CONFORMITY: zimbardo Flashcards
Informed consent in zimbardos study
Lack of infrormed consent
Particiapnts werent told everything that would happen in the experiment.
E.g being arrested in their own homes
As ps werent aware of everything there is a lack of fully informed consent
How were participants allocated to their social roles in zimbardos study ?
random sampling
How many prisoners were in zimbardos study ?
12
Why is zimbardos study said to be valid ?
Both prisoners and guards still continued their behaviours even when they werent being observed
How many participants in zimbardo study ?
24 male college students
What is a social role?
The parts we play as members of various social groups
What was the procedure of zimbardos study?
volunteer sample was used to obtain a pool of participants
from the volunteers they selected actual ps by giving a test and those most physically and mentally able were chosen
they were allocated to the role of prisoner or guard randomly and there were 12 of each
they were told to act as their allocated role
prisoners arrested from own home stripped and disinfected
guards given uniform and help set up prison
What are the findings of zimbardo?
Both prisoners and the guards had shown identification with their social roles
Guards took complete control and became deindividuated due to the anonymity in their uniform. They woke up the prisoners in the middle of the night made them do pointless tasks and push ups and pointless cruel tasks e.g counting backwards and cleaning toilets with bare hands
prisoners acted like prisoners. some rebelled but most obeyed and became withdrawn and depressed.
5 prisoners were released early as they were showing distress, emotional depression, crying, rage , anxiety
study was supposed to last for 2 weeks but was stopped after 6 days
how many guards in zimbardos study?
12
What is deindividuation?
When someone loses their individual identity and may begin to start to act like the crowd
Right to withdraw in zimbardos study
ps were not allowed to leave the study at first but after time right to withdraw was given when prsioners started to show signs of distress
5 prisoners left after 5 days
The study ended after 6 days it should have lasted for 2 weeks
Protection from harm in zimbardos study
Prisoners were distressed and humiliated they werent allowed to wear underwear
they showed depression anxiety and crying
prisoners were mistreated by guards they were woken up in the middle of the night and made to do push ups and pointless tasks e.g cleaning toilets with bare hands and counting backwards
prisoners werent protected from harm
However in follow up interviews with ps zimbardo found no lasting negative effects
demand characteristics in zimbardo
Demand characteristics may have taken place as ps were aware that theyre playing a role of guards or prisoners so the results of the study may be due to the ps acting and results may not actually be valid. They may have acted differently to what they thought the experimenter wanted them to do.
However when guards were told the cameras were off they still mistreated prisoners
Does zimbardos study have population validity ?
only used male participants so it cant be generalised to females
What are the conclusions of zimbardo?
People will esasily conform to their new social roles especially if the roles are strongly sterotyped.
The roles that people play shape their attitudes and beahviour
Was zimbardos experiment a lab natural or field ?
lab
From the volunteers that zimbardo had how did they choose the actual participants?
They did a test and chose those who were the most mentally and physically able
How did zimbardo help to reinforce the role of a prisoner ?
They put prisoners in smocks and gave them numbers instead of them using their names
How did zimbardo reinforce the role of a guard ?
They all had identical khaki uniforms and wore reflective sunglasses to help them be deindividuated
they had whistles and clubs
They also went a day early to help and set up the prison
Deception in zimbardos study
In the study ps were deceived as prisoners were unaware that they were going to be arrested in their own homes
What role did zimbardo take ?
prison superintendent
is there ecological validity in zimbardos study?
Lacks ecological validity as it is a mock prison it may not be able to be generalised to real prisons and prisoners and guards were not real prisoners or guards
Where was zimbardos study conducted?
basement of the psychology department at stanford uni
How long was zimbardos study supposed to last
2 weeks but ended after 6 days
what are the practical applications of zimbardos study
been used to train prison guards as the study showed the power of prison guards in socical situations it showed how prisoners should not be dehumanised
abu gharib iraq prison
Zimbardo argues that the same conformity to social role effect from the stanford prison experiment was present in Abu Ghraib, a military prison in Iraq notorious for the torture abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers.
Zimbardo believed that the guards who committed the abuse were victims of situational factors that made abuse more likely e.g no training, boredom and no accountability to a higher authority, which were present in both situations.
These combined with an opportunity to misuse the power associated with the assigned role of ‘guard’ led to prisoner abuse in both situations
**this suggest that the findings of Zimbardo’s study have external validity as there are similar findings in other prisons and can be used to ensure that such abuses don’t happen again
