The Experiment - Unequal Power

The Experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

'via Blog this'

Controversy

The series courted controversy, and was criticised by Philip Zimbardo who said that his original experiment did not need repeating. He also claimed that The Experiment was simply reality television and that it had no scientific base or value, as participants would be playing for the cameras and not acting "normally" (Zimbardo, 2006). In turn, Haslam and Reicher have responded that their goal was not to replicate the Stanford study, but rather to expose limitations in Zimbardo's own theorizing and method. In particular, they sought to demonstrate that internalized group membership could be a basis for resistance as well as tyranny. This prediction was derived from social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and the study incorporated manipulations designed to test some of its core hypotheses.

Haslam and Reicher also argue that Zimbardo's own findings in the Stanford study arose from the leadership role that he had assumed as Prison superintendent — explicitly encouraging the guards to demean the prisoners (see Banyard, 2007). Accordingly, in their study, Haslam and Reicher had no formal role within the prison. They also took non-reactive psychometric and physiological measures to back up and triangulate their behavioural observations and address concerns that the processes observed in the study were somehow 'unreal'.

Zimbardo's (2006) final criticism is that the findings of the BBC study lacked external validity, since prisoner domination of guards is not observed "anywhere in the known universe". Haslam and Reicher have countered that the purpose of their study was to demonstrate the theoretical possibility of resistance, noting that this is a feature of most social systems in which tyranny prevails (e.g., as argued by Michel Foucault). They also observe that the imprisonment of leaders is often important for the development of resistance movements and for processes of social change. 

Group Identity

As a reaction of individual social identity, groups were able to form through shared goals and identities. There are two distinct groups in the series, "prisoner" and "guard", each striving to achieve their own goals through collective self-realization. "Collective self-realization has immense psychological benefits for individual group members. As we saw when the Prisoners first confronted the Guards and later when the Commune was established, the success of groups in bringing about social change is uplifting for their members."^[2] This helped group members to ward off mental health conditions likestress and depression. However destructive the group was to the opposite group and their own mental health, they were effective in their loyalty and maintained consensus.

[edit]

Concluding the Study

 

After the third day, the prisoners accepted their position, uniting them as a group and allowing them to overthrow the guards. In rebuttal, the guards formed their own government with stricter rules and harder punishment. Finally, Reicher and Halsam were forced to terminate the experiment due to the anticipated breach of ethics due to the newly formed government.

[edit]Themes

[edit]Individual Identity

Within the series we see a perfect example of social identity. We can see that the guards not only acted like guards, but internalized this term, taking on "guard" as a part of their identity. However, the attainment of this social identity would not have been possible if the prisoners did not take on "prisoner" as their social identity as well.