Anonymity does not dissolve the self. It makes group identity more prominent than personal identity, so anonymous people follow the norms of the group they identify with more closely.
Lea and Spears named the model in a 1991 paper on computer-mediated communication and group decision-making, and Reicher, Spears and Postmes gave its first full statement in 1995. It was proposed against the older deindividuation account associated with Festinger, Pepitone and Newcomb, Zimbardo and Diener, in which anonymity dissolves self-awareness and releases antisocial acts. In the SIDE account, when a shared identity is salient, anonymity strengthens it, so people see themselves and others as group members and follow the group's norms, whatever those norms are. Where there is no shared identity, anonymity can increase isolation or independence instead.
In practice
- An anonymous staff forum in a company where frank, constructive criticism is the norm fills with it, while the same tool in a company where sniping is the norm fills with sniping.
- Supporters of two clubs on an anonymous message board become more partisan than they are in person, because their club badge is the only identity on show.
- Possible explanations
- The model combines social identity theory with the research on anonymity. Anonymity hides individual differences and leaves the shared category as the main available identity, which raises conformity to its norms. A strategic version examines when less powerful groups use anonymity to express their identity without sanction.
- In its favour
- Postmes and Spears's 1998 meta-analysis of deindividuation studies found no consistent support for anonymity as a release of antisocial behaviour and found that anonymity heightened sensitivity to local norms. Postmes, Spears, Sakhel and de Groot's 2001 experiments found that anonymity strengthened conformity to an induced group norm, and Rosner and Kramer's 2016 study found that anonymity and the tone of other comments jointly shaped aggressive language in comments.
- Against it
- Most tests have used student groups in short, text-based laboratory sessions, so how well the model describes large public platforms is less established. Because it predicts conformity to whichever norm is salient, a test also needs the norm to be identified independently of the behaviour it is meant to explain.
- Standing
- A rival to Deindividuation and a refinement of the Online Disinhibition Effect. Compare Group Polarization.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Theories of the mind, from the lab to the bookshop