Today's lesson went from the extremely frivolous to the extremely serious, as we tried to explore whether or not deindividuation is a valid theory of aggression.
The theory goes that anonymity, sometimes provided by being in a crowd, creates the perfect atmosphere for aggression, as individuals lose their self-awareness and stop being concerned with how they evaluate their own behaviour and how others see them. This makes a lot of sense, but is rather simplistic if you look carefully. In reality, the context of the crowd and the specific social norms applied to it are much more important in determining whether or not aggressive (or peaceful, or loving, or whatever) acts take place.
Today's powerpoint is here.
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