Resources

Haslam, S. A. & Reicher, S. D. (2003).
Beyond Stanford: Questioning a role-based explanation of tyranny. Dialogue (Bulletin of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology), 18, 22-25. 

Haslam, S. A. & Reicher, S. D. (2004).
Visión crítica de la explicación de la tiranía basada en los roles: Pensando más allá del Experimento de la Prisión de Stanford. Revista de Psicología Sociale, 19, 115-122. 

Haslam, S. A. & Reicher, S. D. (2005).
The psychology of tyranny. Scientific American Mind, 16 (3), 44–51.

Reicher, S. D. & Haslam, S. A. (2006).  
Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC Prison Study. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 1–40.

• Abstract: This paper presents findings from the BBC Prison Study: an experimental case study that examined the consequences of randomly dividing men into groups of prisoners and guards within a specially constructed institution over a period of eight days. Unlike the prisoners, the guards failed to identify with their role. This made the guards reluctant to impose their authority and they were eventually overcome by the prisoners. Participants then established an egalitarian social system. When this proved unsustainable, moves to impose a tyrannical regime met with weakening resistance. Empirical and theoretical analysis addresses the conditions under which people identify with the groups to which they are assigned and the social, organizational and clinical consequences of either doing so or failing to do so. On the basis of these findings a newframework for understanding tyranny is outlined. This suggests that it is powerlessness and the failure of groups that makes tyranny psychologically acceptable.