Identify one example of behaviour of current interest, either from the

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Essentials of Applied Psychology (): Assignment 1

8 February, 2005

page 1 of 9

Identify one example of behaviour of current interest, either from the

press/media or from your experience or professional practice.

Choose two theoretical perspectives from psychology and suggest

ways in which each would explain and investigate the behaviour.

Critically compare the two approaches in terms of their

ability to explain and investigate the behaviour.

In January 2005 the celebrity edition of the reality television programme Big Brother featured in the news

as Germaine Greer, one of the participating celebrities, left the programme early as she did not "want to

be part of their [other contestants'] undoing" (Greer 2005:7). Private Eye (issue 1124 January 2005:5)

and several Internet discussion fora

reported that before the Big Brother phenomenon was launched in

2000, the production company, Endemol, studied Zimbardo's 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE),

and it is impossible not to see the immediate parallels to a prison in Big Brother where the contestants are

"completely cut off the from the outside world" (BBC 2000:1). The producers are put in a position of

authority from which they dictate rules twenty-four hours a day, much as Zimbardo's guards who "were

free to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison [... they] made up

their own set of rules, which they then carried into effect" (Zimbardo 1999: slide 12)

The role of the Stanford guards and the Big Brother producers becomes that of bully; indeed, the very

name of the reality television programme alludes to George Orwell's novel 1984 in which the power of

the state, or "Big Brother", dominates the lives of individuals by controlling their behaviour and through

cultural conditioning. Ultimately, Orwell's protagonist not just believes in the party line, but comes to

love Big Brother. In neither the SPE nor Big Brother is the reaction of the prisoners, or contestants, to

authority so straightforward, and it is the response of the housemates to the unseen authority figures that

will be considered here.

In Greer's article there are three explicit examples of the reactions of individuals and the group to

authority which can be examined. The first is a personal description of adopting a role within the group,

when performing a search on www.google.com for the keywords endemol and zimbardo

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Essentials of Applied Psychology (): Assignment 1

8 February, 2005

page 2 of 9

and her reaction to the idea of having to interact with the unseen authority figures that constitute Big

Brother:

Although the janitorial role quickly became mine by default, I was damned if I was going to ask

for everything we needed. Part of the strategy is to induce each housemate to believe that Big

Brother is his or her sole confidant and friend. My instinctive response was to withhold as much as

humanly possible. (2005:4)

The second is concerned with an incident where a house rule was broken, and Big Brother used another

contestant to correct it leading to a confrontation between housemates:

John fought a heroic battle against being forced to breathe recycled air all night and illegally

placed his bag between the one exterior door and the jamb to let a little fresh air in. This Big

Brother would not allow; when Kenzie obeyed the order to remove the bag, John insulted him in

unforgivable terms. Kenzie quite properly went ballistic and Big Brother had what he wanted.

(2005:5)

The final example shows Big Brother's bullying nature, and the victimisation of an individual at the

hands of the group as a result of Big Brother's influence:

The housemates have a choice as to whether to replicate and amplify [Big Brother's]unreasonable

and sadistic behaviour. Take the incident of the Diet Coke. When John said he could not function

without it, Big Brother chose to torment him by denying it to him while offering it to all the other

housemates. Not only did they all drink it but they taunted John, as children might taunt an

unpopular child in the playground. [...] Did viewers notice that I didn't join in? (2005:7)

These three incidents will be considered from both the behaviourist and cognitive perspectives in an

attempt to explain the housemates' behaviour, and to see which approach is able to offer the best means

of investigating and interpreting the behaviour.

As a psychological approach, behaviourism grew in the United States from around 1912 in response to

accusations that psychology was "subjective and unscientific" (Eysenck 1998:7ff). It emphasised the need
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for scientific observation and measurement of behaviour, and led to a theory of behaviour which states

that "behaviour can be described and explained without making reference to mental events or to internal

psychological processes", and that the "sources of behaviour are external, not internal" (Graham 2002:1).

This is saying that "human behaviour is learned, [or] developed through experience with and feedback

from [the] environment" (Coolican 2004:295), rather than as a result of scientifically unquantifiable

mental processes. In behaviourism's simplest form, an external stimulus determines a conditioned

behavioural ...

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