Just as I finished putting the fake blood on the front window … I read about some research …

It was conducted in the 1970s by three psychologists who wanted to see if dressing up in Halloween costumes (and becoming anonymous in the process) would affect the behaviour of children as they went about their tricking and treating around the local neighbourhood. It did:

This study is one of many which shows your identity can spring a leak in the presence of others, and the more others there are, the more you dissolve into the collective will of the group. Looting, rioting, lynchings, beating, war, chasing a monster with torches – the switch is always there, and it doesn’t take much to flip it.

This comes from David McRaney on his blog You Are Not So Smart titled Deindividuation.

The theory of deindividuation suggests that we do things in groups that we would not do if we were alone – that as group identity develops there is a decrease in a sense of self.

Is this really what happened in the riots in Manchester this summer?