Conformity To Social Roles

Question 1

What are social roles?

Answer 1

• Behaviours expected of an individual who occupies a given social position or status

Question 2

Outline Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment

Answer 2

• Converting the basement of Stanford University into a mock prison he aimed to investigate the effect of social roles
• After psychologically screening, 21 men were randomly assigned as guards or prisoners. Prisoners were arrested from their homes, deloused when they got to prison and only had an id number as reference. Guards wore uniforms, reflective mirror shades and had clubs
• Within the first few days, the guards grew increasingly abusive, constantly harassing the prisoners, some even appearing to enjoy their newfound power. The prisoners became subdued, depressed, and anxious
• Zimbardo ended the experiment after only 6 days rather than the intended 14
• Zimbardo concluded that social roles have a strong influence on an individual’s behaviour

Question 3

What are evaluations for Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment?

Answer 3

• High Control (+)
• SPE Can Explain Real Life Situations (+)
• Low Population Validity (-)

Question 4

Explain the evaluation point ‘High Control’

Answer 4

• A strength of Zimbardo’s study is that it had high control over key variables such as the selection of participants
• Emotionally-stable individuals were chosen and randomly assigned to the roles of prisoner and guard. This was one wat in which the researchers controlled individual personality differences as an explanation of the findings
• This is a strength because we can be confident that the results about social roles are not being affected by confounding variables
• Therefore this study has internal validity

Question 5

Explain the evaluation point ‘SPE Can Explain Real Life Situations’

Answer 5

• A strength of Zimbardo’s research is that conformity to social roles can be used to explain real life situations such as Abu Ghraib
• Like in the SPE, Zimbardo argued that situational factors, such as the lack of training, boredom and no accountability to higher authority, made prisoner abuse more likely. These factors combined with the power associated with the role of ‘guard’, led to mistreatment in both cases
• This is a strength because it shows that Zimbardo’s findings remain relevant to real life situations even years after the study

Question 6

Explain the evaluation point ‘Low Population Validity’

Answer 6

• A limitation of Zimbardo’s research is that it has low population validity
• Zimbardo’s study consisted of American male students and therefore were not representative of all people as it may be the case that males or students will behave differently in this environment compared to other types of people
• This is a limitation because the results about social roles may be difficult to generalise to the behaviours of others such as females or people that are not students
• Therefore this study has low external validity