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The Experiment A User’s Guide to The Experiment Exploring the Psychology of Groups and Power Manual to accompany the DVDs B B C ACTIVE Pearson Education ii The Experiment Preamble Cover Photograph The participants (left to right) Guards: Brendan Grennan, Thufayel Ahmed, Tom McElroy, Tom Quarry, Frankie Caruana; Prisoners: Frank Clark, Derek McCabe, Paul Petken, John Edwards, Philip Bimpson, Ian Burnett, Dave Dawson, Kevin Murray, Neil Perry, Glen Payton The experimenters: Steve Reicher, Alex Haslam Second Edition ACTIVE Pearson Education ACTIVE © BBC Active, Pearson Education 2006 80 Strand London WC2R 0RL e-mail: [email protected] First edition published 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 563 54734 0 Library of Congress catalog card number record available The Experiment Contents iii About this Manual This manual provides material to accompany the BBC DVDs of the four episodes of The Experiment. It is intended to help students, teachers and practitioners reflect on the social and psychological issues that the programmes address and to help people get more out of their viewing experience — whether alone, in class, in a seminar, or in a workshop. On the one hand, the manual allows for a detailed understanding of what happened in The Experiment and of the lessons to be drawn from it. In this sense it is also an introduction to issues that are addressed in the range of formal academic publications that have come out of the study (for details see p.131). On the other hand, the manual allows The Experiment to be used as an introduction to many of the key concepts in social psychological theory and method — from authoritarianism to intergroup relations, from leadership to stereotyping, from research design to the logic of measurement. In this way, the manual is intended to provide a lively and engaging way of introducing the subject of social psychology in general. The manual is organized into five main sections. In turn, these present: • the background to the research — including, for example, the research questions, recruitment procedures, details of psychological measures and ethical protocols, • its findings — including a detailed breakdown of the events in each episode and consideration of their relationship to key debates in psychology, • its implications, — including discussion of the study’s theoretical and practical significance, together with consideration of potential critiques, • its conclusions, and finally, • additional material — including further reading and references. We have tried to write the manual so that its contents are accessible to a wide readership. However, because the programmes are most likely to be used in a teaching environment, much of the text is written for the benefit of prospective instructors. Additional features are also included to help instructors stimulate and focus the activities of other people who have not necessarily read the manual. iv The Experiment Contents These features are colour-coded and formatted as follows: Discussion questions • These relate to material that is dealt with in the text and are intended to stimulate debate around that material. Exercises These are designed to allow groups of people (e.g., students) to explore issues raised by The Experiment in a hands-on way and to provide insight into practical issues surrounding psychological research. Key concepts These provide definitions of terms and concepts that are commonly used in psychological literature and that can be used as a focal point for teaching and discussion. Key concepts are also identified in the body of the text in bold. We hope that you find this material useful and that, used in conjunction with the DVDs, it contributes to an enjoyable and thought-provoking learning experience. Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher The Experiment Contents v Contents 1: Background to The Experiment 1 A: The issues 1 B: The psychology of tyranny 2 Classic studies 2 Questioning Zimbardo’s analysis 4 C: Social identity and the psychology of resistance 7 Social identity theory 7 Explaining social change 9 Aims of The Experiment 14 D: Setting up the study 18 Selection of participants 18 Consent 22 The participants 25 Assignment to groups 26 Planned interventions 27 The prison environment 29 Guards’ resources and Prisoners’ rights 33 Rules 36 Psychometric measures 39 Ethical safeguards 45 Initial set-up 48 2: Findings of The Experiment 51 A: Qualitative findings 51 Episode 1 — Conflict 52 Episode 2 — Order 64 Episode 3 — Rebellion 75 Episode 4 — Tyranny 87 B: Quantitative findings 100 C: Integrating the findings 107 vi The Experiment Contents 3: Discussion of The Experiment 108 A: Explaining the findings 108 Taking on social identity 109 The psychological consequences of social identity 113 The move towards tyranny 117 B: Critical issues 120 On the impact of prior knowledge 121 On the impact of television and surveillance 123 On simulation and reality 125 On the nature of science 128 4: Conclusions 131 5: Additional material 136 A: Further reading 137 B: Other references 139 C: Index of key concepts 141 D: The authors and acknowledgements 143 The Experiment Background 1 1: Background to The Experiment A: The issues The Experiment was designed as a major scientific study into the psychology of groups and power. It aimed to address a range of key social, clinical, organizational and methodological issues. Some of the main ones were: For social psychology • What are the effects of power and powerlessness on behaviour? • Can people resist tyranny and oppression, and, if so, how? • What role does personality play in large-scale social processes? • What psychological factors contribute to the rise of tyranny? For clinical psychology • Does social inequality impact on mental health? • Is there a relationship between social support and depression? • How does group membership contribute to clinical well-being? • Do social factors contribute to stress? Do they play a role in coping? For organizational psychology • What factors make groups effective and productive? • What is the basis of successful leadership? • What strategies contribute to positive relations between groups? • How should group negotiation be managed? For methodology • Can behaviour in simulated environments help us understand behaviour in general? • What can we learn from qualitative and quantitative data analysis? Do these tell a similar story? • How can we study phenomena like inequality and tyranny in ways that are both valid and ethical? • What is the relationship between theory, experimentation and scientific progress? In addition, our aim was to re-open debate surrounding an important question that is relevant both to psychologists and to society in general: How might we better understand the conditions which give rise to tyranny, in order that we might be in a better position to oppose it? 2 The Experiment Background B: The psychology of tyranny Classic studies Since World War II, the study of group psychology can be seen, above all else, as a response to the Nazi Holocaust. It is haunted by the question of how millions of people could be exterminated simply because of their membership of particular social groups. Since that time, social psychologists have presented a number of answers to this question. The first, and simplest explanation suggested that the Nazis and their sympathisers were simply people who had a particular type of personality — an authoritarian personality. This personality was believed to be expressed through extreme deference to those with power and extreme hostility to those without it (Adorno et al. 1950). Over the ensuing decades, a series of influential and dramatic field studies moved the analysis of hostility and aggression from explanations based on personality and individual differences to explanations couched in terms of group processes. In particular, this was because classic studies by Milgram (1963), Sherif (1956), and Tajfel (1970) suggested that basic group processes could lead normal, healthy individuals to behave in anti-social and/or discriminatory ways. In Milgram’s obedience research about two-thirds of participants were prepared to administer what they believed to be a potentially fatal electric shock to another person when asked to do so by an experimenter. In Sherif’s boys’ camp studies the assignment of boys to different groups led those boys to behave antagonistically towards each other (even when they had previously been friends) once the groups were engaged in competition for scarce resources. In Tajfel’s minimal group studies individuals who had been assigned to different groups (e.g., as ‘over-estimators’ or ‘under-estimators’) tended to favour members of their own group over members of the other, even though the groups had no prior history or meaning. The Experiment Background 3 Such research culminated in the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Zimbardo and his colleagues in 1971 (Haney, Banks & Zimbardo, 1973). In this, young men were randomly divided into Guards and Prisoners and the former were given power over the latter. The study was scheduled to last two weeks. However, the brutality of the Guards and the suffering of the Prisoners was so great that it had to be stopped after six days. For those running the study, this demonstrated the inherent tendency of people to slip into role and their inability to resist anti-social impulses once their individuality was lost. In the researchers’ words: Guard aggression … was emitted simply as a ‘natural’ consequence of being in the uniform of a ‘guard’ and asserting the power inherent in that role (Haney et al., 1973, p.62). This analysis suggests that tyranny is embedded in the psychology of powerful groups. Accordingly, it is concluded that the only way to avoid tyranny is to avoid groups and to avoid power.
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