Le Bon's Theory Of Deindividuation

Deindividuation happens when there is a shift in personality because of factors like anonymity and being part of a group. This causes a shift in individuals, which reduces their concern towards society and also their responsibilities towards their actions. These individuals on their own may act differently and would not do such actions due to social norms however but because they are part of a crowd they feel different and anonymous. Therefore since everyone in the group is doing the same actions it feels safe to perform these actions. Le Bon looks at it as a group mind where the mind is taken over by the dynamics of the group that the individual belongs to. Some theorists look at deindividuation “as a process of immersion within a group such

Festinger, Pepitone and Newcomb in 1952 came up with an alternative to Le Bon’s theory, which developed further Le Bon’s theory on contagion. This helped in understanding the individual – group relationship that was the concept of deindividuation (Dixon and Mahendran, 2007). In this study Festinger et al explained deindividuation as a process were the individual has a big influence from the group that they belong that he/she does not view themselves as separate but a part of this group and therefore are not judged personally which leads to disinhibited and impulsive behavior to respond to the immediate demands of the situation (Dixon and Mahendran, 2007). Deindividuation is based on the idea that an individual is associated with a group through a common idea; this idea defines the group but not the

According to Reicher’s research in 1984 although the riots were blamed on the black youths and how they lacked parental care and how they sank into a criminal mob sub-culture he interpreted the riots from an outside perspective and found that the rioters directed their violence at specific targets and remained within the community. This showed that the riots were not unconstrained or random violence and the reason behind them were to expel the police from the area because of aggression towards the young black people in the same area. This was because local people had become irritated with the so called ‘sus’ laws that allowed the police to stop anyone to search and arrest because the police thought that they might be suspicious and might commit an “arrestable offence”. The locals whether white or black saw these laws as racism because it made it easier for police to harass young black men on anything however the riots were mainly participated by white young men defending the young black men from harassment. Therefore the riots were considered a reasonable response. This showed how local people could be very attached to their community and do anything to protect it. This is why according to Reicher it fits with a social identity account of crowd psychology. The values that communities share show a collective behavior to protest against injustices (Dixon and