Alex Haslam, University of Exeter

"Questioning the banality of evil: Have Milgram and Zimbardo misled us?"

This paper reappraises historical and psychological evidence that is routinely taken to support the ‘banality of evil’ thesis - the idea that ordinary people commit atrocities without awareness, care or choice. Counter to this thesis, historical evidence suggests that perpetrators act thoughtfully, creatively, and with conviction. Drawing from the BBC Prison Study (Reicher & Haslam, 2006) and other social psychological data, a case is made for an interactionist approach to tyranny which explains how people are (a) initially drawn to extreme and oppressive groups, (b) transformed by membership in those groups, and (c) able to gain influence over others and hence normalize oppression. These dynamics can make evil appear banal, but are far from banal themselves.

References

Haslam, S. A. & Reicher, S. D. (in press). Beyond the banality of evil: Three dynamics of an interactionist social psychology of tyranny. Personaity and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2006a). Debating the psychology of tyranny: Fundamental issues of theory, perspective and science. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 55-63.

Reicher, S. D., & Haslam, S. A. (2006a). Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC Prison Study. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 1-40.

Biography

Alex Haslam is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of Exeter and a former Commonwealth Scholar at Macquarie University (Sydney) and Jones Scholar at Emory University (Atlanta). He was previously Associate Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology (1999-2001) and Chief Editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology (2001-2005). He is currently on the editorial board of eight journals (including JPSP, PSPB, BJM and Scientific American Mind).

At Exeter he is part of a team of internationally-renown researchers investigating a range of core social and organizational topics — including leadership, motivation, stereotyping, group conflict, stress and prejudice. This work has been published in top international journals in both psychology and management. His most recent books are Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach (2nd Ed. Sage 2004); Social Identity at Work: Developing Theory for Organizational Practice (with Daan van Knippenberg, Michael Platow & Naomi Ellemers, Psychology Press, 2003) and Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology (with Craig McGarty, Sage, 2003).

In 2002 he collaborated with Steve Reicher on the ground-breaking BBC programme ‘The Experiment’ — a project that subsequently led to over a dozen publications (e.g., in BJSP, JAP, SPQ, PSPB). In 2005 he received a Kurt Lewin award from the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology for outstanding contribution to research in social psychology. In 2006 he was made a fellow of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research and his work with Michelle Ryan on the Glass Cliff was short-listed for the THES Research Project of the Year.