Alex Haslam

The following four projects give some idea of the ongoing impact of Alex's research:

The new psychology of leadership

Since the 1990s I have collaborated with a number of social identity researchers, notably Steve Reicher, Michael Platow, and John Turner, to develop a social identity analysis of leadership. This work focuses on the role of perceived shared identity as a basis for mutual influence between leaders and followers. It argues that leaders' success hinges on their ability to create, represent, advance and embed a social identity that is shared with those they seek to motivate and inspire. In 2012 the researchers received the International Leadership Association's Outstanding Leadership Book Award for their book The New Psychology of Leadership. This work has also been the basis for the award-winning 5R Leadership Development Program which has been delivered to a range of leading organisations around the world. This won the Australian Psychology Society's award for Leadership Development in 2017.

The glass cliff

I have worked with Michelle Ryan on the leadership experiences of women and together they coined the term "glass cliff" to describe some of their key findings — specifically, evidence that women are more likely than men to be appointed to leadership roles in organisations that are performing poorly. This is now a major focus for research and practice the world over and was short-listed for the Times Higher Education "Research Project of the Year" in 2005. In 2017 the term 'the glass cliff' was short-listed for the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year.

The social cure

My more recent work (funded by both the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Australian Research Council) has contributed to the development of the Social Identity Approach to health and well-being (also referred to as "The Social Cure"). This work argues that the sense of social identity derived from shared group membership is a basis not only for a sense of meaning and purpose, but also for social connection and social support. This is an antidote to loneliness and depresssion and is also a basis for them to work with others to overcome stressors rather than succumb to them.

The BBC Prison Study

In 2001 I collaborated with Steve Reicher (University of St Andrews) on the BBC television programme The Experiment, (which became known as the "BBC Prison Study"). One of the largest and most intensive field studies in psychology in the last 50 years, this examined the behaviour of a group of individuals within a simulated prison environment and re-examined issues raised by the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Amongst other things, the study's findings challenged the role account of tyranny associated with the SPE as well as broader ideas surrounding the "banality of evil". The core insight from the study was that tyranny results from the engaged followership of subordinates rather than blind conformity to roles or rules. Recent work has also demonstrated that the same analysis can explain the behaviour of participants in Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiments, and this idea formed the basis for Kathryn Millard's 2017 award-winning documentary Shock Room.