Reicher and Haslam study

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What is tyranny?
Cruel and oppressive exercise of power
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What is the R&H study linked too?
The Zimbardo study in 1973, which attempted to uncover the reasons for the antisocial behaviour commonly found in prison
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Why did this study become so known?
Due to the severe reactions from the PP's. It was stopped just after 6 days, due to extreme stress in the prisoners and the increasingly sadistic behaviour of guards.
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What did Zimbardo conclude about this study?
He took the determistic view, and it suggested that people can be excused for their actions by blaming the situation they are in.
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What did R&H want to test?
They wanted to test the situational hypotheses. They wanted to get away from the idea that people had no control over their behaviour and to show that to accept that people have a natural tendency to behave in pathological
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What was the aim of this study?
To create an instituation 'like' a prison in which in to investigate the behaviour of groups that are unequal in resources, power and status, and the conditions under which people do or do not conform to allocated social roles
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What are the specific research aims?
collect data on the development of social interactions between groups of unequal power and to analyse the conditions under which people define themselves in terms of groups membership and accept or challenge group inequalities
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What was the method of this study?
It was a lab experiment designed to create a society in which PP's would live in for 10 days. It was conducted in a film studio in London.
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What was the layout of this prison like?
3 person lockable cells of a central area that was separated from the guards quarters by a lockable steel-mesh fence
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How did they recruit their sample?
They advertised it in the national press as well as leaflets. This study was a self selected sample
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How many PP's applied for this study? and what was the size of PP's they were looking for?
332 people applied, and they only needed 15 PP's for this study
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How did they narrow down the applicants?
They had to go through lots of screening and test, including a psychometric tests which measured social and clinical variables, a weekend of assessments by independent clinical psychologists and medical and character references.
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What were Reicher and Haslam's considerations of the sample?
Wanted the PP's to be representative to the populations so results could be generalised, only men recruited so comparability to SPE, and to avoid ethical issues, PP's picked to ensure diversity in ages, social class, ethnic backround
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What was the IV?
Permeability of the roles (possible change in their roles), Legitimacy of roles (how seriously did they PP's take their roles) and Cognitive alternatives (the different ideas)
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What did the researchers do to manipulate the permeability of the roles?
All PP's told guards pick due to their reliability, trustworthiness&initiative- told 3rd day there would be a promotion (see if it would change their behaviour)
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What did the researchers do to manipulate the legitimacy of role?
Told on the 3rd that there would no differences between the roles of the PP's, but unpractical to changes, so they would stay the same.
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What did the researchers do to manipulate the cognitive alternatives?
4th day a new prisoner was introduced to the prison - he was a trade union officers (brought in due to his background) They wanted to see whether if he would provide the skills required to organise 'collective action'
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What is the DV of this study?
PP's behaviour and experiences were measures, social variables, social identification, awareness of alternative plans and action, right wing authoritansm, organisational variables, and clinical vairbales
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How many guards where there?
5 guards
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What happened the night before the experiment with the guards?
Invited to a hotel, they were shown prison timetable, informed about duties, roll calls, and their responsibilities to ensure insititution runs smoothly and then told to draw up a series of punishments for rule violation, and told no physical punishe
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How was the guards authority enhanced?
They were given keys to all doors inside prison including, a punishment cell, access to an upper level guards station with surveillance system, snacks, cigarettes to give as reward or withhold as punishment
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What was the guard uniform like?
Formal trousers, shirt, and tie was superior to the prisoners
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What was their food and living standards like?
They got superior meals, extra drinks, and snacks and superior living standards.
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What happened with the prisoners as they arrived?
9 arrived on the first day, got their head shaved on arrival, and given a uniform
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What was their uniform like?
T-shirt printed with a 3 digit number on, with loose trouser and filmsy sandals
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What sort of information were the prisoners given?
They were given no information a part from the prison rules which were printed on the back of their cell doors. There was a brief announcement for researchers to say violence was not allowed and explaining possibility of promotions for prisoners
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How did the researchers safeguard against harming the pp's?
prior study plan for research sent to BPS ethics committee, pp's had 3 phase clinical, medical, and background screening, consent from pp's, paramedic on constant standby, on site security guards,
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Where the results to this study different to Zimbardo?
The results from this study were opposite to ZImbardo's this is because guards did not develop group identity, as the PP's did not internalise power roles and could not agree norm&priorities
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How did the prisoners see themselves throughout the study?
They started to see themselves as a group and became uncooperative with the guards. This shared identity led to improved organisations, effectiveness and mental well-being. As study continues prisoners became more positive and empowered
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Was how the guards behave what the researchers predicted?
No-some troubled by idea that groups and power are dangerous, led them to be reluctant to exercise control- never developed group identity, as a result lacked organisation&became despondent
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What happened once the prisoners realised they were not going to be promoted on day 3?
Prisoners compliance with prison rules diminished
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What happened on day 5 once a new prisoner had been added into the prison?
The prisoners collaborated to challenge the fragmented guards, leading to prison breakout and the collapse of the prisoner guard structure
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What did the prisoners and guards established once they have broken out?
A self-governing, self disciplining commune'
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What happened when some people began to lose faith in the commune system?
A number of former guards, and prisoners, decided to become the new guards, they asked for black berets and dark glasses as symbols of new authoritarian management that they wanted to impose
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What did the researchers expect the people who supported the commune to do?
To defend the commune, however they did nothing. This is because they lacked individual and collective will to make a stand against the new regime assumed to be lack of shared identity and lack of cognitive alternatives
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How come the new regime never occurred?
For ethical reasons the research teams decided they did not want risk the type of force they seen in the SPE, so decided to stop the study after 8 days
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What happened after they study was shut down?
PP's asked to stay an extra day so that they could debrief them, and that there was no hostility between any PP's
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What did R&H conclude?
Claimed to resemble the SPE, but PP's took very different path to get there-they claim that events wee not determined by the PP's being in groups or their social roles but the failure of those groups
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What did they say about earlier studies of tyranny such as SPE?
Agree tyranny is a product of group processes and not due to an individual deviancy.
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What are strengths to the method used?
High ecological validty pp's got involved to react (called experimental realism), Ethical issues reduced to avoid harming PP's (stopped early), lab based exper high level of control
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What are the weaknesses of the method used?
Prison not real, PP's not real guards&prisoners, shown on national TV lead to demand in characteristics (Zim criticised it) too much control can be artificial which effects ecological validity of study
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What did R&H say to the criticism about the study being on national TV?
Would of been hard to act in a situation like this for 8 days and hard to fake psychometric and physiological data which was gathered
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What the sample representative?
Chosen to reflect wide variety of variables including age, social class and ethic background. But PP's were all male, and volunteered- may all have similar personality making sample less representative
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What kid of data was collected in this study?
Both data collected- collected through observations, psychometric testing and physiological measures
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What are the advantages and disadvantages of the data collect?
Variety of measures can increase the validity of study since weakness of individual measuring systems can be overcome. Lack of qualitative self report- been good to see how the PP's were feeling, and thinking. Data can be reductionist
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How useful was the study?
It challegned the earlier research of anti social behaviour in groups- R&H point out that conditions and prevalent values of value groups determine collective actions (values of groups are often allocated by influential/powerful person)
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Card 2

Front

What is the R&H study linked too?

Back

The Zimbardo study in 1973, which attempted to uncover the reasons for the antisocial behaviour commonly found in prison

Card 3

Front

Why did this study become so known?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What did Zimbardo conclude about this study?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What did R&H want to test?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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