An Interesting Health Psychology Activity

We were learning about deindividuation in our health psychology tutorial today (which is a state of lowered self-awareness e.g. you feel a greater sense of anonymity when being a member of a group, and it increases as the size of the group increases). We did this activity where we each had to write down one thing we would do if we could go about it undetected. We each submitted our own thoughts anonymously, and the results are pretty interesting:

Pro-social (behaviour which would benefit others or society as a whole)
...nothing...

Anti-social (behaviour which involves a common disregard for social rules, norms, and cultural codes)
- Humiliate someone I really hate
- Rob a bank
- Rob a bank
- Rob a bank
- Rob a bank
- Rob a bank
- Cheat in exams
- Steal a Picasso painting
- Get hold of exam papers
- Rob the biggest bank in the world
- Shoot Helen Clark and become prime minister of New Zealand
- Start match-fixing to make sports teams win
- Rob Smith & Coughey
- Steal an expensive car from a car dealer

Non-normative (weird behaviour)
- Shadow doctors at work
- Kiss girls

Neutral (Neither good or bad behaviour)
- Fly a plane
- Go into pyramids of Egypt and see treasure
- Depends on mood...might watch TV

it seems as though there are a lot of wannabe bank thieves in our health psychology class! I won't say which desire was mine...
The make-up of desired behaviours in a typical group is:
Pro-social - 9%
Anti-social - 36%
Non-normative - 19%
Neutral - 36%

So it seems as though our class fits the bill!