APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - get an abstract for a record - mobile App popup - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My List count - save record to My List - get references associated with a record - page navigation - memorize search form information - display database popup information - adjust limits on search form
Skip Navigationsdtxydtuurey

Home

Facebook image Twitter image
Login    Languages 

Record Display

Citation

Database: PsycINFO
[ Journal Article ]
The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos.
Zimbardo, Philip G.
Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol 17, 1969, 237-307.

Abstract

  1. While psychologists "were demonstrating in the laboratory the remarkably fine degree of control which man had at his disposal, all hell was breaking loose outside in the real world." Recent evidence regarding self-destruction, the destruction of others, riots, mob violence, the diminution in the value of life, and the loss of control of behavior is presented. Research evidence relating anonymity to aggression, car smashing, vandalism, and other violent acts is also presented. The "releaser cues" required to initiate destructive vandalism in various cities such as New York and Palo Alto are compared. Anonymity, deindividuation, dehumanization, and control (or the lack of it) are the key words. "In the eternal struggle between order and chaos, we openly hope for individuation to triumph, but secretly plot mutiny with the forces within, drawn by the irresistible lure of deindividuation." (26 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)