There are many things that can influence whether someone will conform to a social situation or not. One of those factors is the level of anonymity that a person has when communicating. The idea is rather simple, stating that when people are anonymous, there are fewer consequences from their actions. Due to this sentiment, it is believed that when people are more anonymous, they will tend to conform less, and act based on their own will, since there are no obvious repercussions for acting against the crowd. It is much easier to detach themselves from a situation, in a phenomenon called disassociative anonymity. This process is mainly referring to online anonymity, however.
Anonymity decreasing social conformity
Demonstrating that anonymity in itself can reduce social conformity is not new. Philip Zimbardo conducted a study in 1969 where participants were asked to either wear a hood to cover their face or wear a name tag and no hood. Zimbardo then told them to give an electric shock to another person. The results of the experiment showed that the participants who were covered and anonymous were twice as likely to give an electric shock to the other person. Anonymity enabled people to act in a less restrained manner versus social norms. Participants felt there were less potential consequences when their face wasn’t visible.
Online, anonymity can have a similar effect. John Suler. PhD did his own research on the online disinhibition effect and argues that anonymity is a key factor leading to unrestrained behaviour. In his paper, he talks about 6 factors from which the online disinhibition effect may occur which include anonymity, as well as invisibility and asynchronicity. Anonymity is a key factor of the online disinhibition effect because people can separate real life from their online behaviour and so they feel less vulnerable online, leading to lower restraints on behaviour. This mirrors the effect of anonymity from Zimbardo’s research. People are able to more easily detach themselves form their behaviour, so their behaviour becomes much more unrestrained.
Counterarguments
Despite it seeming obvious that anonymity would decrease social conformity, leaving people much more unrestrained, there is also some research out there which suggests that anonymity does not play such a large role in decreasing social conformity. In fact, in some cases, it can increase it. In 2014, Klein Menting did a piece of research on anonymity and flaming, and found no difference in whether people were anonymous or not. People showed the same amount of unrestrained or restrained behavior regardless. This shows that people conscientiousness may still get in the way of showing unrestrained behavior, it’s not just about anonymity. And it’s true, that even online, where many people are anonymous, people are still typically quite socially conforming.
However, there is also an instance where social conformity might be higher due to anonymity. This can occur within online groups, where no one’s identity is known, or people do not know each other by specific identities. In these types of groups, people are drawn together by a sharing of a social norm. For example, there is a flat earth society online. In this group, people are highly conforming to the idea of there being a flat earth. And so, within that community, social conformity is in general, very high. This is because without that level of conformity to each others’ beliefs, the group itself ceases to exist. This finding is quite counter-intuive, in the sense that the sense of anonymity increases social conformity. But what’s really happening is that with everyone being anonymous, there are no real individual identities. The identity of the group is what holds people together, so people are highly conforming to norms within the group.
Implications
When people are online, or anonymous, they can be much more unrestrained, in any kind of situation. Dealing with these types of people can be very difficult, and it is hard to tell when someone is lying online. People will also create anonymous accounts online to specifically do strange things, such as trolling. When dealing with anonymous people, it is often not worth arguing about anything or getting annoyed by what they say, because what they say often has very little meaning. People who exhibit unrestrained behavior often do so on purpose to rile people up or have fun. Consider this when browsing online so that it doesn’t bother you, as flaming behavior and trolling happen everywhere.