Conformity to Social Roles

Question 1

What does the topic Conformity to Social roles consist of?

Answer 1

• Zimbardo’s research

Question 2

What was Zimbardo’s research procedure?

Answer 2

• 21 ‘emotionally stable’ students randomly allocated to roles of prisoners and guards in mock prison (basement of Stanford university psych department)
• the social roles were reinforced through uniform e.g sunglasses for prison guards and prisoner were called by a number

Question 3

What did Zimbardo find?

Answer 3

• Guards treated prisoners harshly (e.g nighttime headcounts)
• prisoner tried to rebel but it failed and they became depressed causing the study to stop after only 6 days

Question 4

What did Zimbardo conclude?

Answer 4

• Social roles have a strong influence on behavior and can be very easily adopted

Question 5

What sampling method did Zimbardo use and how is it a strength of the investigation?

Answer 5

• Zimbardo randomly assigned the boys to role of prisoner or guard, this is a strength as it prevents bias e.g assigning the ‘tougher looking’ boys to be guards and therefore increases the internal validity of the experiment

Question 6

What features of the participants may make the findings less generalisable?

Answer 6

• All of pps were American men. This may mean the findings are only true to men who are form western individualist cultures and not woman or people form collectivist cultures. This is a limitation as it means the findings are not universally applicable.

Question 7

Did Zimbardo over exaggerate, if so how?

Answer 7

• Only 1/3 guards behaved in a brutal manner, another third were fair and the final third actively helped/supported the prisoners. Most guards were able to resist the situational pressure suggesting Zimbardo overstated the idea they conformed to social roles