deindividuation

Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology that is generally thought of as the loss of self-awareness in groups, although this is a matter of contention (see below). For the social psychologist, the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation. As such, social psychologists emphasize the role of internal psychological processes. Other social scientists, such as sociologists, are more concerned with broad social, economic, political, and historical factors that influence events in a given society.

==Overview== Deindividuation theory seeks to provide an explanation for a variety of antinormative collective behavior, such as witch hunts, violent crowds and lynch mobs. There are a range of perspectives on the role deindividuation plays in producing anti-normative behaviors, and how contextual cues affect the rules of the deindividuation construct; it is proposed that it is a psychological state of decreased apprehension and self-evaluation, reducing inhibition and enabling antinormative behavior in participants. Deindividuation has also been suggested as a factor enabling genocide, as well as an explanation for antinormative behavior online in computer-mediated communications.