Conformity And Deindividuation During A Flash Mob

Decent Essays
The Social Psychology chapter has concepts that relate to flash mobs including conformity and deindividuation. Conformity deals with an indirect social pressure involving a change in behavior in order to fit in with a group. For example, bystanders to the flash mob may be questionable as to what is going on, but when more and more people join the flash mob, the bystanders are indirectly pressured into joining. In addition to conformity, people may experience the phenomenon deindividuation, during a flash mob. This phenomenon occurs when a person loses their individuality and hands themselves over to the mood and actions of the group. Behaviors resulting from deindividuation can be positive or negative. Negative deindividuation occurs when groups

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Carol Tavris, the author of “In Groups We Shrink”, received her PhD from the University of Michigan in social psychology and has since then published many articles and books; Tavris’ works include articles for Vogue, G.Q., and Harper’s, as well as a handful of novels including The Mismeasure of Women. Using her knowledge of human emotions and sexuality, Tavris also taught in the psychology department at UCLA as well as the New School for Social Research. Printed in the Los Angeles Times in the early 1990’s the article “In Groups We Shrink” leads one to predict that the piece will explain in-depth about how group socialization differs from one-on-one contact and how each person’s self-assurance changes. The author stayed true to her title, the article is very much so about how when individuals become part of a group they often lose their self-reliance and wait for someone else to make the first move. In the article, the author mentions two particular names: Kitty Genovese and Rodney King.…

    • 833 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Do you ever feel pressured to go along with the group? Do feel the need to do what everyone else in the group does? This is what Herd behavior is going along with the crowd, just doing what everyone else does. Herd behavior describes how a crowd of people can act together without centralized direction. This normally happens to humans when there are times of fear or being in a terrible situation.…

    • 621 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Beitler Mob Mentality

    • 244 Words
    • 1 Pages

    After reading and viewing the mob mentality pieces, I can conclude that mob mentality was a key factor in people doing things that they would not normally do. As seen in Beitler’s photograph, there are two black, young, men being lynched by a white mob. This photograph also depicts the tattered and torn clothing of the two boys hanging; it also shows how casual, well dressed, and abundant the White people were (Beitler). Due to such a huge crowd, it was obvious that people were gathering to spectate. Everyone has a casual, nonchalant expression, and they almost pose for their picture to be taken.…

    • 244 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mob Hysteria Analysis

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Mob Hysteria is a phenomenon that researchers have attempted to understand the reason why individuals act…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mob Hysteria is defined as the heightened and extreme emotions that can be experienced by people in a large crowd. There have been many outbreaks of Mob Hysteria in history. For example, just recently, the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri created mob hysteria that spread like a wildfire throughout the city. Blacks in the city became scared and angry; they started riots, burned buildings, and vandalized. The Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Era are two more instances of Mob Hysteria.…

    • 1124 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Examples Of Mob Mentality

    • 237 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Mob Mentality After reading and viewing the mob mentality pieces, I conclude that mob mentality led many people to doing many disgusting things that they normally wouldn't have done otherwise. For example Lawrence Beitler depicts a picture of a lynching of two black men, underneath the bloody, and broken men is a mob of white citizens. In the mob there are men, women, and children smiling and laughing at the spectacle in front of them showing no remorse whatsoever. This mob carried the two men from the jailhouse beating them and eventually killing them, then they proceeded in hanging them from a tree for everyone to see what they had accomplished. Another idea that supports this conclusion for instance, is what S.E Smith illustrates in “What…

    • 237 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Behavioral Alternatives Relationships If you have been a direct care staff long enough to form positive relationships with the children, this connections will help you to change children’s behavior. If the children care about you, they are more likely to respond to your requests and interventions. Group mood and structure Being sensitive to what the group is feeling can help you change behavior. A bored or restless group can be a cue that you need to provide some activity.…

    • 1029 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The article “Good people do Bad Things” was written by Anne Trafton. This article explains that people don’t always act rationally when they’re in group settings rather than alone. Anne emphasizes that the brain acts differently because it is stuck in a “mob mentality”. She started studying this affect after she found herself on the other side of a hostile situation versus a large crowd. The author’s strategies are very effective as far as I can see; most all theories are backed by facts and statistics.…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    To begin, mob mentality refers “to unique behavioral characteristics that emerge when people are in large groups” (Smith). Mob mentality is also considered “the sense of confusion or even panic that can exist in a large group” (Smith). This idea can be shown in current examples such as the instance that many people will go to an already-crowded restaurant for the reason that they figure the restaurant must be serving good food, or it would not be nearly as busy (Smith). Mob mentality has also been a part of events in the past. For example, on one night in a town in Indiana, a few black men were going to be lynched.…

    • 2600 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The seemingly uncontrolled riots across Ferguson, like many other historical riots such as in New York and L.A., can actually be evaluated and explained in terms of a few different group psychological concepts. Groups, forming into mobs, often operate within two sociological principles: group polarization and deindividualization. Group polarization describes the tendency for group decisions to be more irrational and extreme than individual decisions. Groups tend to cause individuals to become more convinced in whatever preexisting belief they had. Deindividualization (486) describes the lack of self identity combined with reduced rationality often common in mob situations.…

    • 1657 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mob mentality is a dangerous characteristic of a person’s attitude. When in a group people often experience “deindividuation, or a loss of self-awareness” causing “the provocation of behaviors that a person would not typically engage in if alone” (Avant). These behaviors can include poor decision making processes and engaging in the defamation of one’s character. It is important that people stand up to this mentality to stop it before extensive damage can be done. This is clearly defined in The Crucible by Arthur Miller.…

    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When a community of people is influenced to dislike something, they tend to congregate together. In recent events, people who couldn’t accept the outcome of the presidential election grouped together because they had similar beliefs, and protested the democratic verdict. These herd mentalities are formed when people are tempted by a sort of peer pressure by a group or community. In the book The Crucible, the people of Salem formed a mob mentality toward accused witches. Their society was based around faith and religion.…

    • 564 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Negative impacts turn into negative behavior which can cause a disturbance in the…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to Irving Janes (1972), groupthink occurs when a group makes an irrational decision because of group pressure fostering and the deterioration of ‘mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement” (Irving, Janis, Victims of groupthink, p.9). Social influence is the effect that people have upon the beliefs or behaviors of others (Aaronson, 2004). Both groupthink and social influence theory have a factor in what we see as an ongoing reaction to the silent protest started by Colin Kaepernick in August 2016. In recent news on October 1, 2017 during a game between the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers, about 30 of the 49ers players took a knee during the national anthem.…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mob mentality is a term used to describe the unique behavioral characteristics that emerge when people are in large groups (Smith 1). These actions can be violent, and it is not always clear what the motivation is at the time of execution. An event that involved a mob was the lynching that occurred on August 6, 1930. People who were at the lynching recall not completely know what was happening at the time of the lynching; though it was evident something was wrong (“Strange Fruit: Anniversary of a Lynching”). In the photograph that was taken at the time of the lynching, there were a large number of people who did not seem to be very concerned that there are two people hanging dead from a tree (Beitler).…

    • 1098 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays