Reicher and Haslam Flashcards
Why is stress or psychological harm an ethical concern in this study?
- Guards may have suffered as a result of failing to identify and cohere as a group.
- Guards may have suffered as result of being challenged by the prisoners.
- prisoners may have suffered as a result of having no shared identity
- Prisoners may have suffered as a result of the deception in relation to role allocation.
One way researchers tried to ensure ethical guidelines were upheld
- Submitted for scrutiny by the BPS ethics committee
- All participants went under clinical, medical and background screening to ensure suitability
- All participants gave fully informed consent
Qualitative data
Recorded participants reaction through actions and personality.
Video recordings
Questionnaires
Saliva tests
Quantitative data
When people did things a number of times.
Tyranny
Asserting sense of authority, and maintaining power through asserting sense of fear.
Why does tyranny exist?
As everything else fails.
- Legitimate social roles failing.
- Democracy failing.
Everything else fails and it is the only thing left.
Aim
To examine the relations between social. Organisational and clinical factors in group behaviour.
What was the rejecting inequality phase?
- Guards did not identify with their roles, therefore did not stick together as a group.
- Initially prisoners failed to identify as a groups and visually in the hope of promotion.
- After promotion of Day 3, they increasingly identified as a group and worked collectively to challenge the guards.
‘Shift of power and collapse of prisoner-guard system’
What was the embracing inequality phase?
- Participants decided to operate the study as a single self-governing ‘commune’, on equal footing. However, this was not successful in the face of opposition which arose.
- By the end, participants seemed more predisposed to tolerate a harsher guard-prisoner system which some now proposed.
Day 1
Arrive
Promotion announcement
Bad food = unhappy
Day 2
Sausages
Guards see sausages as privilege, prisoners see as equality.
Day 3
Promotion announced.
Prisoners start acting as a group.
Day 4
Prisoners and guards close to blow.
- Prisoners plot to undermine guards authority
- Guards oblivious, some of them uncomfortable with power and makes them even more vulnerable
- Throw food on floor, refusal to go to cell
- Prisoners support each other
Guards undermine each other - Prisoners = solidarity.
Guards = division. - Power is moving to prisoners as guards become further apart after disagreement.
Day 5
Trade unionist arrives.
Good at negotiating.
Crisis when prisoners get keys as guard left unattended.
Prisoners demand negotiation. Join together as new prisoner wins, accept this as guards are weak. Their ability to influence guard shows vulnerability.
Day 6
New prisoner taken out
Idea goes quickly.
Prisoners taunt guard.
Guards not helping each other and give up.
Guards join together when prisoner escapes into guards sanctuary
