PubMed · 6907043
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M B Ratsoy. 1981. For nurses only. Nursing management.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6907043/
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Robert Carson's principle of complementarity asserts that the behavioral styles of interaction partners tend to complement each other by encouraging individuals to act opposite in terms of dominance and similar in terms of warmth. The principles of complementarity further hypothesize that as relationships progress through multiple interactions, the behavioral styles of its members will be altered to increase complementarity. To examine this acquaintanceship hypothesis, the behavioral styles and personalities of 102 college roommate dyads were assessed after living together for 2 weeks and again after living together for 15 weeks. Consistent with the acquaintanceship hypothesis, after 2 weeks the behavioral styles of roommates did not complement each other; however, after 15 weeks, the behavioral styles of roommates strongly complemented each other. In contrast to the change in complementarity observed in roommates' behavioral styles, participants' perceptions of their own personalities were relatively unaffected by the personalities of their roommates.
This paper presents findings from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) prison study - an experimental case study that examined the consequences of randomly dividing men into groups of prisoners and guards within a specially constructed institution over a period of 8 days. Unlike the prisoners, the guards failed to identify with their role. This made the guards reluctant to impose their authority and they were eventually overcome by the prisoners. Participants then established an egalitarian social system. When this proved unsustainable, moves to impose a tyrannical regime met with weakening resistance. Empirical and theoretical analysis addresses the conditions under which people identify with the groups to which they are assigned and the social, organizational, and clinical consequences of either doing so or failing to do so. On the basis of these findings, a new framework for understanding tyranny is outlined. This suggests that it is powerlessness and the failure of groups that makes tyranny psychologically acceptable.
Reicher and Haslam's (2006) BBC prison study undermines the idea that people passively accept and enact social roles. In this commentary, I point out that this idea is an example of Moscovici's (1976) conformity bias and a wider stability bias in social psychological theorizing. In many key areas, the science prefers analyses that explain how and why social structures, intergroup and power relations, personalities and beliefs maintain and reproduce themselves, and indeed cannot be changed, rather than how and why society constantly generates forces for social change from within itself. This bias distorts reality and produces ideas of limited theoretical or practical power. Human psychology does not make us prisoners of social structure. It makes us capable of collective action to change social structures and in turn re-fashion our identities, roles, personalities and beliefs. Society is not a psychological prison but a means of expanding human possibilities. A reorientation of theoretical emphasis is overdue.