Deindividuation: Why Anonymity and Crowds Make People Do Things They Never Would Alone

In 1969, Philip Zimbardo had NYU students administer electric shocks to another person. Half wore their normal clothes and name tags. Half wore hoods and oversized lab coats that concealed their identities. The hooded participants delivered shocks twice as long as the identified participants — to both a pleasant and an unpleasant confederate. Deindividuation: when identity is submerged, behavior changes in ways that cannot be explained by who the people are.