Posted by campfire hero (160.129.27.22) on November 15, 2001 at 15:52:43:
In Reply to: to make up for that horrible CIA post posted by campfire hero on November 15, 2001 at 10:52:49:
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY:
Reality TV Puts Group Behavior to the Test
Ben Shouse
CAMBRIDGE, U.K.--Two British scientists are preparing to take advantage of the popularity of "reality TV" to recreate a notorious psychology experiment in which students played the roles of prisoners and guards. Skeptics, including the researcher who designed the original experiment at Stanford University in 1971, fear that the BBC production could rerun the abuses that brought it to a halt after 6 days. But the researchers say that the show offers an excellent opportunity to answer pressing questions about the psychology of racism, oppression, and terrorism.
The Stanford experiment, conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo, took place in the basement of the psychology building, which had been converted to look like a jail. Immersed in the situation, the 9 prisoners and 9 guards quickly internalized their assigned roles, the guards becoming brutal and the prisoners at first rebellious and then utterly compliant. Even the researchers acted more like wardens than scientists, suspecting that the prisoners were faking anxiety to gain early release and helping the guards thwart a rumored jailbreak. The experiment, planned to run for 14 days, was stopped after a colleague objected to its brutality.
The study demonstrated the influence of group pressure on individual behavior. Other experiments during the 1970s confirmed the power of social context. In one, subjects stayed in a room that was filling up with smoke because others seemed unconcerned; in another, they obeyed a lab-coated scientist's orders to deliver what they thought was an electric shock to a human subject. The specter of these disturbing experiments has prevented further realistic, large-scale tests of group psychology.
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Too real. Strip searches and delousing helped student "guards" assert power over "prisoners" in a 1971 experiment.
CREDIT: PHILLIP ZIMBARDO
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Then along came reality TV, which puts people in artificial situations for sheer entertainment value. Stephen Reicher of the University of St. Andrews, U.K., and Alex Haslam of the University of Exeter, U.K., accepted an offer to create a show with a stronger experimental basis. "This is a piece of science being filmed," says Reicher, who with Haslam will select 15 people to be assigned the role of either guard or detainee. The researchers have chosen a setup similar to Zimbardo's but with a less oppressive atmosphere and safeguards such as independent observers and clear boundaries for subjects' behavior. The BBC will televise the results, but the researchers retain control of the experiment's design and presentation.
Reicher and Haslam say this is a unique chance to test "social identity theory," which posits that group identity can override individual personality in shaping behavior. Dominic Abrams, a psychologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, agrees: "It is rare that one gets an opportunity to simulate a powerful situation." And in the wake of the 11 September attacks, there is an urgent need for such research. "We don't have to be part of a terrorist cell to gain insight into the psychological processes involved with terrorism," he says.
Large-scale social psychology studies can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Abrams says, and TV companies may be the only source of funding. Haslam says safeguards alone will cost more than $100,000, but he and the BBC declined to disclose the overall budget for the program.
Although crews have not yet begun filming, Zimbardo and others have expressed concern that entertainment will be the overriding factor in carrying out the experiment. "There is no question in my mind but that the BBC and their consultants are hoping for something dramatic to erupt, to make it riveting for viewers," Zimbardo says. He says he declined the BBC's offer to participate because of the danger to the research subjects. Excessive precaution could also doom the experiment, says Peter Collett, a retired University of Oxford psychologist who consulted on the reality TV program Big Brother. "If we don't get the phenomenon that Zimbardo observed, then the whole thing is pointless," he says.
Reicher and Haslam insist there is a middle ground between cruel and dull. For one, the study will tone down the power imbalance between prisoners and guards through variations in housing, dress, and status, with the hope of exploring questions Zimbardo left open. For example, they will examine whether groups can have positive effects and if the results might also apply to milder social situations, such as relationships between employers and employees.
The dangers of Zimbardo's experiment and the trivializing influence of reality TV are the "Scylla and Charybdis" of the new project, Haslam says. Psychologists may differ on the potential perils of the study, but they agree on the importance of its goals. Viewers and researchers alike will have to wait until the show premiers next year to see if the partnership of science and television survives these treacherous waters.