowered inhibitions caused by his membership in the gang. For this reason, the D.O.C. and many other gangs, require their members to get tattoos. Just the presence of a shaved head, swastikas, tattoos, and the associated clothing, cause a lowering of inhibitions and impulsive deviant acts. These are very powerful devices, as shown by the fact that for some advertisements of American History X, Derek's swastika tattoo was airbrushed off! This idea of nonsocial deindividuation has also been found experimentally. Berkowitz and LePage (1967) and Anderson, Anderson, Deusen (1996) were able to correlate the mere presence of a gun with loosening of normal constraints; measured through expressed aggression. Whereas it usually was necessary to have a crowd of like-minded individuals to deindivuate, it is now possible to deindividuate merely from the reminder of these feelings. By the time Derek and Daniel Vinyard became capable of nonsocial deindividuation, they were deeply immersed in the vicious cycle of prejudice. The good news is that they were able to over come their biases, even though many of their comrades could not. For Derek, it took three years in jail, and a new black friend to change him. For Daniel, he had to be persuaded by Derek, the one who had started him in this nonsense. The point of this paper is not that deindividuation needs to be abolished, it is natural and imbedded in all humans. The schema most of us have of deindividuation is something like the scene at Hillsborough were ninety-five soccer fans were crushed to death, leaving hundreds of others injured; while the deindividuated police force helped put an end to the malay, and may have saved a few lives. It is often stated that alcohol is the cause and solution to life's problems, the same could be said of deindividuation. Education on the subject is needed to show people that deindividuation needs to be used responsibly, no deindividuating and driving. Works Cited Aronson, E., Wilson, T.D., @ Akert, R.M. (1999). Social Psychology (3rd edition). New York: Addison Wesley Longman. (Deaux, K. K. (1971). Honking at the intersection: A replication and extension. The Journal of Social Psychology, 84, 159-160.) (Derek, Daniel, and Daniel's D.O.C. tattoo)