Copyright © The British Psychological Society Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society Response Debating the psychology of tyranny: Fundamental issues of theory, perspective and science S. Alexander Haslam 1 * and Stephen Reicher 2 1 University of Exeter, UK 2 University of St. Andrews, UK In our rejoinder, we concentrate on responding to Zimbardo’s criticisms. These criticisms involve three broad strategies. The first is to turn broad discussion about the psychology of tyranny into narrow questions about the replication of prison conditions. The second is to confuse our scientific analysis with the television programmes of ‘The Experiment’. The third is to make unsupported and unwarranted attacks on our integrity. All three lines of attack are flawed and distract from the important theoretical challenge of understanding when people act to reproduce social inequalities and when they act to challenge them. This is the challenge that Turner identifies and engages with in his commentary. In his commentary, Turner (2006) engages with the core theoretical questions raised by our work. Are people unimaginative slaves to circumstance? Do groups necessarily abuse power when they have it and succumb to it when they do not? Should people not be held accountable for the systems of tyranny they create and administer? In this, he makes an important contribution to precisely the debate that we hoped to encourage. Zimbardo, by contrast, suggests that our contribution is so flawed that it provides nothing of substance to debate. He too raises some important issues. However, many of his points are based on misconceptions and misleading arguments about our study. It is necessary to address these and – since Turner’s piece speaks for itself – we concentrate mainly on Zimbardo’s (2006) commentary in this rejoinder. First, though, it is worth placing his commentary within a wider context. The Stanford Prison Study (SPE) has handed down an ambiguous legacy to our discipline. On the one hand, it was a dramatic illustration of the power of context upon behaviour and advanced debate concerning the conditions under which ordinary people will tyrannise others. It is hard to overestimate the importance of the study in this regard. Along with Milgram’s obedience studies, it is one of the very few one can point to when asked, ‘Where has social psychology had an impact upon society at large?’ (see Blass, *Correspondence should be addressed to Alex Haslam, School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon EX4 4QG, UK (e-mail: A.Haslam@exeter.ac.uk). The British Psychological Society 55 British Journal of Social Psychology (2006), 45, 55–63 q 2006 The British Psychological Society www.bpsjournals.co.uk DOI:10.1348/014466605X80686