Conformity To Social Roles

Question 1

Define conformity to social roles

Answer 1

• roles that people play as members of various social groups e.g teachers/students

Question 2

Zimbardo’s Prison experiment : Procedure

Answer 2

• volunteer sample of 24 emotionally stable US male university students
• Prisoners arrested outside their homes and taken to mock prison
• Prisoners given smocks and numbers
• Guards given uniforms, night sticks and mirrored glasses
• zimbardo took role of superintendent

Question 3

Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment : findings

Answer 3

• prisoners started to rebel
• guards gave harsher punishments
• prisoners became depressed and some showed severe stress responses, 3 released early
• supposed to last 2 weeks but stopped after 6 days due to harm caused

Question 4

Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment : conclusion

Answer 4

• guards, prisoners and researchers conformed to their role within the prison
• social roles have an extraordinary power over individuals, making even the most well-adjusted capable of extreme brutality towards others

Question 5

Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment : strength

Answer 5

P- high control over extraneous variables
E- e.g the way in which the ppts were selected
E- researchers assessed the emotional stability pf the ppts prior to the experiment, and randomly and randomly assigned them role of prisoner or guard. This allowed zimbardo to accurately measure the power of social roles on levels of conformity, rather than it being affected by individual personality differences
L- increases internal validity of research

Question 6

Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment : weakness 1

Answer 6

P- gender bias
E- male only sample (androcentric)
E- difficult to generalise findings to females. Could be argued that the role of a guard was a violent one, females would not conform as much due to stereotypically being more caring and concerned for others
L- thus, reducing the external validity of the research

Question 7

Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment : weakness 2

Answer 7

P- major ethical issues
E- lack of protection from harm as they showed some signs of psychological disturbance
E- lack of informed consent as ppts did not know they would be arrested at their homes
L- reduces credibility of research