Conformity to social roles: Zimbardo's research

Question 1

What was the purpose of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 1

Zimbardo wanted to see whether prison guard brutality was due to sadistic personalities or the environment they were put in. To see how people adopted/played their role of prisoner or guard.

Question 2

What was Zimbardo’s procedure for the Stanford experiment?

Answer 2

Zimbardo gathered 24 male university students who volunteered. They were tested for mental stability and were paid $15 a day and were randomly assigned roles of prisoner or guard.

Prisoners were arrested by local police, fingerprinted and stripped. Given numbers instead of names and uniforms. Guards given uniforms, sunglasses and handcuffs. Guards were not allowed to use physical violence.

Question 3

What were Zimbardo’s findings for the research?

Answer 3

Prisoners and guards quickly identified with their social roles. Guards became increasingly abusive causing prisoners to naturally become submissive.
e.g making the prisoners clean the toilet with their bare hands.
Prisoners began to riot and study ended after 6 days, 5 prisoners had to leave the study before it ended due to poor mental health.

Question 4

Suggest support for Zimbardo’s study
(Real-world applications)

Answer 4

A strength of Zimbardo’s research is that it can be used to explain abuses of power in real prison situations. For example, Abu Ghraib prison is an example of how ordinary guards can do evil things, this is a place where prisoners were tortured in ways that were truly unnatural and evil. The prison guards at Abu Ghraib conformed to their assigned social roles; supporting Zimbardo’s view that ‘evil situations create evil behaviours’ and lead people to behave in ways which they would normally reject. As such, we must consider Zimbardo’s research when training future prison guards and other members of society in roles of authority.

Question 5

Suggest weaknesses for Zimbardo’s study
(Demand characteristics)

Answer 5

Critics claim that Zimbardo’s participants were merely play-acting and not truly conforming to their social roles. For example, Banuazizi and Movahedi (1975) argued that the participant’s were merely play-acting and were adhering to their roles. They based their behaviour off of the stereotypes of how guards and prisoners ‘should’ behave. One guard said he based his role on a brutal character from cool and luke. A lot of the conversations (90%) prisoners had were about prison life. This suggests that demand characteristics were displayed, which means Zimbardo’s research lacks realism as participants were not acting based on their personality or environment, but doing what they think they should do to please the researchers. As such, Zimbardo’s research may have lacked realism which questions the level of its internal validity.

Question 6

Suggest weaknesses for Zimbardo’s study
(Ethical issues)

Answer 6

Stanford’s ethics committee approved but some ethical things were not dealt with. Protection from harm was broken, Mental health affected, anxiety, guilt. Should have stopped earlier. Zimbardo’s work is valid but his ethics are questionable.

Question 7

Suggest a weakness for Zimbardo’s study
(Sample)

Answer 7

Zimbardo only used