Reicher and Haslam

AIMS: 

• to conduct prison experiment wihtout ethical issues (Stanford Prison Experiment) 
• look at conditions that lead individuals to identift with a group and accept/challenge group inequalities
• examine the role of social, organisational and clincal factors in group behaviour

METHOD:

• lab experiment over 10 days 
• BBC created prison environment, all videod
• ethics: 2 clinical psychologists, 5 ethics committee, paramedic on scene, independent security guards

PARTICIPANTS:

• 15 men (prisoners and guards) 
• advertised in national press - 332 -> 25 after 3 screening phases
• psychometric testing, full weekend assessment, character/medical references and police checks
• only well adjusted/pro-social people included
• diversity of age, class, ethnic background
• personality matched to groups of 3 - one randomly allocated guard

DESIGN:

• Repeated measures
• Time series approach

PROCEDURE:

• Initiation for guards: shown timetable, 'ensure insitution ran smoothly', asked to draw up rules/punishments lists, given uniforms, 
• Initiation for prisoners: arrived on at a time, heads shaven, given uniform, only given list of rules, rights and told there was possibility of promotion
• Day 3 - Permiability: At beginning all told guard selection was due to reliability/trustworthiness, told movement between groups was possible but on Day 3 told CHANGE WAS NOT POSSIBLE
• Day 6 - Legimitacy of group situations: 3 days after ONE PROMOTION took place told there were actually no differences but it would be impractical to change groups (Random allocation) 
• Day 7 - Possibility of change: New prisoner (trade union official) - expected that he would introduce plan of action, organise to have more equality

DATA COLLECTION:

• Observation - visually/audibly recorded throughout
• Daily psychometric testing - questionnaire - adressed social, organisational and clinical factors e.g. identifcation with group
• Daily saliva swabs - cortisol levels - stess - to look at their wellbeing

RESULTS:

• prisoners behaved as expected - working hard at first (possibility of promotion)
• after promotion eliminated prisoners began to…