Conformity to Social Roles: Zimbardo's Research Flashcards
Stanford Prison Experiment Aim
To see if prison guarda behave brutally because they have sadistic personalities or is it the situation that creates such behaviour?
SPE Procedure
Mock prison. Students were willing to volunteer after advertisement & chose who were emotionally stable after extensive psychological testing. Randomly assigned roles of guards & prisoners. To heighten realism, prisoners were arrested from homes & taken to prison. Blindfolded, strip searched & issued no. & uniform. Prisoners had 16 rules which were enforced by guards 3 a shift. Guards had keys & handcuffs & had power over prisoners.
SPE Findings
Guards took up roles with enthusiasm which affected prisoners’ psychological health so exp. stopped after 6 days instead of intended 14. 2 days in, prisoners rebelled against guards and swore at guards who retaliated with fire extinguishers. Conducted frequent head counts in middle of night as well. After rebellion, prisoners became depressed. Some left on 1st day and one was on hunger strike.
SPE Conclusions
Guards, prisoners & researchers all conformed to their roles in prison and behaved as though they were in prison rather than a study.
Strength
Control. Control over variables. Emotionally stable people were chosen so there wouldn’t be individual personality differences. Increases internal validity.
Weakness (Mohavedi)
Lack of realism. He said that participants were play acting and not genuinely conforming. Based on stereotypes of how prisoners & guards are supposed to behave. One guard claimed that based his role from a film character. However Zimbardo got quantitative data that said 90% of prison convos were about prison life.
Weakness (Reicher & Haslam)
Lack of research support. Replicated SPE and was on BBC. Findings were different from SPE. Prisoners took control of mock prison.
Weakmess (Fromm)
Role of dispositional influences. Accused Zimbardo of minimising role of personality factors. Eg: 1/3 of guards behaved in brutal manner & another 1/3 were keen on applying rules fairly.
