In the now famous prison studies, Philip Zimbardo simulated a prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford. He recruited about a dozen run-of-the-mill students through newspaper advertisements. Half of these students were randomly assigned to play a role of prison-guards, and half a role of prisoners.He simulated an unexpected arrest of those assigned as prisoners by the city police. This included a temporary detention at a police station and escorting the "prisoners" to the simulated prison.

In no time, they began to go beyond taking their roles seriously. The guards displayed verbal and physical aggressiveness, arbitrariness, and dehumanization of those assigned to the role of prisoners even though neither those with the role of guards nor the role of prisoners were instructed, in any way, on how to act. The prisoners became so distressed that the study had to be terminated after three days when it had been scheduled to run for a couple of weeks. Neither a battery of personality tests nor the medical, social or educational histories of the participants predicted the behavioral patterns adopted by the participants (Zimbardo, 1971). The sole predictor was the social role the participants were randomly assigned to. 

Other relevant work is Norma Jean Orlando's (1973) "Mock Psychiatric Mental Ward." To give some insight to nurses as to how patients might feel, she staged a mock psychiatric ward at Elgin State Hospital in Illinois. Here, 29 of the hospital staff members played the role of patients in a psychiatric ward. Other staff played their normal roles. Just as in the Stanford Prison Study, this study only lasted a few days. Orlando observed with amazement how the mock patients begun to act so similarly to real patients in such short period of time. Staff members in the experiment took their roles so seriously that some tried to escape, wept uncontrollably, had near nervous breakdowns, and experienced increased tension, anxiety, frustration and despair. One staff member declared how conceptually wrong he had been about patients. Orlando's work also gives us insight on the consequences of placing people into roles.

These social psychological studies-- and the principles about the power of social roles that they make clear-- are widely known. This research helps us understand that in many occasions, when roles and boundaries are not explicitly defined, people fill in the gaps from what they associate with the roles themselves. However, one has to wonder whether these lessons form part of police officers' training. Suspending the police chief at UC Davis is effective only if this move implies that officers will be better trained to mind what is permissible versus impermissible behavior when faced with hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters. Part of that training needs to include lessons from social psychology and group behavior.

I am hopeful for the OWS movement. I believe that it will shine light not only on societal disparities, but also on how important social psychological research is for preventing abusive behavior by police officers who, in the end, look as if they are the problem when they themselves are part of the ninety-nine percent.  

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