Sociology breeds cynicism. For decades, sociologists (and social psychologists) grappling with tragic events (e.g. the shooting deaths of four Kent State University students by ROTC cadets) have attempted to elevate the study of mobs and crowds into a science of "people going berzerk." Scholars of collective behavior identify characteristics of groups and individuals that present a combustible mixture. Which kinds of individuals, under which circumstances, can produce a mob? A crowd? A cult? A batallion of World War II German infantry? And just what happens to a person during his or her transformation from inner-directed individual to a rank-and-serial number ... a leaf in the wind of group activity?
As a social psychologist myself, I'd like to see the mission of social psychologists shift from one of keeping the peace between racial & ethnic groups to one of understanding the potentially damaging effects of groups on individuals and, in turn, on groups. We are living in an increasingly group-oriented society. Progress is measured in mergers & acquisitions. Scientists publish in packs of six. Aspiring professionals negotiate career milestones evaluated by committees, from peer review to faculty search to tenure review. The intrinsic worth of books and films are measured in millions of units sold. The worth of the individual is measured by the size of his or her network. Hospital patients coordinate care between multiple five-member physician groups. We have entered a new era of viewing and manipulating individuals through groups, and individuals are coordinates in social space, where membership has its privileges.
Social psychologists have known since the early 70s that individuals can surrender their own priorities and decision-making faculties to a group in exchange for social identity, which is to say for a sense of belonging, guidance / resources, social and material amenities, harmony, and even self-definition. Groups use direct pressure, appointed mindguards, and collective rationalizations to promote illusions of morality and invulnerability, activate in individual members a propensity for self-censorship, and stereotype real or "straw" rivals.
Even the social body responsible for producing knowledge about groups and individuals (i.e. academe) is shaped by these uniforming-mechanisms. I am referring here of course to faculty departments within universities (e.g. Department of Psychology). The social structures and discourses invented by academic communities -- and their ever-widening nucleus of core policies and procedures governing everything from research to classroom instruction -- generate friction for apprentices-in-training. Some critics allege an underlying "ideology" designed to present prohibitive challenges to students with highly developed personalities and original thinkers whose individuality is grounded in a cause (even where the cause is a grass roots focus on the subject matter itself). Even the speech of many academic insiders gives some hint as to a problem, using words like "guild," "professional gatekeeping," "perfect fit," "willingness to adjust," and "socialization into professional culture" to refer to the lodge-like nature of academic training. I am also reminded of colorful phrases from my dissertation advisor -- "you have to keep one hand on the mast and one on the sail" -- "you have to learn how to shave the balloon to make it in barber college" -- and "you have to get your union card first" -- that put things in just the right perspective to help me navigate the political headwinds and bureaucracy within my PhD program. And while academics might grow queasy with the thought of being compared to the military, new classes of graduate students are, like new military recruits, more likely to survive boot camp if they show up to training with nothing to be broken down and re-built in the image of the armed forces.
While self-awareness may be lacking, the resentment within academe toward corporate America, the military, and Republican-controlled legislative bodies did manage to inspire concepts like deindividuation, which refers to the deterioration of morality and consciousness in many individuals within like-minded and / or similarly-aroused groups. In its explanation of collective phenomenon like mobs and crowds, convergence theory proposes that the similiarity of group members is the active agent in assembly (and depicts the process of coming together as somewhat deliberate). By contrast, the older contagion theory (LeBon, 1896) sought to explain how persons can behave more irrationally in group settings than as individuals, suggesting a contagious emergent property to groups capable of "hypnotizing" individuals. Emergent-norm theory (Turner & Killian, 1987) proposes that unexpected behavior from groups of similiar individuals is the result of new norms and expectations that emerge in response to new circumstances. While this theory approaches an adequate account of mob behavior within communities (e.g. McCarthyism, the Salem Witch Trials, Inquisition), a truly comprehensive theory will need to revisit the irrationality of the group behavior. For example, how do we make sense of the occasional "witch hunt" among academics? This phenomenon may not be as sellacious a headline as the occasional murder of a homeless man by impromptu gatherings of high school teens. But I find this inhouse collective behavior among professors quite illustrative of sociological/social psychological principles ... that a collection of ten or more professors -- all scientists by vocation -- can "switch off" their truth-finding radar and / or truth-sounding siren and slavishly comply with a small group of their colleagues bent on ousting a graduate student they do not like (i.e. typically a graduate student in excellent academic standing who simply does not embody the same theory or ideology). Members of the same academic community published excellent research demonstrating how the goal of accuracy in information-gathering tasks can be subverted to the goal of preserving group harmony (Thompson, Petersen, & Brodt, 1996).
But group harmony is not always the whole story. In a synthesis of the aforementioned theory and research, I suggest that we look for the group's irrationality in the glue that binds its individuals (i.e. in the similarity). The individuals that make up a group may harbor similar sensitivities. Where these sensitivities are unarticulated (and this is usually the case), it may be meaningful to speak of the group's collective unconscious. For example, psychology professors aspiring to be treated as rank-and-file scientists may resort to extraordinary measures to engineer solidarity within their own community and present a united, cosmetically rigorous front to the public. One method of doing this is to design policies & procedures that standardize and regulate an ever-widening scope of activities which, had they been left to the discretion of the individual, would have resulted in an embarassing diversity of pet theories, research styles, and teaching methods (something quite problematic for the scientific persona of a discipline in which the human being is both the subject and object of scientific study and in which the individual scientist can claim authoritative knowledge of him- or herself). The policies and procedures conceal, control, and compensate for this natural diversity (but which also occludes the kind of original thinking and exploratory research that may prove vital to genuine progress). This explains instances in which psychology professors use end-of-semester evaluation meetings as vehicles for identifying, reigning in, and weeding out graduate students who at one time or another exhibited an idiosyncratic (but not necessarily illegitimate) choice in the design of a research project or design of a course he or she is teaching as an assistant. Such students, many of whom are in excellent academic standing, are surprised by a formal letter (cc'd to their permanent file) threatening them with one or more categories of conduct probation ... surprised to be on the receiving end of such characterological labels as "unwilling to adjust," "imperfect fits," and "arrogant" ... surprised to learn their conduct will be monitored by future professors whose expectations have been skewered by what just passed for slander. Given the right chemistry (i.e. motivation, support, and freedom from self-awareness / consequence), even educated professionals can lose themselves in the pride and passion of a group in which they are invested.
An individual's investment in a group has many facets. Individuals may have some stake in the group. Individuals may have deferred formative powers over their own identity and self-worth to the group. Individuals may have sacrificed a great deal to become a group member. The theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) is invoked to explain how hazing rituals are used to manufacture extreme loyalty in new group members. Individuals who expect extraordinary harmony within their group are usually the same individuals who once expected similar harmony within themselves. These are individuals who would rather turn their back on imperfections within their community because the idea of an imperfect community is painfully inconsistent with the idea they gave up so much to become members. According to cognitive dissonance theory, individuals are driven to reduce the unpleasant arousal associated with the inconsistency (i.e. dissonance) and that in instances where an attitude is inconsistent with a behavior, the person finds it simpler to change the attitude (i.e. what I think of my job / community) to conform to the behavior (i.e. I am employed here / I am a member here). Much in the same way not all individuals have the same tolerance for pain, not all personalities have the same tolerance for dissonance. Individuals with a low tolerance for dissonance make for great loyalists. You behavioral science and statistics majors may have heard that something cannot correlate with something else to a degree greater than it correlates with itself. I mention it only for its metaphorical value, and to set up my next hypothesis, which is that many individuals are driven to expect a level of conformity to the group norms (and bring a level of pressure to bear) that is equal to the level of dissonance they were compelled to reconcile through attitude adjustments. We already know that many academics begrudge "bitching" among their apprentices because, by golly, they had to do it. So we know that many of them expect from future generations of academics the same level of conformity required of them, and this is all rationalized in the name of maintaining standards. Unfortunately, the corollary of this theory is that in an era of more tightly controlled communities, the most innovative individual is left out on the doorstep like a skanky barn cat.
So in revisiting emergent-norm theory, what we are observing in many groups are individuals with common expectations and norms who, in response to perceived challenges or risks, create new norms and expectations that structure and rationalize punishment for nonconformity. In many cases, the degree of structure appears completely unnecessary or overdone (e.g. policies & procedures in academic psychology), serving a cosmetic purpose in concealing or compensating for the irrational impetus (i.e. appetites, emotional "ego-driven" issues) at the root of it all. So by now you have more of a handle on how individuals may be transformed in becoming and in being a member of a group. This is a rather crude Jeckyll-to-Hyde way of conceptualizing what is fundamentally an adaptation. A more nuanced view from social identity theory suggests an individual can have multiple selves that correspond to widening circles of group membership, such that one thinks, feels, and acts as this or that person depending on the social context (Tajfel & Turner, 1979).
Computer-Mediated Communication Augments Etiological Factors in Group Formation, Maintenance
In many ways, groups that form on the Web and that use the Web for its networking and image enhancement are extremely susceptible to the factors by which self and other (i.e. adversary to group) is deindividuated and dehumanized. Nothing is more efficient than the Web at bringing together people with similar interests. No where else can one voice opinions as loudly, as universally, and as anonymously. In short, the technology augments the social effects of group membership, resulting in greater facilitation, legitimation, and immunization. In cyberspace, even individuals with no group-related education or brick-and-mortar affiliation with the group can experience the priviliges of membership by performing services for the ranking members of the group (e.g. recruitment, outreach, dirty chores like slander and hacking). This is where antisocial types form an unholy symbiosis with academics and professionals, executing their wishes in exchange for an adda-boy and a place at the table.
In this cyberstalking blog, we take up the factors associated with the formation, maintenance, and proliferation of cyberstalking gangs. You may be surprised to learn that these gangs are not comprised of low socioeconomic youth & minorities as much as by well-to-do digerati (e.g. network administrators with hacking know-how), academics and professionals with sensitive egos bent on preserving their field's reputation from unconventional wisdom on the net, and computer chair potatoes like you seeking some perch from which to leap safely into the coliseum for gladiatorial hobbies. However, these cyberstalking gang members often share issues of identity and turf with their traditional gang counterparts.
