In the U.S history, Hurricane Katrina is one of the deadliest and costly hurricanes ever witnessed. It formed in August 23, 2005 during the Atlantic Hurricane Season. In fact, it is the sixth strongest hurricane recorded. The hurricane came with many losses including life and property loss. At least 1,836 people lost their lives. Property was damaged and lost too as people suffered a calamity through the floodwaters. It is estimated that property worth $81.2 billion was damaged and this is the costliest disaster ever in the US history ( Levitt & Whitaker , 2009). Hurricane Katrina caused destruction in New Orleans but this was not the only place impacted by the hurricane which swept across the Mississippi coast into Alabama. The floods exposed inequalities and other social injustices in the American Society. There was looting of stores for food and other items.
Human beings have always desired to be in group. Deindividuation can be defined as the tendency of individuals to display aggressive and antisocial behavior while in a group or in a crowd that they would probably not have engaged in when alone as individuals. This phenomenon is referred to as deindividuation . Le Bon Gustave introduced this theory of deindividuation. He discussed how many people or crowds possesses and individual to produce uncharacteristic behaviors (Le Bon, 1960). That people will act in some manner in a group which they would not otherwise have done were they alone as individuals. Later, in 1952, Festinger, Pepitone and Newcomb furthered the ideas of Le Bon and then postulated the idea of deindividuation.
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Some scholars did believe that deindividuation is attained once a person recognizes that there will be no consequences for his or antisocial behaviors. For these unusual behavior to happen, one suppresses his or her self-regulation and awareness that in a crowd, an individual can do and is capable of doing anything whether heroic or destructive due to the loss of control making him or her a mindless puppet. For deindividuation to happen, the feelings of fear and responsibility are withdrawn and the individual does not care what the consequences of the actions will be. The repressed behaviors are expressed during deindividuation.
Deindividuation can also occur outside the presence of a group. A person will not be deindividuated until he or she engages in antisocial act and that attraction to the group that causes deindividuation increases. Lack of accountability will make individuals behave antisocially. They know that their actions will not call them into responsibility due to anonymity.
Anonymity has got a great influence in deindividuation. By being a group member, one is able to exhibit such antisocial behaviors due to the norms that characterize the associations in the group. The implication is that these individuals outside the group can be more imprudent and likely to act antisocially. In an experiment by Zimbardo, individuals who were anonymous were more aggressive than those who were in the control group. This is after he experimented using individuals who were covered to conceal their identity whereas others in the control group dressed normally. This made an implication that anonymity is another factor responsible for deindividuation outside a group (Zimbardo, 1969).
Personality also can be responsible for deindividuation. This is because the individuals who are well behaved and exhibit self-differentiation do not become deindividuated and it is only those who have undifferentiated system psychologically who can be deindividuated. This means that deindividuation can come from outside the group based on the nature of the individual. As an individual becomes self-aware and notes a discrepancy between his acts and expected behavior, he will be motivated to return and conform to the required norms. The argument here is that, individual characteristics and behaviors are responsible for either deindividuation or no deindividuation in and individual (Duval & Wicklund, 1972).
References
Duval, S., & Wicklund, R. A. (1972). A theory of objective self-awareness. Academic Press , New York.
Le Bon, G. (1960). The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind; with a New Introduction by Robert K. Merton . New York: Viking Press.
Levitt, J. & Whitaker, M. (2009). Hurricane Katrina: America's unnatural disaster . University of Nebraska Press.
Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. In Nebraska symposium on motivation . University of Nebraska press.
