Steve Reicher | |
---|---|
Born | Stephen David Reicher |
Alma mater | University of Bristol[citation needed] (PhD)[3] |
Known for | BBC Prison Study[4] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions | University of St Andrews University of Dundee University of Exeter |
Thesis | The determination of collective behaviour (1984) |
Doctoral students | Fabio Sani[2] |
Website | risweb |
Stephen David Reicher FBA FRSE is Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Social Psychology at the University of St Andrews.[5][6][7][1]
His research is in the area of social psychology, focusing on social identity, collective behaviour, intergroup conflict, leadership and mobilisation. He is broadly interested in the issues of group behaviour and the individual-social relationship.
After attending the Perse School, Cambridge, Reicher completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Bristol[citation needed] and his PhD also at the University of Bristol in 1984 with a thesis on collective behaviour.[3] At Bristol, Reicher worked closely with Henri Tajfel and John Turner on social identity theory and social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE).[8]
Reicher held positions at the University of Dundee and University of Exeter before moving to St Andrews in 1997.[citation needed] He was formerly head of the School of Psychology at St Andrews.[when?]
He is a former Associate Editor of the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology and Chief Editor (with Margaret Wetherell) of the British Journal of Social Psychology.[citation needed] Reicher is an editor for a number of journals including Scientific American Mind.[citation needed] His research[7] is in the area of social psychology, focusing on social identity, collective behaviour, intergroup conflict, leadership and mobilisation.[1] He is broadly interested in the issues of group behaviour and the individual-social relationship.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] His research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).[6] His former doctoral students include John Dixon, John Drury, Nick Hopkins, Mark Levine, Eva Loth, Fabio Sani and Clifford Stott
Stephen Reicher as well as his direct University of Sussex colleague John Drury are both participants in the Sage subcommittee advising on behavioural science during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was also a member of the advisory committee to the Scottish Government and convened the behavioural science group of Independent SAGE.
Reicher's work on crowd psychology has challenged the dominant notion of crowd as site of irrationality and deindividuation. 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 but because they share a common social identity. This common identity specifies what counts as normative conduct.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]
Reicher collaborated with Alex Haslam of the University of Exeter on the BBC television programme The Experiment,[4] 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, and advanced a social identity-based understanding of the dynamics of resistance.[citation needed]
-He was interviewed by Jim Al-Khalili for The Life Scientific first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2018.[5]