Effects of deindividuating situational cues and aggressive models on subjective deindividuation and aggression.

Demonstrated that a subjective state of deindividuation mediates the effect of deindividuating situational cues on aggression displayed by small groups of coacting aggressors. 72 male university students were instructed to administer shocks to another person in what they thought were studies of biofeedback and behavior modification. The deindividuated state was composed of 2 factors, Self-Awareness and Altered Experiencing, both of which had a causal influence on aggressive behavior. These data are interpreted in terms of deindividuation theories that assume that certain input variables reduce self-awareness and concern about social evaluation and thereby weaken the restraints against expressing antisocial behavior. As predicted, compared with a no-model control condition, a high-aggressive model disinhibited overt displays of aggression, whereas a low-aggressive model inhibited aggression among both individuated and deindividuated group members. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deindividuation and anger-mediated interracial aggression: Unmasking regressive racism.

Investigated the effects of deindividuation, anger, and race-of-victim on aggression displayed by 96 White male undergraduates. Deindividuating situational cues produced an internal state of deindividuation that mediated aggressive behavior. Deindividuation theories are extended by the finding that the internal state of deindividuation was composed not only of the factors Self-Awareness and Altered Experience, but also Group Cohesiveness, Responsibility, and Time Distortion. As predicted, nonangered Whites were less aggressive toward Black than White victims, but angered Whites were more aggressive toward Blacks than Whites. Interracial behavior was consistent with new, egalitarian norms if anger was not aroused, but regressed to the old, historical pattern of racial discrimination if anger was aroused. This pattern of interracial behavior was interpreted in terms of a new form of racism: regressive racism. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional Biases to Internal and External Sources of Potential Threat in Social Anxiety.

D. M. Clark and A. Wells (1995) proposed that a shift of attention inward toward interoceptive information is a central feature of social phobia. However, few studies have examined attentional biases toward internal physiological cues in social phobia. The current experiment assessed whether socially anxious individuals exhibit an attentional bias (a) toward cues for an internal source of potential threat (heart-rate information), (b) toward cues for an external source of potential threat (threatening faces) or (c) both. Ninety-one participants who were selected to form extreme groups based on a social anxiety screening measure performed a dot-probe task to assess location of attention. Results showed that socially anxious participants exhibited an attentional bias toward cues of internal, but not external, sources of potential threat. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deindividuation, self-awareness, and disinhibition.

Assessed whether lack of self-awareness and conscious planning, group unity, and disinhibited behavior occurred together in deindividuating settings as predicted by E. Diener's (1979) theory of deindividuation. The characteristics and effects of group-induced deindividuation with non-socially-induced non-self-awareness was also compared. The 3 conditions were deindividuated, non-self-aware, and self-aware. After the manipulations, 126 undergraduates chose inhibited vs disinhibited tasks in a supposed "creativity" session, followed by a variety of deindividuation measures. Results reveal that the deindividuation group surpassed the other 2 on the deindividuation factor and on most of the individual measures. For some of the variables, the deindividuation and non-self-aware groups differed significantly, suggesting that deindividuation may not be identical in every respect to lack of self-awareness induced in a non-social way. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interaction between self-monitoring and manipulated states of self-awareness.

We conducted four experiments to examine the differential responses of high and low self-monitors to variations in public and private self-awareness. The first 2 experiments used an attribution of responsibility paradigm to test the hypothesis that high self-monitors would show greater responsiveness than low self-monitors to manipulations of public self-awareness. This hypothesis was supported. Two additional experiments tested the hypothesis that low self-monitors would be more responsive than high self-monitors to manipulations of private self-awareness. Manipulations of private self-awareness following a Velten (1968) positive-mood induction exercise strengthened the induced mood in low but not in high self-monitors. Thus, when the dependent measure had implications for their public self, high self-monitors were more responsive than low self-monitors to public self-awareness manipulations; low self-monitors, on the other hand, were more responsive than high self-monitors to manipulations of private self-awareness when the dependent measure required subjects to access aspects of their private self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deindividuation and valence of cues: Effects on prosocial and antisocial behavior.

Manipulated deindividuation and valence of costume cues in a 2?×?2 factorial design. P. G. Zimbardo's (1970) theory of deindividuation suggests that deindividuation should disinhibit antisocial behavior independent of cue valence, and should reduce any influence due to cues. The theory of K. J. Gergen et al (1973) suggests that cues may have increasing influence, given deindividuation, and that deindividuation may increase prosocial behavior, given positive cues, and increase antisocial behavior, given negative cues. Results support Gergen's position. Given options to increase or decrease shock level received by a stranger, no main effect was found for deindividuation. There was a main effect for costume cues, and an interaction of cues with deindividuation, with deindividuation facilitating a significant increase in prosocial responses in the presence of positive cues and a nonsignificant increase in antisocial responses in the presence of negative cues. Also cues interacted with trial blocks, prosocial behavior increasing with positive cues and antisocial behavior increasing with negative cues over trial blocks. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dual learning processes in interactive skill acquisition.

Acquisition of interactive skills involves the use of internal and external cues. Experiment 1 showed that when actions were interdependent, learning was effective with and without external cues in the single-task condition but was effective only with the presence of external cues in the dual-task condition. In the dual-task condition, actions closer to the feedback were learned faster than actions farther away but this difference was reversed in the single-task condition. Experiment 2 tested how knowledge acquired in single and dual-task conditions would transfer to a new reward structure. Results confirmed the two forms of learning mediated by the secondary task: A declarative memory encoding process that simultaneously assigned credits to actions and a reinforcement-learning process that slowly propagated credits backward from the feedback. The results showed that both forms of learning were engaged during training, but only at the response selection stage, one form of knowledge may dominate over the other depending on the availability of attentional resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A test between deindividuation and emergent norm theories of crowd aggression.

In groups of 6–8, 89 female undergraduates who were either anonymous or identifiable to each other acted as an audience to a pair of discussants. Ss were given the opportunity to administer loud noise to the discussants. The response displayed to each group as an alleged average was manipulated so that Ss were led to believe that either an aggressive or a lenient norm had developed. As predicted by deindividuation theory, anonymous Ss administered significantly higher levels of noise than identifiable Ss. Anonymous Ss used equally loud noise regardless of group norm. Self-ratings provided evidence that the effects of anonymity were mediated by a psychological state of deindividuation, in addition to freedom from accountability for individual acts. There was no support for the crucial emergent norm theory prediction that aggression will be greatest when Ss who are identifiable to each other are exposed to an aggressive norm. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deindividuation and antinormative behavior: A meta-analysis.

A meta-analytic integration reviews evidence for deindividuation theory as an explanation of collective and antinormative behavior. Deindividuation theories propose a subjective deindividuated state that causes transgression of general social norms. Deindividuation research classically manipulates anonymity, self-awareness, and group size. Results of 60 independent studies showed little support for (a) the occurrence of deindividuated (antinormative) behaviors or (b) the existence of a deindividuated state. Research results were explained more adequately by situation-specific than by general social norms. Analyses indicated that groups and individuals conform more to situation-specific norms when they are "deindividuated." These findings are inconsistent with deindividuation theory but support a social identity model of deindividuation effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

To Eat or Not to Eat: Implications of the Attentional Myopia Model for Restrained Eaters.

The attentional myopia model of behavioral control was tested in a study of food consumption by chronic dieters. According to the model, when individuals' attentional capacity is limited, their behavior will be disproportionately influenced by highly salient internal and external cues to the exclusion of more distal stimuli. In situations that normally feature conflicting behavioral pressures, such a state of narrowed attention is likely to result in abnormally disinhibited behavior when cues promoting action are more salient and to result in abnormally restrained behavior when inhibiting cues are more salient. In addition to supporting the predictions of the model, this study provided the first evidence for enhanced behavioral control under conditions of limited attention. Participants' responses to a thought-reporting measure also provided evidence for the role played by attentional myopia in the control of eating. Implications for a broad array of regulatory successes and failures are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deindividuation: Effects of group size, density, number of observers, and group member similarity on self-consciousness and disinhibited behavior.

Predictions about the social causes of self-consciousness in groups were derived from the theory of deindividuation and tested in 3 experiments with 618 university students and adults. In Exp I, it was found that increasing group size was related to a decrease in self-consciousness. Group density did not influence self-consciousness. In Exp II, it was found that increases in the number of observers increased self-consciousness. In Exps I and II, self-reports of self-consciousness were independent of one's group, whereas the degree of behavioral disinhibition was highly correlated within groups. In Exp III, it was found that gender similarity within a group was related to lower self-consciousness. Findings support a perceptual/attentional model of self-consciousness within groups. Contrary to deindividuation theory predictions, however, behavior intensity did not vary across conditions in Exps I and II, even though self-consciousness did differ. This finding suggests that deindividuation theory is incomplete in its present form. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The organizational functions of the self: An alternative to the Duval and Wicklund Model of self-awareness.

Proposes a model that defines the essential functions of self-awareness in terms of the cognitive organization or encoding of information according to its self-relevance. This view is contrasted with a definition of self-awareness in terms of self-focused attention, self-evaluation, and motivated affect reduction. Three experiments with 219 undergraduates are presented in support of the proposed encoding model. Exp I used an incidental memory paradigm to demonstrate that self-awareness is associated with a particular encoding depth. Exps II and III used previous self-awareness paradigms to demonstrate that self-criticism and self-attribution are not characteristic of self-awareness per se, but rather depend on aspects of the immediate situation. On the basis of this evidence, it is suggested that self-awareness phenomena are a function of a particular form of informational encoding rather than the attentional activation of a self-evaluative process. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Private self-consciousness, self-awareness, and the reliability of self-reports.

Two studies found that individuals high in private self-consciousness provide self-reports of greater reliability across time than individuals low in private self-consciousness. In addition, Study 2 found that a successful manipulation of self-awareness did not affect test–retest reliability of self-reports among Ss either high or low in private self-consciousness. The hypothesis that individuals high in private self-consciousness have articulated self-schemata of greater temporal stability than individuals low in private self-consciousness received support. The discussion considers (a) how private self-consciousness, but not self-awareness, influenced test–retest reliability of self-reports, (b) how private self-consciousness and self-awareness may both influence, albeit differentially, the criterion-related validity of self-reports, and (c) the possibility that current models of self-consciousness–self-awareness require reformulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attribution and alcohol-mediated aggression.

48 males participated in an aggression task after receiving either alcoholic or placebo beverages and after being told that they had received either a high or a low dose of alcohol. All Ss in the alcohol group actually received the same dose. Measures of aggression were the intensity and duration of shock given to a bogus partner in a RT-pain perception task and a score on a posttask attitude questionnaire. Blood alcohol readings were taken 3 times during the session, and a locus of control scale was administered before and after drinking. For Ss in the alcohol conditions, blood alcohol levels averaged .079% before the task and .085% afterwards. Alcohol resulted in higher aggression scores only on the questionnaire measure, and an interaction between drug and attribution was found for the measure of shock duration. Attribution alone resulted in greater aggression on the measure of shock intensity. Ss in groups where the attribution was discrepant with the drug condition were the most aggressive on the measures of shock intensity and duration. These Ss became more external, reflecting a high correlation between their aggression and a stimulus tone. Results suggest that a person's increased aggressiveness when intoxicated results from an interaction between alcohol and an altered responsivity to provoking stimuli. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explanation of the relation between negative mood and helping.

Prior research addressing the relation between negative affect and helping behavior has yielded inconsistent results. Three theoretical interpretations, negative-state relief, attentional focus, and responsibility/objective self-awareness, are examined in an expanded analysis of published research. For this purpose, judges assessed for each of 85 negative affect conditions the contextual levels of the variables relevant to each theory by reading relevant material that was excerpted from the method section of each article. Higher order partial correlations were then calculated between each variable and the 85 helpfulness effect sizes. The results are consistent with the attentional focus and the responsibility/objective self-awareness models. Both increased perceptions of responsibility for causing the negative event and attentional focus on another (as opposed to oneself) as the target of the negative event augment helpfulness. Furthermore, mood-lowering events that engender objective self-awareness promote helpfulness when prosocial values are psychologically salient. No support obtains for the negative-state relief model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye Gaze and Individual Differences Consistent With Learned Attention in Associative Blocking and Highlighting.

The associative learning effects called blocking and highlighting have previously been explained by covert learned attention, but evidence for learned attention has been indirect, via models of response choice. The present research reports results from eye tracking consistent with the attentional hypothesis: Gaze duration is diminished for blocked cues and augmented for highlighted cues. If degree of attentional learning varies across individuals but is relatively stable within individuals, then the magnitude of blocking and highlighting should covary across individuals. This predicted correlation is obtained for both choice and eye gaze. A connectionist model that implements attentional learning is shown to fit the data and account for individual differences by variation in its attentional parameters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional bias for smoking and affective stimuli: A Stroop task study.

Prior research has demonstrated attentional biases to smoking-related cues among smokers, and several lines of research suggest strong ties between smoking and negative affect. The authors tested attentional biases to both smoking and affective cues in 27 smokers using an emotional Stroop paradigm, and examined the relationship between these forms of attentional bias. Findings indicated significant attentional biases to smoking-related and negative-affect words, but not positive-affect words. In addition, there was a significant correlation between the degree of attentional bias to smoking and negative-affect words. These data provide evidence of a close association between smoking-related and affective cue processing from a cognitive perspective. Potential theoretical and clinical implications for these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inescapable shock and attention to internal versus external cues in a water discrimination escape task.

In these experiments we examined discrimination learning in a water escape task following exposure to escapable, yoked inescapable, or no electric shock. Inescapable shock did not have an effect on swim speeds in any of the experiments. Inescapable shock interfered with the acquisition of a position (left–right) discrimination when an irrelevant brightness cue (black and white stimuli) was present. However, inescapable shock did not affect the acquisition of the position discrimination when the irrelevant brightness cue was removed. Inescapably shocked Subjects showed facilitated learning relative to escapably shocked and nonshocked subjects when the brightness cue was included as a relevant cue. These data may resolve discrepancies between studies that did, and did not, find inescapable shock to interfere with the acquisition of discriminations. Moreover, they point to attentional processes as one locus of the cognitive changes produced by inescapable shock and suggest the exposure to inescapable shock biases attention away from "internal" response-related cues toward "external" cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overt attention and predictiveness in human contingency learning.

Two experiments used eye-tracking procedures to investigate the relationship between attention and associative learning in human participants. These experiments found greater overt attention to cues experienced as predictive of the outcomes with which they were paired, than to cues experienced as nonpredictive. Moreover, this attentional bias persisted into a second training phase when all cues were equally predictive of the outcomes with which they were paired, and it was accompanied by a related bias in the rate of learning about these cues. These findings are consistent with the attentional model of associative learning proposed by Mackintosh (1975), but not with that proposed by Pearce and Hall (1980). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does Imminent Threat Capture and Hold Attention?

According to models of attention and emotion, threat captures and holds attention. In behavioral tasks, robust evidence has been found for attentional holding but not for attentional capture by threat. An important explanation for the absence of attentional capture effects is that the visual stimuli used posed no genuine threat. The present study investigated whether visual cues that signal an aversive white noise can elicit attentional capture and holding effects. Cues presented in an attentional task were simultaneously provided with a threat value through an aversive conditioning procedure. Response latencies showed that threatening cues captured and held attention. These results support recent views on attention to threat, proposing that imminent threat captures attention in everyone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)