The most famous methods of crowd elimination include: physical violence through the generation of fear for one's own life, ridiculing crowd members, directing its activity in a different direction using a distraction mechanism or manipulating feelings and tension. A special situation in which the influence of infection is very strong, panic. Panic is an emotional state that occurs in the mass of people and is the result of a deficit or excess of information about some dangerous or incomprehensible situations. The term "panic" comes from the name of the Greek god Pan, the patron saint of pastures, herds and shepherds. With anger, he could cause the flock to go crazy, and then for a minor reason they would throw themselves into the fire or the abyss. The power of panic lies in the fact that a person, once "inside" panic, cannot stay away.

Suggestion, or suggestion, is a purposeful, unreasoned emotional-volitional influence of one person on another or on a group of people in order to change its state or attitude to something. It is carried out in a verbal form, is based on an uncritical perception of a message or information and does not require evidence or logic. The effectiveness of suggestion depends on the age of the person: children are exposed to it more than adults.

Also, a tired and physically weakened person is more suggestible. The means of influence are personal magnetism, authority, confidence, clarity of speech, the use of an environment favorable for suggestion (for example, rhythmic sounds, darkening the room, etc.).

Persuasion is the achievement of a person's consent based on the rationale for their positions. The person being persuaded is presented with clearly articulated arguments at an acceptable pace and in words that he understands. Both the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal are openly acknowledged. The person who is being persuaded makes the decision about the correctness of the information on his own. Therefore, persuasion is primarily an intellectual influence on a person. There are two types of persuasion: direct and indirect. With direct, people are influenced by favorable arguments, with indirect - by random factors, for example, the attractiveness of the speaker.

Imitation is the repetition of an example set by another person. This means of influence is of great importance in the process of human development. It is as a result of imitation that group values ​​and norms arise and are consolidated. In childhood, imitation occurs very often, in adults - in cases where it is not possible to apply some other way of mastering an unfamiliar action.

“In certain group situations, people tend to drop normative restraint, lose their sense of individual responsibility, experience what psychologist Leon Festinger and colleagues have called “deindividualization.” Thus, the phenomenon of deindividualization is understood as the loss of self-awareness and fear of evaluation, when normative restraint is significantly weakened.

Under what conditions does this phenomenon manifest itself? What affects its manifestation? The conditions that determine the likelihood and intensity of the manifestation of deindividualization include the following.

First, the size of the group. The larger the group, the more its members lose their sense of self-awareness and the more readily they agree to violate normative behavior.

Secondly, physical anonymity and impersonality. Psychologist F. Zimbardo suggested that impersonality in large cities in itself means anonymity and provides for norms of behavior that allow vandalism. For the experiment, he purchased two ten-year-old used cars and left them with their hoods up and license plates off, one on the old NYU campus in the Bronx, and the other near the Stanford University campus in the small town of Palo Alto. . In New York, the first car lockers showed up ten minutes later, removing the battery and radiator. Three days later, after 23 episodes of theft and vandalism (by well-dressed white citizens), the car turned into a useless pile of scrap metal. In contrast, the only person who touched a car in Palo Alto during the week was a passer-by who closed the hood of the car as it began to rain.

Thirdly, the exciting and distracting actions of the group, preparing the ground for deindividualization (applause and clapping, singing in chorus, various ritual events and ceremonies, etc.). “There is a self-enhancing pleasure in that,” writes D. Myers, “to perform an impulsive act, watching how others are doing the same. When we see that others do what we do, we assume that they feel the same way, and thus strengthen our feelings.” Sometimes we ourselves are looking for opportunities to de-individualize in a group, because we can indulge in strong positive emotions and feel our commonality with others.

Fourth, weakened self-consciousness. Group existence, weakening self-consciousness, tends to mismatch the behavior and attitudes of the individual. Those who are not self-aware are less inhibited, less in control of themselves, more inclined to act without thinking about their values, more receptive to the situation. Alcohol intoxication is a factor that increases deindividuation. On the contrary, deindividualization is reduced in circumstances that increase self-awareness: in front of mirrors, cameras, film and video cameras, in small villages, in bright light, when wearing nameplates or non-standard clothes, in unusual settings.

A three-year study of the behavior of children in West Germany also showed the duration of exposure to violent films on propensity for aggression. Boys and girls who preferred to watch violent TV films later spoke out in favor of harsher punishment.

However, we develop habits of being aggressive in some situations and repressing our anger in others, expressing aggression against some people (such as siblings) rather than others (such as police officers), and in response to some types of frustration rather than not on others.

These habits play a crucial role in our control of our aggressive behavior. One of the most important mechanisms on the basis of which children's behavior is formed is imitation. All people - and especially children - have a strong tendency to imitate other people. The child watches how they eat with a fork and tries to repeat the actions. After a while, he himself begins to use the fork. Such imitation extends to almost any form of behavior, including aggression. The child observes how other people show or control their aggression and imitates them in doing so. Thus, his own aggressive behavior is shaped and determined by what he observes in the behavior of others.

Mimicking aggressive behavior is more likely to occur when:

• 1) the model was rewarded;
• 2) the model turned out to be the same gender as the child;
• 3) the model was associated with this child in a relationship of upbringing or care, for example, she was a friend or teacher of this child.

A peculiar form of imitative aggression, which plays an important role in criminal behavior and the behavior of the crowd, is the infection with violence. The French sociologist Tarde first proposed the idea of ​​infection by violence, drawing attention to the fact that reports of a spectacular crime being committed are usually accompanied by a whole wave of imitations. Another example of infection by violence is the behavior of the crowd. Zimbardo described this phenomenon as deindividualization and proposed a number of contributing factors: anonymity, diffusion of responsibility, group size, activity pattern, new unstructured situation, noise arousal, and exhaustion (fatigue).

For example, the most brutal violence in the wars of primitive peoples is resorted to by those who use such means of depersonalization as masks, face and body painting, and special robes.

Deindividualization is usually accompanied by a process of "dehumanization" - dehumanization. When, for any reason, people begin to behave aggressively towards an individual, they can "dehumanize" their victim by endowing the object of their aggression with different values ​​and beliefs. Zimbardo (1970) believes that deindividualization may be the explanation for many of the tendencies that push people to commit antisocial violent acts, deindividualization is accompanied by a weakening of the sense of one's own individuality, identifiability and personal responsibility. In addition, the threshold for usually restrained behavior is lowered in the crowd. In other words, people feel nameless, less responsible for their behavior, and less constrained by any boundaries.

According to Zimbardo, these conditions provoke antisocial behavior associated with manifestations of selfishness, greed, hostility, lust, cruelty and destructiveness.

In one widely known experiment, Zimbardo manipulated two variables: feelings of anonymity and attitudes towards the victim. He randomly divided college students into two groups: deindividualized and "identifiable".

Subjects in the deindividualized group wore shapeless white lab coats and caps and worked in a dimly lit room. The experimenters did not call them by their names. In contrast, members of identifiable groups did not feel nameless. They had large name tags, greeted each other by name, worked in well-lit conditions, and wore their own clothes without lab coats or caps.

The subjects were told that the project was designed to study empathy. The real aim, of course, was to study the relationship between deindividualization and aggression. Each subject listened to a five-minute, taped interview between his future "victim" and the experimenter.

Some "victims" were portrayed as kind, sincere, honest people, while others were portrayed as obnoxious, self-centered, narcissistic, and overly picky. After each interview, the subjects were allowed to strike with the eye the interviewees they heard on the tape. They were allowed to watch their victims' reactions through a one-way mirror. The aggressive behavior of the subjects was measured by the duration of the painful electric shock. "Victims", who did not really receive any blows, were trained to writhe, squirm and grimace.

Now, recall that Zimbardo manipulated two variables: anonymity (loss of personal identity) and victim characteristics (accompanying stimuli). Thus, some subjects acted completely anonymously, while others were highly identifiable. Some of the victims looked attractive and sympathetic, while others were unpleasant. Zimbardo believed that members of a deindividualized group would give longer duration of electric shocks due to diffusion of responsibility and loss of personal identity.

He also hypothesized that the perceived qualities of the victim would have no effect on the duration of the shock, because the intense arousal experienced in the state of de-dividualization. will interfere with the ability to discriminate between victims. You can argue in another way: emotional excitement and the excitement caused by this excitement, generated by the possibility of punishing someone without the threat of any consequences, would interfere with the ability to differentiate the addressee (the person who receives an electric shock). Zimbardo predicted. that as the experiment progresses, the members of the deindividualized group will punish their victims more severely, using longer strokes. In short, a person finds that every time he commits antisocial acts, he feels “so comfortable” that the behavior becomes habitual and reinforces itself in intensity (strength) and frequency. The results of the experiment confirmed all three hypotheses.

Members of the deindividualized group administered electric shocks to their victims twice as long as members of the identifiable group. In addition, the deindividualized group applied the same levels of punishment regardless of the characteristics of the victim's personality. Finally, this group increased the duration of the shock as the experiment progressed. psychology deindividualization behavior

Zimbarlo concluded that “under conditions in which the group members acted anonymously, these usually kind, well-mannered students would shock other students almost whenever they had the opportunity, sometimes as much as they were allowed to, and it didn’t matter . that the student victim was really a good girl who didn't deserve to be punished."

Notorious cruelty and group violence - does the group harden people?

Social facilitation can excite people, and social laziness leads to the fact that the lines of responsibility in the group are blurred. If these two phenomena are combined, then the regulatory containment.

It's hard to imagine a lone rock fan screaming frantically at a chamber rock concert. In the group there is deindividualization - as a loss of self-awareness and fear of evaluation; conditions for occurrence are group situations that provide anonymity and do not focus on the individual.

The process of deindividuation is influenced by:

Group sizes - thus, life in a big city leads to anonymity and provides for norms of behavior that allow vandalism (example - with two orphaned cars - one in New York, the other in the small town of Palo Alto),

Physical anonymity - women dressed in hoods shocked the test subject twice as hard as then. when there were nameplates in front of them (here - the effect of the uniform - depersonalized cultures are most aggressive or unfriendly to the external environment - therefore nameplates are very important),

The influence of the conditions of depersonalization - an example with an experiment about a prison - it had to be interrupted due to the fact that the "jailers" began to treat the "prisoners" very cruelly - i.e. role can lead to deindividuation,

Exciting and distracting activities (such as joint shouting, songs, rhythmic actions) set the stage for more unbridled behavior,

Weakened self-awareness - when a person himself does not realize who he is.

4.4. Group polarization

In many cases, when a crisis or conflict breaks out in an organization, representatives of the parties involved react to the situation by discussing the events with their like-minded people. The consequence of this is a very interesting phenomenon, which is called group polarization - i.e. the strengthening of pre-existing tendencies of the members of the group caused by the influence of the group; a shift in the average trend towards its pole instead of a split of opinions within the group.

Example: a group discussing an opinion with which the majority agrees (or disagrees) - will the group discussion reinforce their original position?

The group escalates the phenomenon of “runaway investing” to the bitter end that has cost so many companies so dearly (Glen White, 1993) – will you reinvest in a failed project to save your money? - individually 72%, in the group - up to 95% agreed.

Groups compete more strongly and cooperate less with each other than individual individuals.

Polarization may be natural - over time, the differences between the two populations deepen even more - for example, the differences between students of FRIDAS and IATE. Moreover, such a phenomenon as terrorism basically has a phenomenon of polarization - it arises among people who have experienced grievances; as they interact in isolation from restraining influences, their sentiments gradually become more extremist. The output is a powerful social signal, acts of violence that individuals in isolation from the group may not have committed.

Why does the group come to a more radical position?

- information influence theory :

during a group discussion, a bank of ideas is formed, most of which is consistent with the dominant point of view - the more one common position sounds, but expressed in different words, the more this idea is assimilated and appreciated. After all, reason is not just a blank slate; with direct conviction, it is not what is said that is decisive, but what a person thought in response to a message (even simple thinking before discussing with a strong opponent leads to a strengthening of the position);

- regulatory influence :

First of all, the process of comparing oneself with others is taken into account, since this is the only way to evaluate one's opinions and abilities.

Example: it was proposed to read an article that is impossible to understand, and ask what is not clear “If you really run into a serious problem with the text you read” - no one asked for help, but everyone assumed that others were not shy, they just did not need help .

It is the phenomenon of social comparison that works when getting acquainted with the results of public opinion polls - even without discussing the arguments, only when getting acquainted with the position of other poll participants, polarization of opinions occurs - the fact is that, having found support for their position, people can emphasize their views.

It is these processes that underlie the so-called “risk shift” phenomenon - for a long time there was an opinion that groups are more cautious than individuals, and tend to make more thoughtful and balanced decisions. But as early as 1961, James Stoner researched managers in industry and found that a group decision was riskier. Indeed, after a group discussion, the positions of the group members converge, but the convergence does not occur on the arithmetic mean - the point at which the participants in the discussions converge usually corresponds to less chance and more risk.

When social facilitation (getting people excited) is added to social laziness (responsibility dilution), normative deterrence is weakened and results can range from mild disruption (tossing food in the cafeteria, cursing the referee, yelling at a rock concert) to disruptive social explosions (gang vandalism, police brutality, riots, lynching).

Apparently, the band evokes a sense of belonging to something more than "I" (it's hard to imagine a lonely rock fan). In certain situations, people who are members of a group tend to drop normative restraint, to lose their sense of individual responsibility.

Deindividualization - loss of self-awareness and fear of evaluation; occurs in group situations that provide anonymity and do not focus on the individual.

Circumstances of the occurrence of deindividualization

1. Group size. Based on this, F. Zimbardo put forward the hypothesis of impersonality in large cities, which in itself means anonymity and provides for norms of behavior that allow vandalism. He conducted an experiment in which two cars were left unattended on the street of a small town and a respectable area of ​​a big city. In a small town in a week 1 person approached the car only to close the trunk lid as it was starting to rain. In the big city, only in the first 10 minutes, 23 episodes of vandalism were committed, and in three days the car was almost destroyed.

2.Physical anonymity. In 1970, F. Zimbardo conducted a series of experiments in which women from New York University were asked to deliver electric shocks. The force of the blows was greatest when the women were dressed in Ku Klux Klan attire and was less when the women were wearing nameplates. And the least intensity of the shocks was when they were given nurses' gowns.

Related to this is the effect of wearing a uniform, where purposeful deindividuation is used. According to research by R. Watson, in those armies where soldiers are depersonalized (masks, face painting), prisoners are treated more cruelly.

Apparently, in a situation of anonymity, a person is less aware of his actions and becomes more receptive to situational hints, both negative (Ku Klux Klan mask) and positive (nurse robe). In the presence of altruistic hints, deindividualized people donate even more money than usual. Anonymity releases more than just negative impulses, for not all impulses are negative. As an experiment showed, during which two groups of people gathered in a dark and lighted room, 30% more touches were recorded in a dark room than in a lighted one, and 50% more hugged neighbors. People from the dark room demanded the experiment be repeated.

3. Distracting and exciting activities. Minor actions can lead to a decrease in self-consciousness, arouse emotions and lead to outbursts of aggression (for example, the Moon sect uses cries of "choo-choo-choo").

But, I must say that deindividualization is sometimes needed. We seek opportunities to deindividualize when we need strong emotions and a sense of community with others. In culture, this is a function of projective detente (carnivals, holidays, church services, discos, wars, street riots).

4. Weakened self-awareness, that is, a mismatch of behavior and attitudes. One of the powerful factors that weaken self-consciousness is alcohol intoxication.

Factors that increase self-awareness and reduce deindividuation include the presence of mirrors, television cameras, bright light; small towns; wearing nameplates or non-standard clothing; structuring the crowd, i.e., the allocation of parts and leaders in it; lack of distracting stimuli; presentation of positive information, since its absence can lead to a change in the mood of the crowd to a negative one, panic; unusual environment; strong sense of self-consciousness, individuality.

Deindividualization

Socio-psychological phenomenon - the loss of self-consciousness and identity by individuals; occurs in group situations that guarantee anonymity and do not focus on the individual. Deindividualization, like many other socio-psychological phenomena, is a reversible phenomenon: after the situation returns to its normal state, deindividualization disappears.

Many sociologists and social psychologists have studied deindividualization. Gustave Le Bon suggested that under certain circumstances people lose their individuality and merge with the crowd. This may be due to the loss of inhibitions and the tendency of people to behave in atypical and even immoral ways.

Deindividualization researchers have been greatly influenced by the impressions of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. This explains their rather confusing reasoning that a person morally hides in a social group, as a result, behavior is released that was previously restrained by moral prohibitions. In fact, of course, social groups are different. In some, a person feels a decrease in moral prohibitions. In others, it's the other way around.

No one will deny that in a work collective where each worker takes his place (not anonymous) and where everyone is given "personal attention", deindividualization does not develop. Often, on the contrary, a person does not dissolve in the team, but crystallizes out of it due to his successes and constructive influence on this very team.

Nevertheless, however, from time to time social groups are formed (often spontaneously - a crowd of hooligans or football fans), united by destructive drives. The participants of these social groups are united, energized, among other things, by the need to commit immoral and illegal acts. And just because to feel free from all sorts of prohibitions for a while, and because prohibitions prevent you from “letting off steam”. As a result, broken shop windows, overturned cars, raped women, etc. appear.

Different people are prone to deindividualization in different ways. Conformal personalities are more inclined, already pre-configured for the loss of identity. People with high intelligence are less prone to deindividualization. This is explained by the fact that they like to think for themselves, not trusting others, they themselves build priorities, rationalize their behavior, etc.

Deindividualization(Deindividuation) - loss of self-awareness and fear of evaluation; occurs in group situations that guarantee anonymity and do not focus on the individual.

A number of phenomena concerning the interaction of the individual and the group arise in large social groups. Scientists paid attention to these phenomena at the beginning of the 20th century. Researchers at that time were interested in socio-psychological phenomena associated with the crowd and related to its impact on the psychology of the people in it. One of the first to solve this problem was the French scientist G. Lebon. He notes the following features of human behavior in the crowd.

1. Becoming a part of the crowd, a person acquires the consciousness of his strength, multiplied by the strength of other members of the crowd, ceases to limit (curb) his instincts, as a result of which the level of his impulsive activity increases.

2. The irrationality of a person, breaking free, makes him live more with his feelings at a given moment of time, and not listen to the arguments of reason. Consequently, the level of his emotionality rises in the crowd and at the same time the level of criticality in assessing his own behavior and the actions of other people decreases.

3. A person's susceptibility to suggestion increases, and his susceptibility to "infection" increases. A person becomes ready to sacrifice his personal interests to the interests of the crowd and give up his own will.

4. A natural consequence of all this is a decrease in the level of individual responsibility and the actual transfer of this function to the leader of the crowd.

Deindividualization, according to Lebon, is a consequence of the exertion by a mass, a crowd of people of strong psychological pressure on a person who unwittingly became a participant in the events in which the crowd turned out to be involved. Deindividualization is manifested in a decrease in the level of rationality of a person’s behavior, in the loss of self-control, in the predominance of emotions over reason, in the impulsiveness of his behavior, in a decrease in the degree of responsibility for his actions and actions committed together with other members of the mass, the crowd.

Following G. Lebon, other scientists took up the study of the psychology of the crowd and the masses of people. In the center of their attention was another phenomenon associated with the influence of the crowd (mass of people) on a person, called "deindividualization" ("depersonalization"). It is defined as a temporary loss by a person of those psychological properties that characterize him as a unique, peculiar personality. At the same time, in the psychology and behavior of a person, those features are preserved that are common with the people around him in the crowd.

Simultaneously with the concept of "deindividualization" ("depersonalization"), the phrase "deindividualized personalities" entered the scientific circulation, with the help of which they began to designate people who differ little in their psychology and behavior from those around them and almost nothing concrete can be said about them as individuals. . The so-called deindividualized individuals are more disinhibited, less inclined to restrain themselves in their reactions to surrounding events and in their social behavior, control themselves less and less than other people think about the consequences of their actions and actions. The main reason for this, according to scientists, is that those around them almost do not pay attention, and if an event occurs, then the responsibility for it is attributed to such individuals to a minimum extent.

The psychological phenomena and behavioral responses characteristic of deindividualization (and deindividualized personalities) are very similar to those observed in people under the influence of highly effective psychotropic substances, such as alcohol or drugs. From this we can conclude that deindividualization arises and manifests itself in conditions that give rise to altered states of human consciousness.

F. Zimbardo suggested that deindividualization as a phenomenon can manifest itself in any large social group, and not only in the one called the crowd. In particular, the phenomenon of deindividualization can characterize the behavior of a person in a big city, in any mass gathering of people, which, strictly speaking, cannot be called a crowd in the sense that was formed at the beginning of the 20th century.

At the same time, modern mass communication practice, which has a particularly active influence on the information interests of people on the Internet, in our opinion, urgently requires analysis and factors that impede the organization of dialogue relations between the mass media and the audience. First of all, we should talk about the mass communication aspects of the deindividualization of the personality. It finds expression, as our research shows, in the following forms.

"Masochistic" dependence on mass media information. A person is spared from making decisions, they are dictated to him from the TV screen, from the pages of periodicals, from the speaker or headphones of the radio receiver, they are imposed on the windows of network publications that pop up actively when clicking a computer mouse, or the opinions and points of view of "promoted" media gurus. This happens because such a consumer of mass information in the new circumstances of life or according to the nature of his character is "guided" and more and more feels a sense of helplessness, confusion from the abundance of information or even a certain social inferiority (to put it mildly - dissatisfaction, primarily with his current position) . He even gets a certain pleasure from the fact that someone makes decisions for him, thereby taking responsibility for the fate of his personal or the whole generation.

Typologized conformism. In this case, the individual ceases to be himself and gradually assimilates the type of personality offered (imposed) on him by the mass communication template. For some time, actions can be carried out consciously, then they turn into automatic behavior. Erich Fromm called such conformity automatization. Moreover, a person is sure that it is he who makes decisions, chooses a style of behavior, response, or, say, creative style, etc. Pseudo-thinking, pseudo-emotions, pseudo-feelings are one of the main characteristic features of a "typologized" personality.

Game implementation. As you know, Sigmund Freud pointed to two forms of manifestation of the unconscious and changes in reality, which are closer to art than sleep and neurosis: children's play and waking fantasies. With certain, of course, reservations, we can assume that journalism as a form of reflection of reality develops according to the same laws as artistic creativity in general. Thus, the production of the media for the audience and for the journalist himself becomes a kind of "waking dream" - i.e. a means of satisfying unsatisfied and unfulfilled desires that have not been realized in real life. Therefore, inexplicable at first glance, the addictions of certain people to journalistic texts on a certain subject, visual material or, for example, films, become understandable. As children in the game "daughters-mothers" imagine themselves performing some kind of role-playing duties, so adults in the process of perceiving media products or recreating them using certain creative methods realize themselves to be their accomplices.

Creative affectation. This form of deindividualization of the personality finds expression in certain asocial manifestations. For example, in the formation of a manipulative type of personality, in the desire of a person with the help of the media, at least for a short time, to gain power over people, make them dependent on themselves, make them horrified, frightened, suffer, etc. etc. Unnatural creative excitement is often due to subconscious feelings of resentment, one's own impotence, revenge, or is a kind of proof of something to someone.

Thus, the essence of the "psychological" aspect of the problem of organizing dialogue relations between the media and their audience can be formulated as follows: when a person lives in harmony with himself, he is not haunted by complex experiences; when creating and consuming media products, he needs to rely on his own strength and he tries to avoid rigid stereotypes, socio-political clichés, and various kinds of administrative schemes that allegedly streamline reality.

Deindividualization is the loss of self-awareness and fear of evaluation, which occurs in group situations when the anonymity of a person is ensured.

The state of deindividualization may be aggravated by the following factors:

1. Group size. The larger the group, the more its members tend to deindividualize. In large groups, the fear of evaluation drops sharply. Since “everyone did it this way,” people explain their behavior by the current situation, and not by their own free choice.

2. Anonymity. When dissolution in the group is combined with anonymity, self-control disappears. Sometimes, in order to cause especially tough behavior, people are specially depersonalized, for example, they paint their faces and bodies, put on special masks, uniforms.

Robert Watson, studying the customs of the tribes, found that where warriors are hidden by war paint, they torture prisoners especially cruelly. Where it is not customary to hide faces, prisoners are usually left alive.

3. Exciting and distracting activities. Explosions of aggression in groups are often preceded by minor actions that excite and divert attention. Groups are shouting, chanting, clapping, dancing, and this is necessary in order to simultaneously arouse people and reduce their self-consciousness.

"All the brothers and sisters of the Moon Sect held hands and shouted with increasing intensity: choo choo, choo choo! something important. Power, choo-choo-choo, scared me, but it also gave me a feeling of comfort, and there was something extremely relaxing in this accumulation and release of energy "(F. Zimbardo).

4. Decreased self-awareness. Circumstances that reduce self-awareness, such as alcohol intoxication, increase deindividuation. Deindividualization, on the contrary, decreases if self-awareness is increased. This happens, for example, in front of a mirror and cameras, in small towns, in bright light, when wearing nameplates or non-standard clothing, in the absence of distracting stimuli.