MORE ON DEINDIVIDUATION, POWER RELATIONS BETWEEN GROUPS AND THE EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL IDENTITY - 3 STUDIES ON THE EFFECTS OF VISIBILITY TO THE IN-GROUP

The studies reported in this paper address the predictions of the soci al identity model of deindividuation phenomena, or SIDE (Reicher, Spea rs & Postmes, 1995), concerning the strategic effects of visibility to the in-group: increasing the visibility of in-group members to each o ther increases their ability to support each other against the out-gro up and hence increases the expression of those aspects of ingroup iden tity which would attract sanctions from this out-group. In a first stu dy, where anti-fox hunting participants were rendered accountable to p ro-fox hunters, the results were the opposite of those expected: parti cipants actually decreased their endorsement of anti-hunt disruption ( which had been defined as normative for the in-group but unacceptable to the out-group) when made more visible to the ingroup. These results were explained by arguing that participants perceived the intergroup relationship as participants versus experimenters rather than as anti- versus pro-fox hunters and that in-group visibility was being used to resist an experimentally imposed definition of themselves as favouring disruptive activity. This interpretation was supported in a second st udy where participants' accountability to the pro-fox hunters was remo ved, leaving them solely accountable to the experimenters, and similar results were obtained. In the final study, the relationship between s tudent participants and staff experimenters was made the explicit topi c of study. As expected students increased their endorsement of activi ties that are normative to students but unacceptable to staff when vis ible to fellow in-group members. Together these results provide furthe r support for the SIDE model.