Conformity to Social Roles

Question 1

What are the aims of Stanford Prison Experiment?

Answer 1

• To test whether prison violence was due to sadistic personality (dispositional) or prison conditions (situational)
• To study the extent to which people would conform to the roles of prisoners and guards in a prison simulation

Question 2

What are social roles?

Answer 2

Unwritten rules about behaviours/norms, beliefs and obligations that belongs to a social situation

Question 3

Describe the procedure of the Stanford Prison Experiment

Answer 3

• Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison
• He advertised for students to play the roles of prisoners and guards for a fortnight, where they would be paid $15 per day to take part in experiment
• Male student volunteers were psychologically and physically screened and the 24 most stable were randomly assigned to either play the role of prisoner or ‘guard’
• Prisoner were unexpected arrested at home and on entry to the ‘prison’ they were put through a delousing procedure, given a uniform, fingerprinted, photographed and assigned an ID number. Guards referred to prisoners only by numbers, which helped with the process of deindividuation and dehumanisation.
• Prisoners were allowed certain rights, like 3 meals and 3 supervised toilet trips a day and 2 visits per week. Guards were given uniforms, clubs, whistles and wore reflective sunglasses (preventing eye contact). Zimbardo took the role of Prison Superintendent and briefed the guards on their role and physical violence was prohibited.
• Study was planned to last 2 weeks

Question 4

Describe the results from the Stanford Prison Experiment

Answer 4

• Over the first few days, guards grew increasingly tyrannical and abusive toward the prisoners. The woke prisoners in the night to clean toilets with their bare hands and made them carry out other degrading activities.
• On the 2nd day, prisoners organised a mass revolt and riot as a protest about the condition.
• Guards worked extra hours and developed a plan to stop the riot, using fire extinguishers
• Participants appeared to forget they were just in a study and were just acting. Even when they were unaware of being watched, they still conformed to their roles.
• 5 prisoners were released early due to their extreme emotional reactions.
• Ended after 6 days instead of planned 14 due to extreme pathological reactions of the participants. And Christiana Maslach’s intervention that reminded researchers it was just a study so it didn’t justify the abuse being meted out to participants

Question 5

Describe the effects on guards that the Stanford Prison Experiment had

Answer 5

• Many seemed to enjoy the new-found power and control that went with the uniform.
• They punished prisoners with little justification and became increasingly cruel and sadistic
• Verbally insulted the prisoners
• Some volunteered to work extra shifts for no pay and were disappointed when they study was over
• Continued to be authorative even when they be lived the cameras weren’t on

Question 6

Describe the conclusion of the Stanford Prison Experiment

Answer 6

• Significance of the situation and environment in influencing behaviour
• One explanation for why participants’ reactions were extreme could be that they conformed to social roles
• Deindividuation helps to explain the behaviour of participants, especially the guards. This is a state where you lose sense of your identity and personal identity as you’re immersed in the norms of the group. Guards may have been sadistic as they didn’t feel what happened was down to them personally, it was a group norm.

Question 6

Describe the effects on prisoners that the Stanford Prison Experiments had

Answer 6

• Rebellion (that resulted in failure) followed by negative emotions behaviours
• They became increasingly passive, obedient and didn’t question the guards.
• They became dependent and initiated very little activity without instructions
• They had a flattened mood and half the prisoners showed signs of depressions, crying, fits of rage, acute anxiety.
• One prisoner in particular forgot they were in a study when they asked to be put on ‘parole’ instead of asking to withdraw from the study

Question 7

Describe the procedure of the BBC Prison Study

Answer 7

• Reicher and Haslam (2006) randomly assigned men to the role of guard or prisoners and examined their behaviour within a specially created ‘prison’
• 15 male participants were divided into 5 groups who were closely matched on key personality variables, and from each group of 3, 1 was randomly chosen to be a guard and the other 2 prisoners.
• The study was to run for 8 days

Question 8

Describe the findings of the BBC Prison Study

Answer 8

• Participants didn’t conform automatically to their role as had happened in the SPE.
• Over the course of the study, prisoners increasingly identified as a group and worked collectively to challenge the authority of the guards and establish a egalitarian set of social relations in the prison
• Guards failed to identify with their role, making reluctant to impose their authority. This led to a shift of power and the collapse of the prisoner-guard system

Question 9

Give evaluation for conformity to social roles (conformity isn’t automatic)

Answer 9

• Haslam and Reicher (2012) challenged that the guards’ sadistic behaviour was an automatic consequence of them embracing their role
• They pointed out that in the SPE guard behaviour varied from fully sadistic to a few ‘good’ guards, who didn’t degrade or harass the prisoners and even did small favours for them.
• They argued this shows that the guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conforming, as suggested by Zimbardo. Therefore, conformity to roles isn’t automatic

Question 10

Give evaluation for conformity to social roles (demand characteristics)

Answer 10

• Banuazizi and Movahedi (1975) argued behaviour in the SPE was a consequence of demand characteristics (participants guessing how experimenter wanted them to act)
• They presented details of the SPE procedure to a large sample of students who had never heard of the study. Majority guessed correctly the aim of the experiment was to show that ordinary people assigned roles would act like real prisoners and guards, they predicted that guards would be hostile and domineering while prisoners would be passive.
• Suggests that the behaviour of Zimbardo’s guards and prisoners wasn’t due to a response to a ‘compelling prison environment’, but due to powerful demand characteristics in the experimental situation itself.

Question 11

Give evaluation for conformity to social roles (conclusion of study)

Answer 11

• Zimbardo concluded from the SPE that people can descend into tyrannical behaviour as they unthinkingly to their prescribed role without the need for specific orders
• He claimed that the brutality of the guards in the SPE was a natural consequence of being allocated the role of ‘guard’ and the power associated
• However, Reicher and Haslam showed with their BBC study that the way in which members of strong groups behave depends on the norms and the values associated with their specific social identity

Question 12

Give evaluation for conformity to social roles (ethics of the study)

Answer 12

• Zimbardo’s study is seen as unethical, despite following the guidelines of the Stanford University ethics committee that had approved it.
• Zimbardo acknowledges that the study should’ve been stopped before as many were emotionally distressed. He attempted to make amends by carrying out debriefs for several years after and concluded that there were no lasting negative effects
• Recognising the harm in these studies, Reicher and Haslam took greater steps to minimise the potential harm in their study, by creating a harsh and testing situation but not harmful.