4.1.1 - Conformity To Social Roles

Question 1

What are social roles

Answer 1

The parts individuals play as members of a social group which meets with the expectations of the situation

Question 2

How does conformity to social roles involve identification

Answer 2

Both public and private acceptance of behaviours is shown

Question 3

What are social norms

Answer 3

The unwritten rules of society

Question 4

Who investigates conformity to social roles

Answer 4

Zimbardo
- Stanford prison experiment

Question 5

What were the aims of zimbardo

Answer 5

He wanted to understand whether the prison guards in America during 1960s behaved brutally because they have sadist personalities, or because the situation they were in strongly influenced/ created their behaviour

Question 6

What was the procedure of zimbardo

Answer 6

A mock prison was built in the basement of stanford
university and a group of university students were randomly allocated the role of prisoner and guard
↳ He told the randomly selected guards that they were
chosen specifically for that role because they are a good fit for the guard role
- the guards were instructed to run the prison without using physical violence
- the experiment was set to run for 2 weeks

Question 7

What were Zimbardos findings

Answer 7

• both the prisoners and the quarts quickly identified with their social roles
• the guards dehumanised the prisoners as they grew increasingly violent towards them
• 5 of the prisoners were released from the experiment early because of their extreme reactions to the metal and physical torment(crying, extreme anxiety etc..)
• Zimbardo had to end the experiment after just 6 days due to inhumane conditions and was persuaded by his partner

Question 8

What were Zimbardos conclusions

Answer 8

• people quickly conform to social roles despite whether the role goes against moral principles or not
• situational factors are largely responsible for the behaviour found as none of the ppts had demonstrated he avoided of such nature previously

Question 9

Zimbardos investigation A03: high control

Answer 9

strength
- zimbardo had high control over key variables such as the selection of ppts
- only emotionally stable ppts were selected to partake in the investigation
- ppts were then randomly assigned between ‘prisoner’ and ‘guard’ role
- limited the impacts of individual differences as both groups had an even mix of people
- high internal validity as confounding variables of ppt variables were controlled

Question 10

Zimbardos investigation A03: lack of realism

Answer 10

limitation
- lack of realism to real life situations so ppts were one likely to act
- BAHUAZZI and MOVAHEDI (1975): argues that many of the ppts in the experiment were ‘play acting’ rather than conforming to their role. One ppt stated that his character wears based on a film.
- suggests ppts were performing based on stereotypes meaning that demand characteristics could have occurred
- situation isn’t representative of real life so the study lacks ecological validity
- so lowers the external validity

Question 11

Zimbardos investigation A03: deterministic

Answer 11

limitation
- zimbardo study was from a deterministic perspective
- FROMM (1973): accused zimbardo of incorrectly over exaggerating his results. Just because 1/3 of the guards were aggressive doesn’t mean that this should be generalised to the other 2/3 hat weren’t
- meaning zimbardo overstated his view that ppts were confounding to social roles despite thr influence of dispositional factors
- study lacks validity as results may not be accurately drawn