Conformity To Social Roles As Investigated By Zimbardo

Question 1

What are social roles

Answer 1

The behaviours expected of an individual who occupies a social position or status
-> people can conform to the social roles assigned to them

Question 2

What did Zimbardo want to investigate

Answer 2

• whether conformity to social roles would alter a person’s behaviour
  (& whether it’s due to dispositional factors - e.g. sadistic guards, or situational factors e.g. to do with the environment)

Question 3

Zimbardo Prison Experiment (1973) Procedure

Answer 3

• simulated prison created in Stanford university psych department basement
• 24 emotionally & psychologically stable young men recruited + randomly assigned to role (prisoner / guard)

-> guards = complete control over prisoners, who were confined to cells apart from meals, toilet privileges, work & told to maintain order any way (apart from physical violence)

Question 4

How did Zimbardo get participants

Answer 4

-> advertised asking for volunteers
-> then they were given diagnostic interviews + personality tests to eliminate candidates with psych problems, mental disabilities, history or crime / drug abuse

Question 5

How did Zimbardo make the study as real as possible

Answer 5

• each person had uniforms
• guard worked in 8 hour shifts
• each prisoner referred to by a number
• prisoners arrested randomly at their own homes, and fingerprinted, taken to the police station etc

Question 6

Things that happened during Zimbardo’s experiment

Answer 6

• within hours, some guards began to harass & dehumanise prisoners
• second day; prisoners tried to rebel, ripped off prison number etc, sprayed with CO2 by guards, who then stripped them naked and took their beds away
• prisoners became submissive, and guards, aggressive. Prisoners began to tell on each other
• after 36 hours, someone had to be released due to uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying & anger, + deep depression signs -> soon followed by others within a few days
• experiment terminated after 6 days due to Christina Malach’s outrage -> it was terrible

Question 7

Conclusion of Zimbardo present

Answer 7

That people quickly conform to social roles, even when the role goes against their moral principles; furthermore, concluded that situational factors were largely responsible for the behaviour found, as they had never demonstrated that before

Question 8

AO3 P1 - Unethical (-)

Answer 8

• The study was highly unethical as prisoners were subjected to psychological harm. Five prisoners had to be released early because of their extreme reactions, such as crying, rage and acute anxiety.
  -> However, Zimbardo did not expect the guards to behave in the way they did so this harm could not have been anticipated.
  -> lack of informed consent & deception (random arrest)

Question 9

AO3 - P2 (-) Zimbardo’s role

Answer 9

zimbardo’s dual roles in the study.
-> One occasion a student who wanted to leave the study spoke to Zimbardo in his role as superintendent. The whole conversation was conducted on the basis that the student way prisoner in a prison, asking to be ‘released’
-> Zimbardo responded to him as a superintendent worried about the running of his prison rather than as a researcher with responsibility towards his participants.

Question 10

AO3 - P3: Sample issues

Answer 10

-> unrepresentative as everyone was white (bar one) young, middle class, male students from Stanford
(Gender & cultural bias; can’t be generalised)

-> demand characteristics; some participants thought the experimenters wanted them to behave aggressively

-> some didn’t conform and were reluctant to be cruel; suggests individuals differences play a latger role in determining extent of conformity

Question 11

AO3 Zimbardo + Control levels high

Answer 11

-> high level of control when selecting participants (so most stable)
-> random assignment so no experimenter bias, and that if people behaved differently but were in the roles due to chance, behaviour had to be due to the situation
-> therefore, higher internal validity

Question 12

AO3 Zimbardo Practical Application

Answer 12

-> relevant to Abu Ghraib; military prison in Iraq, known for the torture and abuse of Iraqi pridoners by US soldiers (2003/4)
-> zimbardo suggests lack of training / no accountability to authorities, combined with the opportunity to misuse ‘guard’ power led to prisoner abuse