Days 1 and 2

During day one and two, contrary to the authors expectations the guards did not identify with their group and did not behave collectively. This was a surprise to the authors because this was a high status group.

Some of the guards did identify with their role but most of them did not. Most of the guards were very conscious of the role and felt that it was undeserved and were conscious of how they appeared to other people and were concerned about abusing their power. For example some of the guards even tried to give away some of their resources such as food (sausages)

It was found that the guards were not able to form a plan of action because they didn’t work as a group

As expected the prisoners also lacked a social identity probably because they were aware of the ability to gain promotion to the guards group.

The prisoners were unhappy with their inferior conditions and some of the prisoners attempted to improve their lot by displaying the individual qualities they thought would be expected for promotion. As a result, there was no shared identity among the prisoners and no consensus about how they should behave.

Even though the prisoners could see the weakness of the guards they were not united to take the guards on. During these first two day the guards were able to manage the prisoners because the prisoners lacked a group identity.

Day 3 and 4

On day 3 the guards decided which prisoner should be promoted. This was perhaps the most dramatic part of the study as the door had been slammed shut. The prisoners now took on the guards as a group. Almost instantly they began to act together. They began by teasing the guards, humiliating them and challenging their authority

Low group identity amongst guards led to ineffective leadership. This meant there was no need for the legitimacy intervention which had been intended to create insecurity and trigger the search for cognitive alternatives.

Day 5

With the prison in disorder the researchers made their second planned intervention on the morning of day 5. A trade unionist (prisoner 10) was introduced as a further prisoner and Reicher and Haslam believed that because of his background he would offer an alternative vision and offer some order to the simulated prison. They were interested to find out if this individual would change the situation or whether the situation would change this individual.

The trade unionists opportunity came when the prisoners stole the keys off the guards who were then prepared to negotiate to get the keys back. In the meeting which followed there was a confrontation between the trade unionist and a very powerful and charismatic prisoner. The trade unionist suggested a forum where prisoners and guards would meet daily to discuss grievances the trade unionist argument won, he had helped to harness the group and the guards were eager and pleased to accept this arrangement.

Quantitative measures showed that participants became increasingly aware of cognitive alternatives (e.g.” I think the relationship between prisoners and guards is likely to change”).

Day 6

Initially the commune had worked effectively. Almost all of the participants believed in it and the participants identified with commune, its structure and its rules. For example previously cleaning duties had been completed reluctantly but now the participants completed these duties much better and worked hard for the system. For a short time this was a very harmonious system. However it became very apparent that not everybody in the commune was happy with it. Three participants started to make trouble for the commune members. For example they stopped doing their chores

On the morning of day 6 the researchers withdrew the trade unionist from the study. The other prisoners were told that he was withdrawn for health reasons.

During this morning of the 6th day by chance the breakfast was of poor quality and this exacerbated the crisis. This was incorrectly taken as a sign that the experimenters disapproved of the commune system.

A power vacuum appeared and some of the former prisoners and guards believed that this was a vacuum that they could fill and they came up with a plan to reinstate the old prisoner guard regime but with themselves as the new guards.

As a result, late on the evening of Day 6, the prisoners in Cell 2 broke out of their cell and occupied the guards’ quarters. At this point, the guards’ regime was seen by all to be unworkable and at an end.

Day 7 and 8

The crisis was exploited by opponents of the commune, four of whom (one ex-guard and three ex-prisoners) developed a plan to create a new and harsher guard/prisoner hierarchy. The nature and tone of this new regime was made clear in discussions about the form this would take.

Shortly after breakfast, this group convened a meeting where their leader berated the commune and its supporters and he introduced the idea of the new hierarchy. The supporters of the commune were largely passive in response. They looked despondent and listened in silence. During debriefings, a number of them acknowledged that, although they would not have openly endorsed such a hierarchy, they were less opposed to it than they had been previously and that they felt less repulsed by the idea of a strong social order in which someone else assumed responsibility for making the system work.

The study was halted at noon on day 8 because the researchers believed that the study was gridlocked. The researchers believed that new guards would have had the force to impose their regime in the face of weakening resistance but that such force would be prohibited according to ethical guidelines.

The participants remained for a further day in order to undertake a series of structured debriefings designed to obtain and provide feedback on their experience, to explain the rationale for the study and to overcome any hostility between individuals deriving from events in the study.

	Created by Ellen Powell almost 10 years ago

Note on Reicher and Haslam , created by Ellen Powell on 10/02/2015.

Reicher and Haslam