Rethinking the nature of cruelty: The role of identity leadership in the Stanford Prison Experiment
Haslam, Reicher and Van Bavel set identity leadership against role conformity as accounts of the cruelty observed in the Stanford Prison Experiment. Identity leadership holds that roles elicit cruelty only when leaders encourage people to identify with what is presented as a noble cause. Working from the experiment's archive, the authors present evidence that experimenters directly encouraged the guards to adopt roles and act tough, rather than guards conforming to the role of their own accord. They discuss what this means for interpreting the Stanford Prison Experiment and for the analysis of conformity and cruelty.
Haslam, Reicher and Van Bavel set identity leadership against role conformity as accounts of the cruelty observed in the Stanford Prison Experiment. Identity leadership holds that roles elicit cruelty only when leaders encourage people to identify with what is presented as a noble cause. Working from the experiment's archive, the authors present evidence that experimenters directly encouraged the guards to adopt roles and act tough, rather than guards conforming to the role of their own accord. They discuss what this means for interpreting the Stanford Prison Experiment and for the analysis of conformity and cruelty.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-25 via OpenAlex.
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Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2019). Rethinking the nature of cruelty: The role of identity leadership in the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist, 74(7), 809-822. doi:10.1037/amp0000443