Conformity To Social Roles

Question 1

Social roles

Answer 1

The ‘parts’ people play as members of various social groups. Every day examples include parent, child, student, passenger and so on. These are accompanied by expectations we and others have of what is appropriate behaviour in each role, for example, caring, obedient, industrious etc

Question 2

Zimbardo’s research (The Stanford prison experiment)

Answer 2

Mock prison with 21 student volunteers, randomly assigned as guards or prisoners.
Conformity to social roles created through uniforms and instructions about behaviour (e.g. guards have power)

Findings: Guards became increasingly brutal, prisoners’ rebellion put down and prisoners became depressed. Study stopped after 6 days.

Conclusion: Participants strongly conformed to their social roles.

Question 3

Evaluation: strengths

Answer 3

Control: Zimbardo and his colleagues had control over key variables.
The most obvious example of this was the selection of participants.
Emotionally-stable individuals were chosen and randomly assigned to the roles of guards and prisoners. If guards and prisoners behaved very differently, but were in those roles only by chance, then their behaviour must have been due to the role itself.
This degree of control over variables increased the internal validity of the study, so we can be much more confident in drawing conclusions about the influence of roles on conformity.

Question 5

Evaluation: limitations

Answer 5

Lack of realism: It did not have the realism of a true prison. Ali Banuazizi and Siamak Movahedin (1975) argued the participants were merely play-acting rather than genuinely conforming to a role. Participants’ performances were based on their **stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave. For example, one of the guards claimed he had based his role on a brutal character from the film Cool Hand Luke. This would also explain why the prisoners rioted - they thought that was what real prisoners did.
This suggest that the findings tell us little about conformity to social roles in actual prisons.

Exaggerates the power of roles: Zimbardo may have exaggerated the power of social roles to influence behaviour.
For example, only one-third of the guards actually behaved in a brutal manner. Another third tried to apply the rules. The rest actively tried to help and support the prisoners. They sympathised, offered cigarettes and reinstated privileges. Most guards were able to resist situational pressures to conform to a brutal role.
This suggests that Zimbardo overstated his view that SPE participants were conforming to social roles and minimised the influence of dispositions factors.