The following blog contains an example first class psychology essay that I submitted during the autumn semester of my third year. I am studying a BSc Psychology (honours) degree and hope that by reading this essay it will help you structure your own.
It has been submitted via the up-loader 'turnitin' and has therefore been logged by my university (the University of Stirling). However, feel free to have a good read at it and look at my references. These references are all academic articles and are free to use by anyone. This essay was awarded a first class grade of 72/100 and is therefore a very high standard.
When you are writing your essay, I encourage you to follow APA guidelines and use Times New Roman font, size 12 and either 1.5 or double spaced. You should also indent the first line of each paragraph (no need for spaces between paragraphs). To get a first class grade, you must also write academically and you must be able to critically analyse the research of which you have discussed. Please also remember to reference from highly reputable sources, such as journal articles. References must also hang, which you will see at the end of the following essay.
The essay question and area of psychology
The area of psychology that this essay was written for is social psychology. The question that I was to answer in 1500 words was:
'Review social and evolutionary psychological approaches to aggression and discuss how these approaches could be applied to reduce aggression. Use and evaluate relevant evidence'
Please see below for my essay:
Within the field of social psychology, empirical research is typically focussed on individual human interaction within social contexts and how the presence of others and the environment can affect one’s behaviour (Hogg & Vaughn, 2013). Given that social psychology covers such a large domain of human interaction, individual essays, such as this, can help us understand specific areas of interest. The aim of this essay is to review and critically discuss aggression, and will specifically focus on events which occurred in 2003 at Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq. The approach which appears to offer the best explanation as to why the events at Abu Ghraib Prison occurred, is the social psychological approach. This essay is therefore structured around this approach and will draw upon various social psychological research. Lastly, this essay will end with a short evaluative discussion of the research and how aggression in similar environments may be reduced.
From the literature by Hogg and Vaughn (2013), aggression is ‘the intentional infliction of some type of harm on others'. It could be argued that this definition is vague and that aggression may not always be intentional, but it can be easily applied to the atrocities of Abu Ghraib. Between 2003 and 2004, when U.S president George W. Bush attempted to eliminate worldwide terrorism by infiltrating countries such as Iraq, disturbing photographs of dehumanising abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S prison guards within Abu Ghraib Prison began to emerge. From the photographs, which are readily available to the public on Google images, prisoners can be seen stacked on top of each other without clothes. Other photographs show prisoners hooded with electrical cables attached to their wrists. Again, prisoners can also be seen with rope around their necks and being dragged along the floor by U.S guards, all the while the prison guards can be seen smiling and laughing.
Extensive investigations were carried out to find out why the events occurred, and the U.S Army concluded that the acts of aggression and violence was down to a few individual people within the military. The U.S soldiers involved in the human rights abuses were regarded as ‘bad apples’, and that the acts of aggression were simply their own construction (Mastroianni, 2013). However, the U.S guards had a very different version of events and claimed that they were simply following orders from superior military figures. The U.S guards stated that poor leadership, long working hours, aggressive interrogation tactics and bad prison management resulted in the atrocities. They felt that they were not doing anything wrong, and when one looks at the social psychological literature that is available, perhaps there are indeed wider factors which should be considered.
Research by Stanley Milgram in 1963 can be directly related to Abu Ghraib. Milgram created an experiment whereby participants were asked to inflict harm on other people, and were informed that they would not be responsible. In fact, no harm was actually inflicted as the experiment was a set up. Nonetheless, Milgram found that ‘ordinary’ people can inflict extreme harm on others when they have been instructed to do so and responsibility has been removed (Milgram, 1963). At Abu Ghraib Prison, many of the U.S guards were from ordinary backgrounds and carried out ordinary day jobs outside of the military. In response to the accusations of human rights abuse, U.S prison guards claimed that they were simply following orders from superior military figures and were instructed to use aggressive tactics against prisoners, such as using Alsatian dogs without muzzles during interrogation periods (Mastroianni, 2013). It has also been found from literature of Abu Ghraib that one of the U.S guards had stated that his superior officer had told him ‘not to worry’ when he questioned the general mistreatment of prisoners (Greenberg et al., 2005). It is therefore reasonable to assume that, based on research by Milgram (1963) and the general management and poor leadership within the prison, U.S prison guards may have been nudged into becoming hostile. Moreover, a recent replication of the original obedience experiment by Milgram (1963) which was carried out in 2009 further highlighted that people are still very obedient to authority, decades later (Burger, 2009).
Additionally, Abu Ghraib was an environment in which there were two distinct social groups present: the U.S guards and the Iraqi prisoners. Previous research on social identity has previously highlighted that when two distinct groups within an environment are present, an ‘out-group’ can develop, which in the case of Abu Ghraib were the Iraqi prisoners. When an ‘out-group’ develops, it is known that hostility and aggression towards the ‘out-group’ can increase. On the other hand, the ‘in-group’ can become deindividualised to the situation and can lose a sense of self-identity and personal accountability which is likely to further increase hostility (Tajfel, 1974). The evolutionary dynamics of this are complex, but it has been agreed that pro-sociality towards in-groups and anti-sociality towards out-groups have co-evolved, and that aggression can have actually have a functional purpose for increasing and stabilising in-group pro-sociality (Cacault, Goette, Lalive & Thoenig, 2015). With this in mind, the aggression exhibited by the U.S guards may have encouraged social cohesion and a sense of acceptance among the guards about the abuse.
Further, a simulated prison experiment by Zimbardo and colleagues has also previously shown that prison environments can be incubators for aggression. In his original experiment, Zimbardo found very quickly that guards begun to dehumanise the prisoners. Prisoners were subjected to humiliation and dehumanising abuse, resulting in the experiment being stopped. It was deemed by Zimbardo and colleagues that the situation resulted in ordinary participants becoming hostile and that the guards lost a sense of their individual accountability through a process known as deindividuation (Zimbardo, Haney & Banks, 1971). In psychological literature, deindividuation has been regarded as a major contributing factor which can drive aggressive behaviour, and is regularly seen at football matches. When an individual becomes part of a group, they are more likely to align their social identities with the group at large, resulting in a loss of accountability and a sense of collective anonymity among the larger group, thus increasing the likelihood of aggression to occur (Hiel, Cornelis & De Clercq, 2007). There are many parallels between Zimbardo’s research and the atrocities of Abu Ghraib, such as the fact that there were two distinct groups present.
In terms of the research evidence which appears to support the hypothesis that social psychological factors are involved in the human rights abuses of Abu Ghraib Prison, it is of equal importance to stress some of the flaws associated with such a perspective. The social psychological perspective tends to overlook biological and evolutionary factors. It looks at human behaviour and aggression as simply the result of one’s social situation rather than the result of one’s personality or biology. The research by Milgram (1963) can be applied to the situation at Abu Ghraib, though it is important to stress that the context in both situations was very different. U.S soldiers at Abu Ghraib appeared to be laughing and enjoying the abuse, whereas many of Milgram’s participants were very reluctant to proceed and seemed very distressed. It may even be suggested that the opposite effect had happened at Abu Ghraib, and that there was too little authority rather than too much (Mastroianni, 2013). It is also important to understand that according to Mastroianni, some of the perpetrators of abuse at Abu Ghraib were generally not very nice people and had histories of aggressive behaviour and sexual misconduct. When Zimbardo conducted his experiment, he recruited healthy participants, therefore comparing the simulated prison study with Abu Ghraib must be done with caution. It is also apparent that in both situations, prison guards were also not effectively trained to manage a prison environment, therefore their knowledge about policy and operations, especially in a foreign country, would have been severely limited (Greenberg et al., 2005); (Zimbardo, Haney & Banks, 1971).
In conclusion, this essay has focussed on a social psychological approach which appears to provide an adequate framework for understanding Abu Ghraib. It would appear that social psychological factors and poor prison management were heavily involved in the atrocity of Abu Ghraib. Essentially, U.S prison guards were having to obey aggressive and somewhat confusing military commands within an unstructured prison environment in which a very distinct ‘out-group’ existed. The nature of the situation, such as very long working hours within a prison environment, coupled with the mere existence of a subordinate group may have resulted in the human rights abuses to occur within the prison. In order to reduce such abuse in the future, it would not be sensible for untrained individuals with aggressive or sexual tendencies to be involved in the management and operation of a prison, as such an environment may make these individuals more susceptible to aggression. Further, better prison management and implementation of non-violent policy and training would also help reduce aggression and hostile behaviour towards prisoners.
References
Burger, J., M. (2009).
Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today? American Psychologist, 64, 1 – 11
Cacault, M. P., Goette,
L., Lalive, R., & Thoenig, M. (2015). Do we harm others even when we don’t
need to? Frontiers in Psychology, 6,
729
Greenberg, K. J., Dratel,
J. L., & Lewis, A. (2005). The
Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hiel, A. V., Cornelis, L.
H. I., & De Clercq, B. (2007). Football Hooliganism: Comparing
Self-Awareness and Social Identity Theories. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 17, 169 –
186
Hogg,
M. A., & Vaughn, G. M. (2013). Social Psychology (7th edition).
London: Pearson Education Limited.
Mastroianni, G. R.
(2013). Looking Back: Understanding Abu Ghraib. U.S Army War College, 43, 53 - 65
Milgram,
S. (1963). Behavioural Study of Obedience. Journal
of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371 – 378
Tajfel,
H. (1974). Social Identity and Intergroup Behaviour. Social Science Information, 13, 65 – 93
Zimbardo, P., Haney, C.,
& Banks, C. (1971). The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of
the Psychology of Imprisonment. Stanford
University
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