Conformity To Social Roles Flashcards
What is conformity to social roles?
When an individual adopts a particular behaviour, and belief while in a particular social situation. People learn how to behave in certain situations by observing the social roles of others and conformity to this behaviour.
Who is Zimbardo?
A psychology professor at Stanford University
What did Zimbardo conduct?
He conducted an extremely controversial study on conformity to social roles called the Stanford Prison Experiment
What are dispositional factors?
Unique characteristics that influence behaviour and actions in an individual
What was the aim to Zimbardo’s study - SFE?
Whether people would conform to social roles of a prison guard or prisoner when placed in a mock prison environment. Examine whether the behaviour displayed in prison was due to internal or external situational factors and conditions of the prison.
SFE - Procedure - The prison
- The basement of the Psychology department at Stanford University was turned into a mock prison.
- Prisoners stayed in the prison 24/7 and follow a strict schedule of work assignments
- Guards worked 8 hour shifts daily
SFE - Procedures - Selection of ppts
Male respondents to a newspaper ad to take part in a 1-2 week study
Paid 15$ a day
24 students who were the most physically and mentally able
SFE - Procedures - Assignment of roles/PRISONERS
- Randomly selected to be either prisoners or guards.
- Prisoners were arrested by real police, being blindfolded, fingerprinted, stripped and deloused.
- Dehumanised by wearing ID numbers
SFE - Guards
Guards wore khaki uniforms and sunglasses (to avoid eye contact) and were given handcuffs and truncheons
No physical violence used
“Maintain the reasonable degree of order within the prison necessary for effective functioning”
- Guards began to humiliate and punish the prisoners. Increasingly aggressive
- Big differences on how guards acted with good and bad cops, some even volunteered to work extra shifts
Findings - Prisoners
- The prisoners rioted but was dealt with by the guards
- Began to show signs of mental + emotional distress
- 1 had to be released after 36 hours
- Showed deindividualisation by referring to themselves as numbers
SFE - General findings
- The study stopped after 6 days due to the harm it was having on prisoners and increasingly aggressive guard behaviour.
- In later interviews, both prisoners and guards were surprised by their uncharacteristic behaviour.
A03 - limitations - Haslam and Reicher
P - Conformity to roles is not automatic
E - Haslam and Reicher (2012) challenged Zimbardo’s belief that the guards drift into sadisitic behaviour was an automatic consequence of them embracing their roles as they believed the guards chose how to behave rather than blindly conforming. This is due to the guard’s varying behaviour as only a 1/3 of guards behaved in a brutal manner. Ignored dispositions influences and Zimbardo was wrong to claim the guards’ behaviour was an automatic choice.
Limitations - Banuazizi and Movahedi
P - Demand characteristics affected the validity of the experiment.
E - Banuazizi and Movahedi (1975) argued that the behaviour of participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment was a consequence of demand characteristics as they presented some of the details of the SPE procedure to a large sample of students who had never heard of the study. The vast majority guessed that the purpose of the experiment was to show that ordinary people assigned to the role of guard or prisoner would act like real prisoners and guards, with guards acting hostile and prisoners acting passive.
Strength - Abu Ghraib
P - Real-life application to support that conformity to social roles does occur in everyday
E - Within Abu Ghraib, a military prison in Iraq, American soldiers notoriously torture Iraqi prisoners when in wear. It is believed that this occurred due to situational factors which made abuse more likely such as boredom, lack of raining and having no accountability due to wearing glasses and uniform which caused feelings of anonymity.
Strengths - Ethical
P - The use of ethics within the study
E - Within the study, the participants were told their rights would be suspended which was approved by the ethics committee.
E - TMB it highlights the importance of ethical considerations in psychology and this study cannot be replicated once again due to the implications involved.
