The model suggests that anonymity changes the relative salience of personal vs. social identity, and thereby can have a profound effect on group behavior.
With the advance of technology, it is becoming increasingly researched how having the control of being incognito on the web and having profiles that represent one's person is affecting relationships and communication in our lives.
Among others, historical evidence and case studies strongly suggested that the psychological process proposed by deindividuation theory (a loss of self) did not occur in the crowd.
[13][clarification needed] There has been recent studies on the SIDE model may put an end to racism in growing children, as well as social awkwardness.
[clarification needed] With fresh minds and our growing world of technology, the SIDE model is becoming a more researched topic.
Early research in this domain suggested that, similarly to deindividuation theory, users of online computers were prone to flaming and other disinhibitions due to a reduction in social cues.
[19] The SIDE model was developed, in first instance, to account for contradictory effects of social cues in online groups.
[9] According to SIDE, a social identity approach can account for many of the effects observed in deindividuation research and in crowd psychology, as well as in computer-mediated communication.
[20] In order to understand effects of factors such as anonymity and reduced cues on group behavior, one needs to take the social and inter-group context into account.
SIDE argues this occurs principally because (visual) anonymity obscures individual features and interpersonal differences.
This may happen particularly in contexts within which these social categories are potentially meaningful and therefore accessible, and when group memberships are visually clearly identifiable (as is the case for gender, certain racial characteristics, disabilities, etc.[21]).
SIDE thus describes the cognitive process by which the salience of social identity is affected by the absence or presence of individuating information.
The latter process, whereby anonymity provides the opportunities for people to express and develop identities independent of the social influence of the group, is further elaborated in the Strategic SIDE.
However, unlike deindividuation theory, SIDE takes account of the inter-group context within which identifiability and anonymity occur.
By implication, a loss of accountability does not result in the disinhibited or random anti-normative behaviour of individuals that deindividuation theory is concerned with.
The close connection between identity expression and power proposed by SIDE may explain the patterned and targeted behaviour of crowds whose violent actions (if they occur) are very often symbolic, not random.