Steve Reicher
Encyclopedia
Stephen D Reicher is Professor of Social Psychology and former Head of the School of Psychology at the University of St Andrews
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...

.

Reicher completed his undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of Bristol
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...

. At Bristol, Reicher worked closely with Henri Tajfel
Henri Tajfel
Henri Tajfel was a British social psychologist, best known for his pioneering work on the cognitive aspects of prejudice and social identity theory, as well as being one of the founders of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology.-Early life in Poland:Tajfel grew up in Poland...

 and John Turner (authors of social identity
Social identity
A social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group. As originally formulated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and 80s, social identity theory introduced the concept of a social identity as a way in which to...

 theory). He held positions at the University of Dundee
University of Dundee
The University of Dundee is a university based in the city and Royal burgh of Dundee on eastern coast of the central Lowlands of Scotland and with a small number of institutions elsewhere....

 and University of Exeter
University of Exeter
The University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....

 before moving to St Andrews in 1998. He is a former Associate Editor of the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology and Chief Editor (with Margaret Wetherell
Margaret Wetherell
Margaret Wetherell is a prominent academic in the area of discourse analysis. Her 1987 book, Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour, cowritten with Jonathan Potter, was very influential, particularly in social psychology, though also in other fields...

) of the British Journal of Social Psychology. Reicher is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity, operating on a wholly independent and non-party-political basis and providing public benefit throughout Scotland...

 and consultant editor for a number of journals including Scientific American Mind
Scientific American Mind
Scientific American Mind is a bimonthly American popular science magazine concentrated on psychology, neuroscience, and related fields. By analyzing and revealing new thinking in the cognitive sciences, the magazine tries to focus on the biggest breakthroughs in these fields...

. His research is in the area of social psychology, focusing on group processes such as crowd behaviour, tyranny and leadership. He is broadly interested in the issues of group behaviour and the individual-social relationship. His research interests can be grouped into three areas. The first is an attempt to develop a model of crowd action that accounts for both social determination and social change. The second concerns the construction of social categories through language and action. The third concerns political rhetoric and mass mobilisation - especially around the issue of national identity.

Reicher's work on crowd psychology
Crowd psychology
Crowd psychology is a branch of social psychology. Ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. Historically, because large groups of people have been able to bring about dramatic and sudden social change in a manner that bypasses established due process, they have also...

 has been path-breaking. He challenged the dominant notion of crowd as site of Irrationality
Irrationality
Irrationality is cognition, thinking, talking or acting without inclusion of rationality. It is more specifically described as an action or opinion given through inadequate reasoning, emotional distress, or cognitive deficiency...

 and deindividuation
Deindividuation
Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology regarding the loosening of social norms in groups. Sociologists also study the phenomenon of deindividuation, but the level of analysis is somewhat different. For the social psychologist, the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a...

. His social identity model (SIM,1982, 1984, 1987) of crowd behaviour suggests that people are able to act as one in crowd events not because of ‘contagion’ or Social facilitation
Social facilitation
Social facilitation is the tendency for people to do better on simple tasks when in the presence of other people. This implies that whenever people are being watched by others, they will do well on things that they are already good at doing...

 but because they share a common social identity. This common identity specifies what counts as normative conduct. Unlike the ‘classic’ theories, which tended to presume that collectivity was associated with uncontrolled violence (due to a regression to instinctive drives or a pre-existing ‘racial unconscious’), the social identity model explicitly acknowledges variety by suggesting that different identities have different norms – some peaceful, some conflictual – and that, even where crowds are conflictual, the targets will be only those specified by the social identity of the crowd.

Reicher’s (1984) St Pauls’ study was a powerful riposte to the whole ‘irrationalist’ tradition, from Gustav Le Bon to deindividuation. But the study and the social identity model left a number of unanswered questions and hence possible explanatory problems. The emphasis on social identity as the determinant of collective behaviour potentially led to a rather unidimensional reading of the nature of crowd conflict: conflict was ‘read off’ from the St Pauls’ social identity, as if the participants were already ‘violent’; yet this left unexplained how such conflict emerged and escalated over time during the riot. An unanswered question was therefore how an otherwise peaceful crowd might become conflictual. Without further specification, the model risked being read, like Allport’s account, as seeing conflict as a product of fixed and pre-given identities that were simply acted out. How could behavioural change in the crowd be grasped without falling back into something like the LeBonian account in which the peaceful, rational individual is simply subsumed by the (malign) influence of the crowd?

The analysis of the St Pauls’ riot was like a snap-shot, examining the nature of the crowd targets, without examining in detail how conflict actually emerged from relations with the police, and without including the perspective of the police as a possible contribution to the events. Subsequent studies of crowd events by Reicher and John Drury
John Drury (social psychologist)
Dr John Drury is a senior lecturer of Social Psychology at the University of Sussex. His core research is in the area of crowd psychology. Along with his colleagues Professor Steve Reicher and , he developed the Elaborated Social Identity Model of crowd behaviour.-Early career:Drury completed...

 therefore began to address these absences. In each of a number of different type of crowd events, a similar pattern of interaction between crowd and police was identified. The observation of this pattern of interaction led to the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) of crowd conflict, which focuses on the emergence and development of crowd conflict.

Moreover, the ESIM provides the conceptual resources for understanding the possible articulation between social and psychological change. Thus the ESIM suggests that identity change is a function of changed context, brought about through the (often unintended) consequences of one’s own actions. The consequences are often unintended and unanticipated because crowd members’ actions may be interpreted in contrasting ways by outgroups such as the police. The wider significance of such change is in terms of future action. A limited ‘local’ protest becomes understood as part of a wider struggle against national or even global ‘injustice’ where participants are cast as part of a wider oppositional group, where such opposition becomes legitimized by illegitimate outgroup (police, state) action and where there is a perception of wider support and that the collective is indeed capable of translating its ideas into reality. Particular experiences in collective action can therefore be significant in their role of encouraging people to get involved in further actions, which might themselves be forces for social change. Put simply, crowd conflict is argued to be meaningful, but can be a locus of social and psychological change because that meaning may be contested.

Reicher collaborated with Professor Alex Haslam
Alex Haslam
S. Alexander Haslam is a Professor of Social Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Exeter. He was born in Horsforth , and educated at Felsted School....

 of the University of Exeter
University of Exeter
The University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....

 on the BBC television programme The Experiment
The Experiment
The Experiment was a documentary series broadcast on BBC television in 2002. It presented the findings of what subsequently became known as The BBC Prison Study -Background:...

, which examined conflict, order, rebellion and tyranny in the behaviour of a group of individuals held in a simulated prison environment. The experiment (which became known as the BBC Prison Study) re-examined issues raised by the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) and led to a number of publications in leading psychology journals. Amongst other things, these challenged the role account of tyranny associated with the SPE as well as broader ideas surrounding the Banality of evil
Banality of Evil
Banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or...

, and advanced a social identity-based understanding of the dynamics of resistance.

Most influential publications

Books

Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Reicher, S. D. & Hopkins, N. (2001). Self and nation: Categorization, contestation and mobilisation. London: Sage.

Haslam, S.A; Reicher, S.D. & Platow, M.J. (2010) "The New Psychology Of Leadership: Identity, Influence And Power" New York: Psychology Press

Journal articles

Reicher, S. D. (1984). The St. Pauls riot: An explanation of the limits of crowd action in terms of a social identity model. European Journal of Social Psychology", "14, 1–21.

Reicher, S. & Potter, J. (1985). Psychological theory as intergroup perspective: A comparative analysis of ‘scientific’ and ‘lay’ accounts of crowd events. Human Relations, 38, 167-189.

Reicher S. D., & Hopkins, N. (1996). Seeking influence through characterizing self-categories: An analysis of anti-abortionist rhetoric. British Journal of Social Psychology", "35, 297-311.

Reicher, S. (1996). The Crowd century: Reconciling practical success with theoretical failure. British Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 535-53.

Reicher S. D., & Hopkins, N. (1996). Self-category constructions in political rhetoric; An analysis of Thatcher's and Kinnock's speeches concerning the British miners' strike (1984-5) European Journal of Social Psychology", "26 353-371.

Reicher, S. D., & Haslam, S. A. (2006). Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC Prison Experiment. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 1–40. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gary.sturt/prison%20experiment.pdf

Reicher, S. D., Haslam, S. A., & Hopkins, N. (2005). Social identity and the dynamics of leadership: Leaders and followers as collaborative agents in the transformation of social reality. Leadership Quarterly. 16, 547–568.

Reicher, S.D. (1982). The determination of collective behaviour (pp. 41-83). In H. Tajfel (ed.), Social identity and intergroup relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reicher, S.D. (1984b). The St Pauls’ riot: An explanation of the limits of crowd action in terms of a social identity model. European Journal of Social Psychology, 14, 1-21. Also in: Murphy, J., John, M. & Brown, H. (1984), (eds.). Dialogues and debates in social psychology (pp. 187–205). London: Lawrence Erlbaum/Open University

Reicher, S.D. (1987). Crowd behaviour as social action. In J.C. Turner, M.A. Hogg, P.J. Oakes, S.D. Reicher & M.S. Wetherell, Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory (pp. 171–202). Oxford: Blackwell.http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/electronic/reserve/psychology/071110/reichercrowd34137.pdf

Reicher, S., Spears, R. & Postmes, T. (1995). A social identity model of deindividuation phenomena. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (eds.), European Review of Social Psychology, 6, 161-98.

Reicher, S. (1996) Social identity and social change: Rethinking the context of social psychology. In W.P. Robinson (Ed.) Social groups and identities: Developing the legacy of Henri Tajfel (pp. 317–336). London: Butterworth.

Reicher, S. (1996). ‘The Battle of Westminster’: Developing the social identity model of crowd behaviour in order to explain the initiation and development of collective conflict. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 115-34.]] http://people.wku.edu/douglas.smith/Reicher.pdf

Reicher, S. (2001). The psychology of crowd dynamics. In M.A. Hogg and R.S. Tindale (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Group processes (pp. 182–208). Oxford: Blackwell. http://www.uni-kiel.de/psychologie/ispp/doc_upload/Reicher_crowd%20dynamics.pdf

Stott, C., Hutchison, P. & Drury, J. (2001). ‘Hooligans’ abroad? Inter-group dynamics, social identity and participation in collective ‘disorder’ at the 1998 World Cup Finals. British Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 359-384.

Stott, C. & Reicher, S. (1998a). Crowd action as inter-group process: Introducing the police perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 509-529.

Stott, C. & Reicher, S. (1998b). How conflict escalates: The inter-group dynamics of collective football crowd ‘violence’. Sociology, 32, 353-77.http://atgstg01.pineforge.com/ballantine2study/articles/Chapter%205/Stott.pdf

Drury, J., Cocking, C., Beale, J., Hanson, C. & Rapley, F. (2005). The phenomenology of empowerment in collective action. British Journal of Social Psychology, 44, 309-328.

Reicher, S. (2001). Studying psychology, studying racism. In M. Augoustinos & K. J. Reynolds. (Eds.), Understanding prejudice, Racism, and Social conflict. London: Sage.

Drury, J. & Reicher, S. (1999). The intergroup dynamics of collective empowerment: Substantiating the social identity model of crowd behaviour. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 2, 381-402.

Drury J. & Reicher S. (2000) Collective action and psychological change: The emergence of new social identities. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 579 -604. http://www2.uni-jena.de/svw/igc/studies/ss04/Drury_Reicher_2000_BJSP.pdf

Drury, J. & Reicher, S. (2005). Explaining enduring empowerment: A comparative study of collective action and psychological outcomes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 35-58.http://139.184.32.141/affiliates/panic/Drury%20and%20Reicher%202005.pdf

Drury, J., Reicher, S. & Stott, C. (2003) Transforming the boundaries of collective identity: From the ‘local’ anti-road campaign to ‘global’ resistance? Social Movement Studies, 2, 191-212.

Reicher, S. Haslam, S.A. & Rath, R. (2008) “Making a virtue of evil: A five step social identity model of development of collective hate” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2/3 (2008): 1313–1344, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00113. http://bbcprisonstudy.org/pdfs/SPPC%20(2008)%20Evil%20and%20hate.pdf

External links

The official website of the BBC Prison Study: http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org

Profile: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sp/people/lect/sdr.shtml

Publications: http://portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/research-expertise/researcher/sdr/publications

Talks: Beyond the Banality of Evil, London School of Economics, February, 2008. This lecture critically addresses Hannah Arendt's hypothesis on the banality of evil arguing that those who commit extreme acts are not aware of the consequences of their actions: rather, they celebrate these consequences as moral.

Link:http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm#generated-subheading34
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