Bruce Hood - The Self Illusion

Does one really lose one’s individual identity in a crowd as deindividuation suggests? As the psychologist Vaughan Bell 13points out, anyone who has ever found themselves in a situation where they are suddenly under threat as a group does not necessarily lose identity – they just see themselves as part of a different, larger collective. For example, imagine you get on a crowded late-night bus home where there is a group of drunken students, an elderly couple and maybe a teenager playing his music too loudly through his personal stereo. You do not feel anything in common with them and might even resent your fellow travellers. However, if looters, aliens or zombies suddenly attack the bus, you spontaneously feel like a group and formulate plans to fend off the threat. You do not lose your identity but form a new one to address the group concern of which you are now a member. It’s the storyline of many film scripts where individuals discover themselves in threatening situations and, of course, this is where the heroes and villains emerge. So groups do not cause deindividuation but rather trump individualism depending on the context. 14

Piggy in the Middle

Do you remember the childhood game, ‘piggy in the middle’? It’s a wicked teasing game. Usually, two players are supposed to pass a ball backwards and forwards to each other and the ‘piggy’ is the person in the middle who has to intercept it. Sounds harmless, doesn’t it. Except that whenever I was the piggy, I used to get very upset because it seemed as if I was being excluded.

Caring about what others think may be one of the strongest preoccupations we have as an animal. Indeed, as Philippe Rochat 15has pointed out, ‘To be human is indeed to care about reputation.’ To be ostracized from the group is the worst fate, which he calls ‘psychological death’. Being ignored and rejected by our peers is painful. Most of us can remember being very upset when we were teased as children or not picked to play on teams. At the time, these events seemed like personal tragedies.

This is why bullying is not simply physically abusive but psychologically traumatizing. According to a 2001 survey by the US National Institute of Child Health, one in three teenage children was involved in bullying. 16It is more prevalent in boys than girls and the patterns of abuse are different. 17For males, both physical and verbal bullying is common, whereas for females verbal bullying through taunting and rumour-mongering is typically more common. However, even though girls use less physical violence, neuroscience indicates they might as well punch their victims, as the pain of social rejection is just as real.

This is something that psychologist Kip Williams from Purdue University knows from experience. He was out in the park walking his dog one day when he was hit in the back with a Frisbee. He threw it back to one of the two guys who were playing with it who then began tossing it back to Kip. This was fun but, after about a minute, they stopped throwing the Frisbee to Kip and returned their attention to each other. At first Kip thought it was amusing but then it became clear that they were not going to include Kip in their game again. The psychology professor was surprised at how upset he was by this exclusion given that he had only been included in their game for a minute and that these were complete strangers. He realized how sensitive we are to ostracism.

Kip took his experiences from the park and developed a computer simulation known as ‘Cyberball’ where adult participants had their brains scanned as they played a game where they had to toss a ball back and forth between two other playmates. 18Just like the frisbee event, Cyberball was going along fine, until the two others started to only pass the ball back between themselves and ignore the adult in the brain scanner. When this exclusion became obvious, the ACC regions of the brain, which are activated by social cognition, started to light up with activity. This is because the pain of rejection also triggers the ACC – a result of its importance as a mechanism for conflict resolution. The social exclusion of the game had initially caused consternation and then distress, as it activated areas associated with emotional pain. Just like ego-depletion, those who were rejected by colleagues were more likely to eat fattening cookies, which is probably where comfort food gets its potency. 19When we say that our feelings are hurt, it may not simply be a metaphor we are using. We really feel as much pain as a punch in the stomach.

What is remarkable is how sensitive we are to being rejected. Even when participants played Cyberball for only a couple of minutes and were told that it was only a computer simulation, they still felt the pain of rejection. 20And this pain had nothing to do with the personality of the players either. They were not overly sensitive. Rather, there is something very fundamental and automatic about ostracism. 21Williams argues that this reaction must be hard-wired and points out that, in many other social species, ostracism often leads to death. That’s why humans are so sensitive. As soon as it looks as though we are in danger of being ostracized, we become hyper-vigilant to those around us, looking for clues in the way people are interacting and opportunities to re-engage with the group. 22Excluded individuals engage in behaviours that increase their likelihood of being reconciled back into the group. We are more likely to mimic, comply with requests, obey orders and cooperate with others who don’t deserve it. We become obsequious to the extent that we will agree with others who are clearly in the wrong.

If these ingratiating strategies fail, then ostracized individuals switch tack and turn from being likeable to being angry and aggressive: ‘Look at me, I’m worthy of attention. I am not invisible, damn you.’ Individuals no longer care about being liked but rather want to exert their influence on others to take notice. People who have been ostracized are less helpful and more aggressive to others, whether or not the others are the perpetrators of the ostracism. For example, in one study ostracized individuals sought revenge by giving an innocent bystander five times the amount of hot chilli sauce as a punishment even when they knew the victim hated the sauce. 23Many of the tragic cases of school shootings and murderous rampages involve individuals who feel they have been socially rejected. An analysis of the diaries of school-shooters found that in thirteen of the fifteen cases examined, the perpetrators had been targets of ostracism. 24Clearly not everyone who has been ostracized goes on a shooting rampage, but if the ostracism persists, then excluded individuals eventually experience alienation and worthlessness. They often withdraw from society and become profoundly depressed and contemplate suicide. As humans, we all need to belong.

Do You Want to Be in My Gang?

In his resignation telegram to an elite Beverly Hills social club, Groucho Marx wrote, ‘Please accept my resignation, I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.’ 25

Whether we like it or not, we are all members of clubs. As a social animal, we cannot help but hang out with others. Even those of us not in a family can identify significant others in our lives – friends, Romans and even countrymen. Ultimately we are all members of one very big club: the human species. No man or woman is an island. Of course, there are some among us who reject being with others and seek out the isolated life of a hermit, but that is not the norm. They are the weirdoes amongst us. Most of us just want to belong. There is a drive, deep inside us, that compels us to be accepted by others.

Some group membership is relatively fixed and independent of what we want – age, sex, race, height and nationality, for example – though sometimes we try to change even these: lie about our age, cross-dress, have surgery, wear elevator shoes and become a nationalized citizen. Other groups we aspire to join throughout our lifetime – the in-crowd, the jet-set, the highfliers, the intelligentsia or the seriously wealthy. Some of us are assigned to groups we would rather not join – the poor, the uneducated, the criminal classes or the drug addicts. People do not normally choose to be any of these but we are all members of groups whether we like it or not. Furthermore, it is in our human nature to categorize each other into groups. Even those who don’t want to be characterized are a group unto themselves – they are the dropouts and the outsiders.