Social Identity Theory

• Tajfel and Turner wanted to understand intergroup discrimination.

• They wanted to understand what makes an ingroup and an outgroup.

• They argued that when we interact with others, we are not just our personal selves but are representatives of the various groups that we belong to.

• Take a moment to think about the groups that you belong to.

Social Identity Theory• What social groups exist in a school?

Social Identity Theory

• Our identity is impacted by our groups and is made up of both personal and social components (or ‘parts’).

• The way we interact is influenced by whether it is “our group” or “their group”.

Social Identity Theory• There are three mechanisms within social identity

theory:

1. Categorisation – the process by which we put others under labels or categories; we might exaggerate the similarities within a group as well as the differences outside a group.

2. Comparison – We compare the groups that we are in and are more favourable to those compared to others; this results in a rivalry between groups.

3. Identification – Membership of a group can help to build self-esteem; this happens particularly when our group is high up the hierarchy.

Volunteers...!

Background to Reicher and Haslam

• Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues recruited students from Stanford University in California (Haney, Banks and Zimbardo, 1973) to play the roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison.

• Those chosen to take part were judged as physically and mentally healthy.

• They were divided into two groups by a flip of the coin. Half were randomly assigned to be guards, the other to be prisoners.

The Prison• The prison was constructed

by boarding up each end of a corridor in the basement of Stanford's Psychology Department building.

• That corridor was "The Yard" and was the only outside place where prisoners were allowed to walk, eat, or exercise, except to go to the toilet down the hallway.

• At one end of the corridor was a small holding area where the researchers could record the prison.

The Arrest• On a quiet Sunday morning

in August, police car swept through the town picking up college students as part of a mass arrest.

• The suspect was picked up at his home, charged, warned of his legal rights, spread-eagled against the police car, searched, and handcuffed -- often as surprised and curious neighbours looked on.

The arrest• The car arrived at the station, the

suspect was brought inside, formally booked, again warned of his rights and finger printed.

• The suspect was then taken to a holding cell where he was left blindfolded to ponder his.

• Zimbardo wanted the arrestees to experience the same disorientation that any average criminal might experience when first taken into police custody.

• Why? What is significant about this?

Arrival• Each prisoner was systematically

searched and stripped naked. • He was then deloused with a

spray, to suggest that he may have germs or lice.

• Consider the results of stripping, delousing, and shaving the heads of prisoners or members of the military.

• What happens to people when they go through an experience like this?

Prisoner’s Uniform• The prisoner was then issued

a uniform. The main part of this uniform was a dress, or smock, which each prisoner wore at all times with no underclothes.

• On the smock, in front and in back, was his prison ID number.

• Why would numbers be used?

The Guards

• The guards were given no specific training on how to be guards.

• They were free, within limits, to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison and to command the respect of the prisoners.

• The guards made up their own set of rules.

The Punishments

• Push-ups were a common form of physical punishment imposed by the guards to punish infractions of the rules or displays of improper attitudes toward the guards or institution.

• One of the guards also stepped on the prisoners' backs while they did push-ups, or made other prisoners sit or step on the backs of fellow prisoners doing their push-ups.

Rebellions...• On the second day prisoners

removed their stocking caps, ripped off their numbers, and barricaded themselves inside the cells by putting their beds against the door.

• The guards were very much angered and frustrated because the prisoners also began to taunt and curse them.

• At first the guards got a fire extinguisher which shot a stream of skin-chilling carbon dioxide, and forced the prisoners away from the doors.

...and Reprimands• The guards broke into each

cell, stripped the prisoners naked, took the beds out, forced the ringleaders of the prisoner rebellion into solitary confinement, and generally began to harass and intimidate the prisoners.

• The guards began to calculate ways that they could get at the prisoners.

• They did this by arranging privileges for “good” prisoners and taking away privileges from “bad” prisoners.

Prisoner #416• Things became especially

bad when one prisoner became a scapegoat for the others.

• Prisoner #416 had become withdrawn and did not conform with the rest of the group.

• He held a hunger strike in protest.

• Rather than becoming a “hero” with the prisoners, he became the focus of humiliation.

“It’s terrible what you are doing to these boys!”

• Zimbardo and his colleagues called off the proposed two week experiment after 6 days.

• When parents of the students involved began to question the conditions that their sons were kept in, and another psychologist questioned the study’s morality, the researchers knew that it had gone too far.

The Aftermath

• It became clear that the apparent sadistic behaviour of the guards had escalatedsince the start of the study.

• This had not been predicted by the researchers who had tested all participants for physical and mental issues prior to the study.

Prisoner #416"I began to feel that I was losing my

identity, that the person that I called Clay, the person who put me in this place, the person who volunteered to go into this prison -- because it was a prison to me; it still is a prison to me.

I don't regard it as an experiment or a simulation because it was a prison run by psychologists instead of run by the state.

I began to feel that that identity, the person that I was that had decided to go to prison was distant from me --was remote until finally I wasn't that, I was 416. I was really my number."

Read through his comments. What has happened to him? How does social identity theory help us to understand his feelings?

Link:

• Visit the following website to see and read more about the findings of the Stanford Prison Experiment:

http://www.prisonexp.org/

Reicher and Haslam (2006)

•The study was a reaction to Zimbardo's 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment.

•Zimbardo wanted to test why it is that prisons fail to rehabilitate offenders.

•Zimbardo thought it was the prison setting rather than the personality of the inmates and guards that was significant.

•What sort of hypothesis is this? (Think Milgram!)

Dispositional Hypothesis

This views explains behaviour in terms of the individual – their nature, personality, outlook, character.

If so, then all guards are sadistic, uneducated, insensitive and all prisoners are violent, aggressive, lawless fiends.

Situational Hypothesis

The environment in which you find yourself is the strongest influence on your behaviour.

If so, then you may enter prison as an unaggressive, sensitive person but the prison environment will turn you into a violent, angry, hostile person.

Situational or Dispositional Hypotheses?

• A person who is jumping up and down, punching the air, yelling 'Arsenal!' and chanting songs.

• A person, (adult), skipping down a supermarket aisle, singing loudly about fluffy bunnies and chucking packs of toilet roll in the air.

• A person who is in the middle of an argument with their partner and stamps their feet and shouts loudly at one point during the argument.

• A parent who hits the roof when they discover their teenaged son smoking, even though they themselves indulged in the habit when they were 14 too.

Recap: Zimbardo’s Study

•The Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment concluded that social roles dictates behaviour, supporting a situational hypothesis.

•In this case it was the social roles of prisoners and guards.

Up to date....

•Will the Reicher & Haslam BBC Prison Study reach a similar conclusion?

Video

•As you watch the short excerpt from the '5 Steps to Tyranny' programme think about how social identity theory, roles and group identification apply to Reicher & Haslam’s study.

Is it possible to blame the situation rather than the individual?

Abu Ghraib prison, 2004

Reicher & Haslam's challenge to Zimbardo's results:

* People do have control over their behaviour

* If you blame the situation for behaviour then you can excuse anything, no matter how terrible i.e. holocaust, genocide, Abu Ghraib

* Group membership has a powerful influence over behaviour, particularly if one identifies with the group (i.e. the Women's movement)

Reicher and Haslam Aims

• To examine group behaviour in terms of unequal levels of power (how was this done?)

• To examine the conditions under which people assume their roles, asking:

- Do participants wholly accept their roles?

- Do those with power, abuse it?

- Do those with no power, accept it?

The Power of a Group

•Early 20th century – women felt powerless to change gender inequalities. Collective action by women. Result – votes and increased influence in society.

Reicher & Haslam were also testing...

Are we just sheep?

Link to Milgram study:

In a later experiment, Milgram found that participants are more likely to defy the experimenter when they are supported by confederates who are also of the same mind (e.g. disobedient).

Power in numbers!

Independent variables of Reicher & Haslam study:

On Day 3:

> Participants beliefs about the permeability ofgroup boundaries were changed.> At the start of the study there was the possibility of promotion from prisoner to guard. > Reicher & Haslam decided that from day 3 this was no longer possible.

Likely effect on the prisoners?

Independent variables:

Day 4:

> At the start of study participants were told that guards had been chosen because of their personal qualities (i.e. reliable, trustworthy). > Reicher & Haslam told the participants that in fact there was no difference between prisoners and guards, the assigning of roles had been random.

Likely effect on the prisoners' sense of group identity?

Independent variables:

Day 5:

Cognitive alternatives introduced – prisoner no. 10 introduced who had been a trade union official. Reicher & Haslam expected him to bring alternative plans/action to the group and to negotiate with the guards to bring about more equality between the 2 groups.

Likely outcomes?

Dependent variables:

- social variables (social identification, awareness of alternative plans of action, authoritarianism, subservience)

- organisational variables (obeying rules or not, adhering to authority commands)

- clinical variables (self-efficacy, depression, stress hormones)

Guard's authority enhanced by:

- keys to all doors

- punishment isolation cell

- surveillance system

- power to give rewards (snacks, cigarettes) or punishments (bread and water diet)

- better living conditions and uniform

What happened?

Start of study – groups in control, compliant participants.

After day 3 – no promotion, participants become uncooperative, some groups uncomfortable with own authority.

Prisoners rebel (they have strong group identity and cohesion) – organised breakout.

What happened?

•A new regime is introduced – 'a self-governing, self-disciplining commune'.

•Some former prisoners and guards become the new guards – they ask for black berets and dark glasses.

•Lack of shared identity and cognitive alternatives mean that the rest of the commune are aimless.

What happened?•Day 8: Reicher & Haslam stop the study as they predict it is becoming too tyrannical and too like Zimbardo's SPE in terms of brutality and abuse of power.

• Tyranny - a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)

• Tyrants hold dominance through threat of punishment and violence .

Reicher & Haslam's conclusions:

- Different to SPE because events not determined by social role but by failure of certain groups (ieguards had no cohesion)

- Same as SPE in that tyranny is a product of group processes, not individual evil

- Disagree with Zimbardo – people in groups can still control behaviour

- Individual identifies with group only when it makes sense to do so.

Reicher & Haslam: Mini Quiz

1. This study was: a) case study b)experiment c) observation d) all of the above

2. This study was based on: a) Piliavin's Good Samaritan study b) the idea that Germans are evil c) Zimbardo's SPEd) Kitty Genovese murder

3. Which of these was not an intervention used by R & H? a) introduction of new prisoner on day 4 b) promotion of a prisoner to guard c) stopping the study earlier than planned d) dressing the prisoners in drag

4. The guards failed because: a) they used violence b) they did not work effectively as a group c) they lost money gambling with the prisoners d) they had a spy amongst them

5. Which of these was not a DV being measured? a) individual differences b) social variables c) clinical variables d) organisational variables

6. The 'commune' created by the participants was judged 'unethical' by Reicher & Haslam on the grounds of it being: a) silly b) lacking in ecological validity c) a tyrannical regime d) boring