Academic Output
The findings of the production were published as Rethinking the Psychology of Tyranny (2006), providing more detail on the findings of Zimbardo’s prison study. What Halsam and Reicher attempted to challenge was the effects of social theory in the initial experiment. Further, how did people conform to a group and who were the people conforming.
Confounding initial criticism, findings of the BBC study were reported in scientific papers that were published in leading peer-reviewed journals. These papers addressed the dynamics of tyranny, resistance, stress and leadership. Indeed, it is possible that the study has formed the basis for more academic papers than any other single field experiment in psychology.
These papers challenged the role-based analysis forwarded by Zimbardo and served to elaborate ideas associated with a social identity approach to social, clinical and organizational psychology. One of their central arguments is that individuals only move towards tyranny once they have come to identify with a group and its leadership (in a way that Zimbardo's briefing of his guards encouraged) and once an authoritarian agenda has come to define that group's identity and to be seen as a solution to its problems.
Reflecting its contribution to ongoing debate in this area, in 2007 the BBC Prison study was included in the OCR examination board's Psychology A-level syllabus.
Halsam and Reicher were also able to produce several questions to apply for future studies. The first was whether or not the participants were affected by the camera crew that constantly watched them. Also, the simulation of a prison may not have provided a real enough account of the inequalities others face in the real world when experiencing social theory. Participants were fully aware that they could quit at any moment, a luxury that many people do not have in reality.
Read more about this topic: The Experiment
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