Conformity to social roles Flashcards

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1
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
Where was the mock prison set up?

A

The basement of the psychology department at Stanford University in California, USA

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2
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What gender where the students involved?

A

Male

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3
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What happened to students before they were assigned?

A

Psychologically and physically screened

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4
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
How many participants participated?

A

24 ( of the most stable)

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5
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What role could a participant be?

A

Either a prisoner or guard

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6
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What happened to prisoner participants before the xperiment started?

A

UNEXPECTEDLY arrested at home

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7
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What happened to prisoners on entry to the ‘prison’?

A

put through a delousing procedure, given a prison uniform and assigned an ID number

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8
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What did the guards refer to prisoners by?

A

Their ID numbers

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9
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What rights were the prisoners allowed?

A
  • Three meals
  • Three supervised toilet trips a day
  • Two visits per week
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10
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What were the guards given?

A
  • Uniforms
  • Clubs
  • Whistles
  • Reflected sunglasses
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11
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What role did Zimbardo have?

A

Prisoner superintendent

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12
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
How long was the study due to last?

A

2 weeks

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13
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What happened to guards over the first few days?

A

Grew increasingly tyrannical and abusive towards the prisoners

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14
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What did the guards used to do to prisoners?

A

Wake them in the middle of the night

Clean toilets with their bare hands

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15
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What did the participants forget?

A

That it was a psychological study and that they were merely acting

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16
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What did one prisoner ask?

A

To go on parole instead of asking to withdraw from the study

17
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What happened to five participants?

A

Released early due to extreme reactions

  • Crying
  • Rage
  • Acute anxiety
18
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
Why was the experimented terminated after just 6 days?

A

Zimbardo’s girlfriend had to remind them that it was a psychological study
She didn’t justify the abuse being meted

19
Q

Key study: The Stanford Prison Experiment ( Haney Et Al. 1973)-
What does this study suggest?

A

That both guards and prisoners conformed to their social role
Guards became increasingly cruel
Prisoners became increasingly passive and accepting

20
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)

How did they assign men into their groups?

A

Random

21
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)

What groups did they assigned to?

A

Prisoner or guard

22
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)

How many participants were invloved?

A

15

Male

23
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)
How many in each group?
How many groups?

A

3

5

24
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)

What were participants match on?

A

Key personality varibles

25
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)

In each group how many became a prisoners and how many became guards?

A

1 Guard

2 Prisoners

26
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)

How long was the study run for?

A

8 days

27
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)

What was the key finding of this study?

A

Participants do not automatically conform to their roles

Similar to SPE

28
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)

What happened to prisoners over the course of the study?

A
  • Increasingly identified as a group

- Worked together to challenge authority of guards

29
Q

The BBC Prison Study ( Reicher and Haslan, 2006)

What happened to guards over the course of the study?

A
  • Failed to identify with their role

- Reluctanr to impose their authoirty over prisoners

30
Q

Conformity to social roles is not automatic

A

Haslam and Reicher challenged Zimbardo’s belief that the guards’ drift into sadistic behaviour was an antomatic consequence of them embracing their role
- They pointed out that in the SPE guard behaviour varied
- Guards were either sully sadistic to, for a few, being ‘good guards’ who did not degrade or harass the prisoners and even did small favours for them
This shows that the guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conformity to their social role, as suggested by Zimbardo

31
Q

Were these studies ethical?

A

Zimbardo’s study is often criticised for being unethical, despite the fact that it followed the guidelines of the Stanford University ethics committee that had approved it.
- Despite this, Zimbardo acknowledges that prehaps the study should have been stopped earlier as so many of the participants were experiencing emotional distress.
- He attempted to make amends for this by carrying out debriefing session for several years afterwards and concluded that there was no long lasting negative effects
Recognising the potential for harm in studies such as this, Reicher and Haslam used the same basic set-up as Zimbardo, but took greater steps to minimise the potential harm to their participants.

32
Q

The SPE and its relevance to Abu Ghraib

A

Zimbardo argues that the conformity to social role effect can also be used to explain events in Abu GHraib, a military prisonn in Iraq notorious for the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers in 2003 and 2004
- As this was the case is SPE, Zimbardo believed that the guards who committed the abuses were the victims of situational factors that made abuse more likely
- These factors such as lack of training, unrelenting boredom and no accountability to higher authority were present both in the SPE and at Abu Ghraib
Zimbardo concludes that these factors combined with an opportunity to misuse the power associated with the role of ‘guard’, led to the prisoner abuses in both situations