conformity to social roles ao3

Question 1

Weakness - individual differences

Answer 1

P; Fromm (1973) accused Zimbardo of exaggerating the power of the situation to influence behaviour, minimising the role of personality.
E; In Zimbardo’s original experiment the behaviour of the guards varied dramatically,
E: There was extremely sadistic behaviour displayed by around one third of the participants in that role, but also a few guards who actually helped the prisoners by offering support, sympathy, offering them cigarettes and reinstating any privileges lost.
L: This suggests that situational factors are not the only cause of conformity to social roles, and dispositional factors such as personality also play a role, implying that Zimbardo’s conclusion could have been overstated.

Question 2

Weakness - lack of research support

Answer 2

P; A recent replication of the Stanford Prison Experiment, carried out by E: Reicher and Haslam (2006), contradicts the findings of Zimbardo.
Reicher and Haslam replicated Zimbardo’s research by randomly assigning 15 men to the role of prisoner or guard.
E: In this replication, the participants did not conform to their social roles automatically. For example, the guards did not identify with their status and refused to impose their authority; the prisoners identified as a group to challenge the guard’s authority, which resulted in a shift of power and a collapse of the prison system.
L: These results clearly contradict the findings of Zimbardo and suggest that conformity to social roles may not be automatic as Zimbardo originally implied, but may infect be more down to the shared social identity of a specific group.