Social Justice as a Form of Discourse Impacting Identity for Action.docx

Social Justice as a Form of Discourse Impacting Identity for
Action
By Philip S. Mirci, Ph.D. (2015)Introduction
Richard Paul (1992) wrote:
Because we do not come to our experience with a blank slate for
a mind, because our thinking is already, at any given moment,
moving in a direction, because we can form new ideas, beliefs,
and patterns of thought only through the scaffolding of our
previously formed thought, it is essential that we learn to think
critically in environments in which a variety of competing ideas
are taken seriously. … Knowledge is discovered by thinking,
analyzed by thinking, organized by thinking, transformed by
thinking… There is no way to take the thinking out of
knowledge, or the struggle out of thinking, just as there is no
way to create a neat and tidy step-by-step path to knowledge
that all minds can mindlessly follow … But thinking requires
counter-thinking, opposition and challenge, as well as support.
We need reasons meaningful to us, some persuasive logic, to
move our minds from one set of ideas or beliefs to another. In
other words, we must “argue” ourselves out of our present
thinking and into thinking that is more or less novel to us if we
are to gain genuine knowledge [Critical thinking: what every
person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world. Santa
Rosa, CA: The Foundation for Critical Thinking, p. xi].
The search for truth and knowledge is one of the finest
attributes of man ― though often it is most loudly voiced by
those who strive for it the least.
The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we

have done thus far creates problems that cannot be solved at the
same level of thinking at which we created them.
Constructivism, as a learning theory, was consistent with
neuroscience research: the brain makes sense of experience by
accessing its own existing knowledge base in order to interpret
that experience. Furthermore, one’s identity is connected to this
sense-making process. Thus, one’s own knowledge about self,
others, and the world is limited. Intellectual humility is the
discipline of bringing this awareness to different methods of
knowing. Stephen Freeman (2000) summarized three different
methods of knowing that were first stated by Charles Peirce in
1940:
The first method of knowing, the method of tenacity, states that
people hold firm to truths they “know” are true. In establishing
these truths there may be a tendency to omit evidence that does
not support our beliefs and to find and include that, which does.
This represents the well-known problem of objectivity. Frequent
repetition or re-indoctrination of these assumptions or truths

enhances their validity. This, simply stated, means one finds
what one looks for…
The second method of knowing is the method of authority or
established belief. This method has the weight of tradition and
public sanction behind it. Many of the things we think we know
have been handed down by tradition. People have also
traditionally sought knowledge from those in positions of
authority. History is replete with examples of kings and clerics
who have dictated truth to the masses. Even now, this source is
still used. The amount of information one is faced with is often
overwhelming, and the method of authority allows it to be
accepted at face value, without validation…
The third method of knowing is the method of a priori. This
method responds to the question: “If facts are known, what is it
that is known?” … a fact in a foreign frame of reference is not
false, it is simply meaningless [Freeman, S. (2000). Ethics: An
introduction to philosophy and practice. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth /Thompson, pp. 41-42].
An examination of these three methods reveals the limitations
of one’s knowing. The first represents the acceptance of
whatever is transmitted “as true” to be “true” without the
unexamined assumptions ever being surfaced and identified
within one’s thinking. The second reveals the dangers of blind
acceptance of authority “at face value without validation.”
Attempting to challenge this way of knowing usually is met
with resistance because such “knowing” constitutes established
belief that is publicly sanctioned and/or comes from tradition.
The third method provides a means for making sense from
experiences in terms of “knowledge categories” that answer the
question: “If facts were known, what actually would be
known?” For example, with the third method of knowing, a
person can address whether or not behavior is consistent with
espoused values. How many authoritative books regarding

leadership address the power of unexamined assumptions in
individual and organizational behavior that perpetuate social
injustices?
The danger of naiveté regarding the concept of “objectivity”
Embedded within the individual and collective psyche of the
Western world is the concept of “objectivity” as being absolute
and beyond any degree of subjectivity. Thus, one’s mental
model of reality usually is perceived to be correct and true. The
sense of identity emerging from such perception is assumed
without critical self-reflection regarding the extent to which
one’s thinking may be determined by a worldview and
conformity within it. Richard Paul and Linda Elder (2001)
revealed the deceptive nature of one’s own thinking:
Humans live with the unrealistic but confident sense that we
have fundamentally figured out the way things actually are, and
that we have done this objectively. … Here are the most
commonly used psychological standards in human thinking:
· “It’s true because I believe it.” Innate egocentrism: I assume
that what I believe is true even though I have never questioned
the basis for many of my beliefs.
· “It’s true because we believe it.” Innate sociocentrism: I
assume that the dominant beliefs within the groups to which I
belong are true even though I have never questioned the basis
for many of these beliefs.
· “It’s true because I want to believe it.” Innate wish
fulfillment: I believe in, for example, accounts of behavior that
put me (or the groups to which I belong) in a positive rather
than a negative light even though I have not seriously
considered the evidence for the more negative account. I believe
what “ feels good,” what supports my other beliefs, what does
not require me to change my thinking is any significant way,
what does not require me to admit I have been wrong.
· “It’s true because it is in my selfish interest to believe it.”
Innate selfishness: I hold fast to beliefs that justify my getting

more power, money, or personal advantage even though these
beliefs are not grounded in sound reasoning or evidence.
[Paul, R. and Elder, L. (2001). Critical thinking: Tools for
taking charge of your learning and your life. Upper Saddle
Back, NJ: Prentice Hall, p. 212].
The difficulty of such thinking is recognizing when it is
happening. Emotional commitments to certain beliefs, attitudes,
practices, and expectations often are operative at an
unconscious level:
When we understand that the mind naturally uses numerous
methods for hiding its egocentrism [and sociocentrism] … And
only when we become adept at detecting them can we take steps
toward changing them [Paul, R. and Elder, L. (2001). Critical
thinking: Tools for taking charge of your learning and your life.
Upper Saddle Back, NJ: Prentice Hall, pp. 354-355].
Definition of Worldview
The dominant worldview in a society inevitably means that
those without the social, economic, and political power usually
are marginalized. Anyone wishing to be a social justice leader
needs to cultivate intellectual humility, intellectual empathy,
and intellectual courage. John Studley (1998) wrote:
Most of us are not conscious of our worldview. We do not learn
it so much as absorb it from our surrounding culture. It is
passed on from generation to generation with minimal change,
the assumptions rarely being reviewed or revised. A worldview
gives a culture structure, a subconscious legitimacy in the
minds of the people. It serves as the basis for evaluation,
judging and validating experience. It is a yardstick with which
people measure events and circumstances in the culture,
providing criteria of acceptability. It provides psychological

reinforcement for a society's way of life. It creates a "we-they"
dynamic; through a common worldview people identify with
their society as opposed to all other societies. [Studley, J. (May
1998). Dominant knowledge systems and local knowledge.
http://www.mtnforum.org/resources/library/studj98a.htm ].
Development of a worldview occurs within the context of
relationships resulting in the “absorption” of beliefs, attitudes,
expectations, and practices. Influences can shape how a person
understands self, others, and the world.
Sociocentric Thinking and Worldview
Many people calling themselves leaders are content to function
within a worldview shared by others. This is a form of
compliance that may rob a person from individuating to the
point of being able to question the unexamined assumptions
upon which a worldview often is based. Before proceeding
further, a definition of sociocentricity must be presented
because it is often the unconscious but operative assumption
governing a worldview:
Sociocentricity is the assumption that one’s own social group is
inherently and self-evidently superior to all others. When a
group or society sees itself as superior, and so considers its
views as correct or as the only reasonable or justifiable views,
and all its actions as justified, it has a tendency to presuppose
this superiority in all of its thinking and, thus, to think closed-
mindedly. Dissent and doubt are considered disloyal and are
rejected. Few people recognize the sociocentric nature of much
of their thought [p. 414].
The “cure” for ethnocentrism or sociocentrism is empathetic
thought (thinking within the perspective of opposing groups and
cultures). Empathetic thought is rarely cultivated. Instead, many
give lip service to tolerance while privileging the beliefs,

norms, and practices of their own culture.
Critical thinkers are aware of the sociocentric nature of
virtually all human groups and resist the pressure of group-think
that emerges from in-group thinking. They realize that universal
ethical standards supersede group expectations and demands
when questions of an ethical nature are at issue. They do not
assume that the groups to which they belong are inherently
superior to other groups. Instead, they attempt to critique every
group accurately, seeking to determine its strengths and
weaknesses. Their loyalty to a country is critically based on the
principles and ideals of the country and is not based on
uncritical loyalty to person, party, or national traditions [Paul,
R. and Elder, L. (2001). Critical thinking: Tools for taking
charge of your learning and your life. Upper Saddle Back, NJ:
Prentice Hall, p. 400].
Conformity within a Worldview
Humans are social: they exist within relational contexts. The
challenge of a person wishing to become an ethical leader is
being able to examine critically these contexts through the
development of ethical reasoning. This is difficult because of
one’s subjectivity in interpreting the contexts. Becoming more
aware, at deeper and deeper levels, of one’s natural tendency
towards sociocentrism constitutes an essential building block in
ethical reasoning:
Not only are humans naturally egocentric but we are also easily
drawn into sociocentric thinking and behavior. Groups offer us
security to the extent that we internalize and unthinkingly
conform to their rules, imperatives, and taboos. Growing up, we
learn to conform to many groups. … Our unconscious
acceptance of the values of the group leads to the unconscious

standard: “It’s true if we believe it.” There seems to be no
belief so absurd but that some group of humans irrationally
accepts it as rational.
Not only do we accept the belief systems of the groups to which
we belong, but most important, we act on those belief systems.
For example, many groups are anti-intellectual in nature. …
In addition to face-to-face groups we are in, we are influenced
indirectly by large-scale social forces that reflect our
membership in society at large. For example, in capitalist
societies, the dominant thinking is that people should strive to
make as much money as possible, though this form of thinking,
it might be argued, encourages people to accept a large gap
between the haves and have-nots as right and normal.
Or consider this: Within mass societies the nature and solution
to most public issues and problems are presented in
sensationalized sound-bytes by television and news media. As a
result, people often come to think about complex problems in
terms of simplistic media-fostered solutions. Many people are
led to believe that expressions such as “Get tough with
criminals!” and “Three strikes and you’re out!” represent
plausible ways to deal with complex social problems.
What is more, the portrayal of life in Hollywood movies exerts
a significant influence on how we conceptualize ourselves, our
problems, and our lives. Sociocentric influences are at work at
every level of social life in both subtle and blatant ways. There
are many sociocentric forces in society them [Paul, R. and
Elder, L. (2001). Critical thinking: Tools for taking charge of
your learning and your life. Upper Saddle Back, NJ: Prentice
Hall, pp. 355-356].
Complexity, Conformity, and the Illusion of Critical Thinking

The human person is complex. In examining Murray Bowen’s
concepts of “togetherness force,” “individuality force,” “self-
differentiation,” and “societal regression” or “societal
emotional process,” the key understanding is that ethical
development necessitates differentiating from unconscious,
unexamined, and uninformed beliefs, attitudes, values,
practices, and ways of behaving that we’ve absorbed from
worldview influences shaping one’s perceptions of a sense of
self, others, and the world.
Pursuit of personal development towards becoming an ethical
leader can create within a person an identity crisis. This may
occur as a result of consciously and intentionally realizing that
ethical leadership is inseparable from one’s stance regarding
social justice. Because social justice involves consciously and
intentionally reshaping institutions, an ethical leader begins
seeing unjust institutional practices and beliefs that previously
were “invisible” to him/her. Coming to such insight may well be
impossible as long as one remains immersed in his/her current
uncritical worldview defined through habitual egocentric and
sociocentric reasoning.
Richard Paul, in a text, now considered a classic defined critical
thinking standards. These need to be developed within us.
Without cultivation of these standards, people often operate in
ways that constitute micro-aggressions towards other people.
The following are four of the intellectual standards [Paul, R.,
1992. Critical thinking: What every person needs to survive in a
rapidly changing world. Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for
Critical Thinking]:
Intellectual Empathy: Having a consciousness of the need to
imaginatively put oneself in the place of others in order to
genuinely understand them, which requires the consciousness of
our egocentric tendency to identify truth with our immediate

perceptions of long-standing thought or belief. This trait
correlates with the ability to reconstruct accurately the
viewpoints and reasoning of others and to reason from premises,
assumptions, and ideas other than our own. This trait also
correlates with the willingness to remember occasions when we
were wrong in the past despite an intense conviction that we
were right, and with the ability to imagine our being similarly
deceived in a case-at-hand. (Paul, 1992, p. 652)
Intellectual Humility: Having a consciousness of the limits of
one's knowledge, including a sensitivity to circumstances in
which one's native egocentrism is likely to function self-
deceptively; sensitivity to bias, prejudice and limitations of
one's viewpoint. Intellectual humility depends on recognizing
that one should not claim more than one actually knows. It does
not imply spinelessness or submissiveness. It implies the lack of
intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined
with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such
foundations, of one's beliefs. (Paul, 1992, p. 652)
Intellectual Courage: Having a consciousness of the need to
face and fairly address ideas, beliefs or viewpoints toward
which we have strong negative emotions and to which we have
not given a serious hearing. This courage is connected with the
recognition that ideas considered dangerous or absurd are
sometimes rationally justified (in whole or in part) and that
conclusions and beliefs inculcated in us are sometimes false or
misleading. To determine for ourselves which is which, we must
not passively and uncritically "accept" what we have "learned."
Intellectual courage comes into play here, because inevitably we
will come to see some truth in some ideas considered dangerous
and absurd, and distortion or falsity in some ideas strongly held
in our social group. We need courage to be true to our own
thinking in such circumstances. The penalties for non-
conformity can be severe. (Paul, 1992, p. 651)

Moral Fairmindedness: Willingness and consciousness of the
need to entertain all moral viewpoints sympathetically and to
assess them with the same intellectual standards without
reference to one’s own feelings or vested interests, or the
feelings or vested interests of one’s friends, community, or
nation; implies adherence to moral [intellectual] standards
without reference to one’s own advantage or the advantage of
one’s group. (Paul, 1992, p. 2530
Summary
Social injustices have existed in the United States in the forms
of institutionalized oppression. Young people in schools have
remained especially vulnerable to the following forms of hate:
· Racism
· Sexism
· Heterosexism
· Classism
· Ableism
· Sizeism
· Ageism
· Audism
· Religious Intolerance
Often religious intolerance has manifested itself in the very
perpetuation of these “isms.”
Developing social justice discourse will be limited and distorted
to the degree that a person remains committed to her/his
egocentricity, ethnocentricity, and sociocentricity. Given the
critical need for social justice leaders and advocates, people
unwilling to pursue personal paradigm shifts (i.e., engage in
transformative adult learning) remain liabilities within the
education system and society.
2

1
Tyranny revisited - Groups, psychological well-being and the
health of societies
Stephen Reicher and S. Alexander Haslam discuss results from
their BBC Prison Study.
Evil acts, we like to think, are the preserve of psychopaths. Yet
30 to 40 years ago, a series of classic psychology experiments
showed that the behaviour of ordinary people can be
transformed in groups and that the most decent of individuals
can be led to behave in the most indecent ways. These studies
raise critical questions about the processes through which
groups can transform us, and whether such transformations are
always for the worse. Yet for decades it has been impossible to
conduct studies with the same power as the classic studies and
to interrogate their conclusions. The BBC Prison Study has
broken this impasse and provides a surprising new set of
answers with important social, clinical and organisational
ramifications.
Are groups ‘naturally’ bad for us?
Of all the demonstrations that groups can change us, perhaps the
most extreme was conducted by Philip Zimbardo and colleagues
at the University of Stanford in 1971 (Haney, Banks &
Zimbardo, 1973). In this, ordinary young men were divided
randomly into prisoners and guards and placed in a prison-like
setting. Very quickly, some of the guards began to act brutally.
They set out to humiliate the prisoners and to deprive them of
their rights. Within days, some prisoners began to develop
psychological disorders. So severe were the consequences that a
study scheduled to last a fortnight had to be terminated after
only six days.

The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) provided a grimly
compelling portrait of the power of circumstances to shape
behaviour. This is the main reason why its findings are well-
known even beyond the boundaries of academia. But the SPE
didn’t just show the depths that people can descend to in
groups, it also sought to explain exactly what caused this
descent. To those who ran the study, it illustrated a general
tendency for people in groups to lose their capacity for
judgement and agency and hence to become helpless to resist
antisocial impulses. Groups are inevitably bad for you. Groups
with power inevitably abuse it. Or, in the researchers’ own
words, the aggression of the guards ‘was emitted simply as a
“natural” consequence of being in the uniform of a “guard” and
asserting the power inherent in that role’ (Haney et al., 1973,
p.12).
A powerful phenomenon… but a questionable explanation
Although few doubt what happened at Stanford, there are in fact
good reasons to doubt Zimbardo’s explanation of the events. If
it is ‘natural’ to abuse power in groups, why did only some
guards behave this way? And if only some guards were brutal,
was this ‘natural’ or was it a product of Zimbardo’s leadership?
After all, in his briefing, Zimbardo instructed his guards by
telling them: ‘You can create in the prisoners…a notion of
arbitrariness, that their life is totally controlled by us, by the
system, you, me – and they’ll have no privacy… We’re going to
take away their individuality in various ways. In general what
all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness.’
There are also moral reasons to doubt the ‘role’ explanation. It
suggests that all of us would mindlessly abuse others if we were
given roles that appeared to demand this. This denies the
capacity for human agency and choice (Reicher & Haslam, in
press). And it suggests that – whatever position they occupy in
the social hierarchy – bullies and tyrants are passive victims of
psychology who cannot be held accountable for their actions. In
this way, psychological analysis easily ends up excusing the

inexcusable (Haslam & Reicher, 2006).
Beyond Stanford – The BBC Prison Study
We have been stuck with this questionable explanation for a
whole generation, because the behaviour that lent the SPE
impact made it unethical to repeat. How can we advance
understanding of the psychology of tyranny without ourselves
being tyrannical?
This was the dilemma that confronted us when we set to work
on a new ‘prison study’ in 2001. This ended up being one of the
largest experiments in social psychology since the 1970s. The
study we conducted – referred to as the BBC Prison Study – was
a collaboration between ourselves and the broadcaster. It was
filmed by the BBC and televised in four hour-long
documentaries in May 2002.
Yet even before the study was run, and certainly after the
documentaries were aired, the BBC Prison Study attracted
considerable controversy – much of which was aired in The
Psychologist. Was it just a piece of reality television with no
serious implications? Can collaborations between the media and
academia ever be of scientific value? Can broadcasting
psychological research be ethical?
Scientific output
These were valid fears. That is why we negotiated a unique
contract with the BBC whereby we, the scientists, would design,
run and analyse the research (as we would in any other study)
while the broadcaster recorded and transmitted key elements of
the research. The television documentaries themselves were not
the full scientific story, but rather were designed to provide ‘a
window on the science’: something that might get people
interested and motivate them to find out more for themselves.
However, the process of producing television documentaries
moves much more quickly than that of performing scientific
analysis and securing scientific publication. So, for a long time
these documentaries were the primary form of information about

the study that was in the public domain. It is only now that, in
the words of The Guardian’s John Sutherland (2005), The
Experiment has ‘crossed back into academia’. So it is only now
that is it possible to assess the scientific merits of the exercise.
Did it provide any worthwhile insights into the psychology of
group behaviour and misbehaviour? And did it do so with a
rigour that meets the standards required for scientific
publication? This is a particularly pertinent question in light of
the fact that the findings of the SPE were never published in a
peer-reviewed psychology journal.
The answer to the latter question is clear. The study’s key
findings were first summarised in Scientific American Mind
(Haslam & Reicher, 2005) and in a more detailed exploration of
tyranny in the British Journal of Social Psychology (Reicher &
Haslam, 2006). Additional publications also explore a broad
range of social, clinical and organisational issues including
agency (Reicher & Haslam, in press), stress (Haslam & Reicher,
in press-b), leadership (Reicher et al., 2005) and organisational
behaviour (Haslam & Reicher, in press-a). Indeed, to our
knowledge, the study has generated more peer-reviewed
publications than any previous social psychological field study.
As to the former question – did the study provide any
worthwhile insights? – the answer obviously depends upon the
judgement of those who read our work. However, for us, one of
the contributions of the study is already implied in the range of
outputs it has led to. Characteristically, in our everyday studies,
psychologists tend to focus on a narrow set of phenomena and
collect a limited range of data. We thereby perpetuate arbitrary
disciplinary divisions between domains that one might expect to
be interrelated. In nearly 10 days of constant data collection –
which incorporated observational, psychometric and
physiological measures – we were able to examine how
relations within and between groups developed and impacted
upon each other. We also had space to investigate clinical and
organisational as well as social psychological issues. We were
thereby able to see how phenomena that are of core concern to

us as social psychologists (notably, the presence or absence of a
shared sense of social identity) are related to the mental well-
being of individuals and the health of social systems. Although
it has been hypothesised that there is a link between these
elements (e.g. Ellemers et al., 1999; Haslam, 2001), no single
study had demonstrated that the phenomena are interrelated,
elucidated how they are interrelated, or explored how their
relationship unfolds over time.
Procedure, ethics and rationale
In what ways, then, did the design of our study differ from the
SPE? The study used the same basic set-up as Zimbardo’s study
and divided people randomly into prisoners and guards.
However, unlike Zimbardo, we did not act as prison
superintendents who instructed the guards how to act. We
simply set up a situation in which the guards had authority, had
the tools of power and had better conditions (food, living
quarters, etc.) than the prisoners. Our intention was to create a
situation that was harsh and testing, but not harmful. In order to
make sure we got the balance right, our study was also overseen
by clinical psychologists and an independent ethics committee
chaired by an MP.
On the basis of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979),
we also planned a series of interventions designed to impact on
the level of shared social identity among the prisoners and
thereby to increase their willingness to resist the guards’ regime
and any tyranny associated with it. Using systematic
observation (aided by unobtrusive filming) and daily
administration of psychometric and physiological measures, we
then observed how both groups reacted.
Although we set the study in a prison-like environment, our
primary goal was not to mimic a real prison. That would have
been impossible as well as unethical. What was real, however,
was the fact that one group (the guards) had more power and
resources than the other (the prisoners) – a feature that is also
characteristic of a wide range of institutional environments such

as offices, schools, factories, and so on. Our interest, like
Zimbardo’s, was then to use our findings – and, more
specifically, the theoretical analysis they support (Turner, 1981)
– to comment more generally upon how people respond to social
inequality. When do the powerful embrace inequality and abuse
their power? When do the powerless succumb to oppression or
reject and resist it? And what is the role of the group in these
processes?
The Guard–Prisoner Regime: Solidarity and well-being
What we found can be divided into two phases. At the start of
the study, both groups felt distinctly uncomfortable with the
exercise of power and with inequalities they encountered. This
is understandable in the case of the prisoners. It meant that, as
time went by, they increasingly banded together as a group in
order to challenge the authority of the guards. It is, perhaps,
somewhat more surprising in the case of the guards, who were
never willing to embrace their position and exert their authority.
So, rather than passive prisoners and brutal guards, we observed
rebellious prisoners and ambivalent guards – some of whom
were keener to befriend the prisoners than to punish them. Our
participants showed no ‘natural’ tendencies to slip helplessly
into role.
The fact that the prisoners came to share a group identity while
the guards did not is important in itself. But some of the most
interesting findings in the study have to do with the
consequences of this contrast. These are summarised in Table 1
[PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE PDF VERSION FOR THE
TABLE]. Amongst the prisoners, social identification led to
agreement and mutual support. This in turn led to effective
coordination, agreed leadership and organisational
effectiveness. They worked together and were thereby
empowered to turn their goals, beliefs and values into social
realities. This collective self-realisation both increased the
initial level of group identification and was in turn good for the
psychological well-being of the prisoners. Their levels of

depression and burnout decreased over time. They didn’t let the
stressors in the situation overcome them but rather acted to
eliminate the sources of their stress. In effect, they experienced
the virtuous circle of social identification represented in Figure
1a [PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE PDF VERSION FOR THE
FIGURE].
The contrast with the guards could not be greater. For them,
lack of social identification led to disagreement and discord.
There was no coordination amongst them, no leadership, no
organisational effectiveness. They worked against each other
and thereby lost any power they could have derived from the
resources available to them. Their inability to impose their will
led to a decrease in group identification and to rising levels of
depression, burnout and internal dissent over time. Rather than
their roles and resources allowing them to master the situation
(and the prisoners), their lack of identity allowed situational
stressors to master them. In this way, they were exposed to the
vicious circle of social atomisation represented in Figure 1b
[SEE PDF VERSION].
Overall, these findings suggest that, far from undermining
agency, shared group identity provides the power that enables
people to implement their beliefs and values (Turner, 2005).
Such collective agency promotes the psychological well-being
of individual group members. As the days went by, the prisoners
in our study became more cohesive and powerful, while the
guards became more fragmented and powerless. This continued
to the point where some prisoners broke out of their cells and
destroyed the old regime. Together, ex-guards and ex-prisoners
then proposed their own regime: ‘a self-governing, self-
disciplining commune’.
The Commune: Power, group failure and health of societies
At its outset, the Commune exemplified all the advantages of a
cohesive group. This was no longer a category we had imposed
upon our participants, but rather one they had created for
themselves. They identified highly with the values and goals of

the Commune and they worked energetically to implement these
goals. Indeed, initially they worked harder and supported each
other more than they ever had under the old system.
However the Commune had a fatal flaw. While most
participants supported it, some did not. And while the
‘Communards’ were willing to be self-organising they were
unwilling to use power to discipline dissent. As a result, the
Commune system began to break down. Its supporters became
despondent as they became unable to turn their social beliefs
into a form of social being – or, in the terms used above, as the
lack of collective self-realisation became chronic. It was in this
context that those who opposed the Commune – a combination
of ex-guards and ex-prisoners – proposed reinstating the guard–
prisoner system, but in a more tyrannical form (see the
manifesto, reproduced for the first time on the contents page of
this issue).
This was disturbing. But what was more troubling was that, as
our psychometric measures showed, those who had previously
supported the Commune were themselves becoming more
authoritarian and more sympathetic to autocratic leadership to
the extent that they had reached the same levels of
authoritarianism as the dissenters. As a result, those in the
Commune showed limited resistance to the new tyranny. This is
where, for both ethical and practical reasons, we terminated the
study. So what started with our participants rejecting a
relatively mild form of inequality had ended on the brink of an
authoritarian world of their own making. How had this
happened?
The crucial step is to recognise that social identities, and the
norms and values associated with them, are related to the
practical ways we organise our everyday world. Where they
empower us to create the worlds we value (as for the prisoners
in the first phase of our study), they engender positivity. Where
we fail to use group power to organise our world effectively (as
for the Communards in the second phase), then group beliefs
become, quite literally, useless. So, because the Communards

remained suspicious of the exercise of group power, they were
unable to transform democratic ideals into working democratic
structures. As a result, these ideals came to seem more of a
hindrance than a help. By contrast, any system that promised to
work – even a tyranny that had previously seemed deeply
unattractive – gained in allure. The tragedy of the Communards
was that their own fear of using power created the conditions
where power could be misused against them.
Giving choice not taking it away
For all the twists and turns in the BBC study, there are two
findings that are constant throughout. The first is that shared
social identity creates social power, and where people are
willing to deploy that power they become effective social agents
who shape their own worlds. The second is that where people
are unable to shape their world – either because they lack
shared identity and hence power or because they have shared
identity but fail to deploy the power that flows from it – they
are liable to become despondent and open to alternative belief
systems, however extreme they might be.
Conceptually, this viewpoint is diametrically opposed to that
which the Stanford Prison Experiment is typically used to
advance. Groups, we suggest, give people choice rather than
take it away. And the ability to exercise choice is good for our
well-being. How people exercise their choice will depend upon
the norms and values they subscribe to. Hence the impact of
groups upon the health of society is not given in our psychology
but is rather something for which people must take
responsibility. All members of a group, from the highest to the
lowest, play a part in determining what the group stands for and
the type of world it seeks to create.
Conversely, the failure of groups, and the consequent lack of
collective power, removes choice from people, and this is bad
for the well-being of individual members. It is also bad for the
health of society. For that is when people become more liable to
accept extreme suggestions and thereby succumb to inequitable

solutions to their social problems. That is when ordinary people
and erstwhile democrats can be seduced by tyranny.
In short, do groups and power corrupt? Not in and of
themselves. But the failure of groups does corrupt absolutely.
These are, of course, big and bold claims. We don’t expect
everyone to accept them without demur. Indeed Zimbardo
(2006) himself remains implacably opposed to our analysis. We
have provided a detailed response to his criticisms (Haslam &
Reicher, 2006), but we welcome the debate. Our major ambition
in undertaking the BBC Prison Study was to reopen normal
scientific investigation and discussion around the relationship
between group processes and extreme behaviours. We have put
our data and our conclusions into the public domain and others
can now judge these for themselves (or, even better, advance
the debate through their own research).
As Turner (2006) notes in his commentary on our study, social
psychologists have been locked into a negative view of groups
and a narrow understanding of tyranny for far too long. As he
points out, a key and undeniable contribution of our study is
that it encourages us to ‘escape our theoretical prisons’ –
forcing us to address new questions and to look at old questions
in new ways. As social psychologists, clinical psychologists,
organisational psychologists – or even better, all together – it is
high time to reconsider the relationship between group
processes, individual well-being and healthy societies.
- Stephen Reicher is a professor of psychology at the University
of St Andrews. E-mail: [email protected].
- Alex Haslam is a professor of psychology at the University of
Exeter. E-mail: [email protected].
Weblinks
BBC Prison Study official website: www.theexperiment.org.uk
Stanford Prison Experiment official website:
www.prisonexp.org
Social science commentary on Abu Ghraib: tinyurl.com/8m2bx
Discuss and debate

Do people in groups inevitably abuse positions of power – and,
if so, are they to blame?
Would society be healthier if we encouraged people to act as
individuals, not as group members?
Should we seek to have an integrated understanding of social,
clinical and organisational psychology, and do we have the
theoretical and methodological tools to achieve this?
Have your say on these or other issues this article raises. E-mail
‘Letters’ on [email protected] or contribute to our forum via
www.thepsychologist.org.uk.
References
Ellemers, N., Spears, R. & Doosje, B. (1999). Social identity:
Context, content and commitment. Oxford: Blackwell.
Haney, C., Banks, C. & Zimbardo, P. (1973). A study of
prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research
Reviews, September, pp.1–17. Washington, DC: Office of Naval
Research. [Reprinted In E. Aronson (Ed.) Readings about the
social animal (3rd ed., pp.52–67). San Francisco: W. H.
Freeman]
Haslam, S.A. (2001). Psychology in organizations: The social
identity approach. London: Sage.
Haslam, S.A. & Reicher, S.D. (2005). The psychology of
tyranny. Scientific American Mind, 16(3), 44–51.
Haslam, S. A. & Reicher, S.D. (2006). Debating the psychology
of tyranny: Fundamental issues of theory, perspective and
science. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 55–63.
Haslam, S.A. & Reicher, S.D. (in press-a). Social identity and
the dynamics of organizational life: Insights from the BBC
Prison Study. In C. Bartel, S. Blader & A. Wrzesniewski (Eds.)
Identity and the modern organization. New York: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Haslam, S.A. & Reicher, S.D. (in press-b). Stressing the group:
Social identity and the unfolding dynamics of stress. Journal of

Applied Psychology.
Reicher, S.D. & Haslam, S.A. (2006). Rethinking the
psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study. British Journal
of Social Psychology, 45, 1–40.
Reicher, S.D. & Haslam, S.A. (in press). On the agency of
individuals and groups: Lessons from the BBC Prison Study. In
T. Postmes & J. Jetten (Eds.) Individuality and the group:
Advances in social identity. London: Sage.
Reicher, S.D., Haslam, S.A. & Hopkins, N. (2005). Social
identity and the dynamics of leadership: Leaders and followers
as collaborative agents in the transformation of social reality.
Leadership Quarterly, 16, 547–568.
Sutherland, J. (2005, 31 October). Abu Ghraib need not have
happened and the Stanford Prison Experiment got it wrong. The
Guardian (G2), p.24.
Tajfel, H. & Turner, J.C. (1979). An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict. In W.G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.) The
social psychology of intergroup relations (pp.33–47). Monterey,
CA: Brooks/Cole.
Turner, J.C. (1981). Some considerations in generalizing
experimental social psychology. In G.M. Stephenson & J.H.
Davis (Eds.) Progress in applied social psychology (Vol. 1,
pp.3–34). Chichester: Wiley.
Turner, J.C. (2005). Explaining the nature of power: A three-
process theory. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 1–
22.
Turner, J.C. (2006). Tyranny, freedom and social structure:
Escaping our theoretical prisons. British Journal of Social
Psychology, 45, 41–46.
Zimbardo, P. (2006). On rethinking the psychology of tyranny:
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45, 47-53.

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