C/PS/23. Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: a Summary

The following piece of work will attempt to provide a comprehensive summary of an authoritative work by Reicher and Haslam, titled ‘rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study’. Published in the prestigious British Journal of Social Psychology, the paper strongly endorses the need for a group-level psychology of tyranny and argues that that powerful and effective group provide an effective psychological safeguard against tyranny and that it is when groups prove ineffective that tyrannical forms of social organization begin to become attractive.