The Chilling Effects of Surveillance: Deindividuation and Reactance

Abstract

Americans are becoming more aware that one's private life may be under surveillance by government agencies and other institutions. Two social- psychological theories are discussed that can be applied to the effect of potentially aversive surveillance on opinion inhibition. The deindividuation- individuation hypothesis predicts that people will avoid opinion expression, while the psychological reactance hypothesis predicts opinion assertion and attack upon threatening agents. To test these notions, a reactance-arousing threat (videotaping of marijuana opinions which would be sent to the FBI) was orthogonally crossed with actual performance of the threatened action. The results are reported.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1975
Accession Number
ADA013230

Entities

People

  • Gregory L. White
  • Philip G. Zimbardo

Organizations

  • Stanford University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • California
  • Cameras
  • Factor Analysis
  • Freedom Of Speech
  • Governments
  • Law
  • Military Research
  • New York
  • Political Science
  • Psychological Theory
  • Psychology
  • Recording Systems
  • Students
  • Surveillance
  • Tape Recorders
  • Theses
  • Video

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

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