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The Psychology of Tyranny: the BBC Prison Study TYRANNYTHE PSYCHOLOGY OF POWER CORRUPTS, AND ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY—OR DOES IT? BY S. ALEXANDER HASLAM AND STEPHEN D. REICHER Images of inhumanity and atrocity are burned into our memories. Jewish men, women and children being herded into gas chambers. Entire villages destroyed by rampaging gangs in Rwanda. The systematic use of rape and the destruction of communities as part of “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans. The massacre at My Lai in South Vietnam, the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and most re- cently, the carnage wrought by suicide bombers in Baghdad, Jerusalem, London and Madrid. Refl ecting on these events, we inevitably ask: What makes people so brutal? Are they mentally ill? Are they the products of dysfunctional families or cultures? Or, more disturbingly, is anyone capable of taking part in collective ruthlessness given the right—or rather, the wrong—circumstances? Now the latest research, including possibly the largest social-psychology experiment in three CREDIT CREDIT decades, is providing a new window on these conundrums. 44 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND COPYRIGHT 2005 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. COPYRIGHT 2005 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. Joseph Stalin, Questions about why groups can behave bad- early 1960s by Stanley Milgram. Ordinary, well- Adolf Hitler, ly have driven some of the most signifi cant devel- adjusted males who took part in a bogus memo- Idi Amin and opments in social psychology in the 60 years ry experiment were told to deliver electric shocks Saddam Hussein since World War II ended. Starting with the need of increasing magnitude to another person who had powerful to understand the psychological processes that posed as the learner. (In actuality, the learner, an personalities, but made possible the horrors of the Holocaust, sci- accomplice of the experimenter, received no their success as ); entists have wanted to know how large numbers shocks.) Amazingly, every single “teacher” was tyrants also ) required social of apparently civilized and decent people can prepared to administer “intense shocks” of 300 Stalin conditions that perpetrate appalling acts. volts, and two thirds obeyed all the experiment- Hussein made their Initially theorists sought answers to group er’s requests, dispensing what they believed were ( messages pathology in individual psychology. In 1961, 450 volts. Participants continued meting out acceptable. however, German-born American historian and punishments even after hearing the learner com- Corbis political philosopher Hannah Arendt witnessed plain of a heart condition and yell in apparent the trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, one of agony. Milgram concluded: “Arendt’s concep- the chief architects of the Holocaust. She con- tion of the banality of evil comes closer to the cluded that far from the defendant demonstrat- truth than one might dare to imagine.” ing a “perverted and sadistic personality” (as The vivid culmination of this line of inquiry psychiatrists for the prosecution claimed), he was was the Stanford prison experiment, carried out PAVLOVSKY JACQUES ); utterly unremarkable and disarmingly ordinary. in 1971 by Stanford University psychologist Phil- Amin Arendt pronounced Eichmann to be an embodi- ip G. Zimbardo and his colleagues. The research- ( ment of “the banality of evil.” ers randomly assigned college students to be ei- ther prisoners or guards in a simulated prison in ( CORBIS COLLECTION HULTON-DEUTSCH PAGE: THIS Everyday Evil? the basement of the campus psychology building. Sygma Corbis Corbis Sygma First published in 1963 in the New Yorker, The goal was to explore the dynamics that devel- Arendt’s analysis was considered shocking and oped within and between the groups over a two- heretical. But a series of studies conducted week period. The study delivered these dynamics Getty Images; around the same time supported her observa- in abundance. Indeed, the guards (with Zimbar- tions. In experiments at U.S. summer camps dur- do as their superintendent) exerted force with ); ALAIN NOGUES ing the late 1950s, Muzafer Sherif, a Turkish- such harshness that the study was halted after born American social psychologist, learned that only six days. Hitler normal schoolboys became cruel and aggressive The experimenters concluded that group toward former friends once they had been placed members cannot resist the pressure of their as- in different groups that had to compete over sumed stations and that brutality is the “natural” scarce resources. Even more striking were obedi- expression of roles associated with groups who PRECEDING CARTER PAGES: MARC ence studies carried out at Yale University in the have unequal power. Accordingly, two maxims, BETTMANN ( CORBIS Scientists have wanted to know how apparently (civilized people can perpetrate appalling acts.) 46 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND COPYRIGHT 2005 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. The “banality of evil” is clear in the hotel room in Rwanda (left) that served as the ordinary- looking setting for launching a plan for genocide (below). which have had immense infl uence at both a sci- entifi c and a cultural level—and which are taught as received knowledge to millions of students around the world every year—are routinely drawn from the Stanford experiment. The fi rst is that individuals lose their capacity for intellectual and moral judgment in groups; hence, groups are in- herently dangerous. The second is that there is an ) inevitable impetus for people to act tyrannically once they are put in groups and given power. bottom ( Reexamining Group Power structively. In variants of Milgram’s obedience The weight of the Stanford prison experiment trials, participants were much more likely to defy lies in both its dramatic fi ndings and the simple, the experimenter when they were supported by stark conclusions that have been drawn from it. confederates who were also disobedient. Magnum Photos Photos Magnum Over the years, however, social psychologists In addition, research after Stanford has con- have developed doubts about the resulting re- fi rmed the prosocial and enriching aspects of ceived wisdom. groups. One particularly infl uential approach to First, the idea that groups with power auto- understanding groups in psychology today is the matically become tyrannical ignores the active social identity theory developed in 1979 by social PATRICK ZACHMANN leadership that the experimenters provided. Zim- psychologists John Turner, now at the Australian ; ) bardo told his guards: “You can create in the National University, and Henri Tajfel, then at top ( prisoners ... a sense of fear to some degree, you Bristol University in England. This theory holds can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life that it is mostly in groups that people—particu- is totally controlled by us.... They’ll have no larly the individually powerless—can become ef- freedom of action, they can do nothing, say noth- fective agents who shape their own fate. Magnum Photos Photos Magnum ing that we don’t permit.... We’re going to take When individuals share a sense of identity (for away their individuality in various ways.” example, “we are all American,” “we are all Cath- Second, we know that groups do not perpe- olic”), they seek to reach agreement, they like and trate only antisocial acts. In studies—as in soci- trust one another more, they are more willing to ety at large—the group often emerges as a means follow group leaders, and they form more effective STUART FRANKLIN FRANKLIN STUART to resist oppression and the pressure to act de- organizations. This fact is shown, for example, in www.sciammind.com 47 COPYRIGHT 2005 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. extensive studies of cooperation in groups con- als. Only when they believe that they cannot es- ducted recently by Steven L. Blader and Tom R. cape—that is, when boundaries between groups Tyler of New York University. As a result, people are seen to be impermeable, as feminists argued can pull together to create a social world based on when they identifi ed the “glass ceiling”—will their shared values—instilling a state of “collective they identify with the devalued group and act self-realization,” which is good for psychological collectively. In addition, they will be prepared to health. Having the social support to control one’s use their collective power to challenge the status fate results in higher self-esteem, less stress, and quo and try to improve the position of their group lower levels of anxiety and depression. only if they view the social system as unstable. People who share a sense of identity in a A large body of research, including controlled group demonstrate two social features. First, laboratory studies, extensive surveys and de- We aimed to represent institutions in which one group ( has more power and privilege than the other. ) they do not lose the capacity for judgment; in- tailed field observations, supports the social stead the basis for their decisions shifts from identity perspective (for a review, see Social Iden- their individual notions to their commonly held tity, edited by Naomi Ellemers of Leiden Univer- understandings. As fi eld studies by one of us sity in the Netherlands and her colleagues). Yet (Reicher) have shown (a summary appears in the until recently there was no single study in the Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: mold of Sherif, Milgram or Zimbardo that might Group Processes), even the most extreme collec- illustrate and combine the theory’s various prop- tive actions, such as a riot, reveal a pattern of ositions in a comprehensive and compelling man- behavior that refl ects the beliefs, norms and val- ner. What is more, it seemed impossible to con- ues of the group involved. Second, people’s re- duct such a study. Despite all the doubts sur- sponses vary depending on which group mem- rounding Stanford, its very severity seemed to bership is most important to them in any given put further studies of its type off-limits. situation. For instance, the norms and values that This situation recently changed with the BBC we use as employees in the workplace may differ prison experiment.
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