KEY STUDY: Zimbardo

Question 1

what was the aim of Zimbardo study?

Answer 1

testing the dispositional versus situational hypothesis to explain prison behaviour.

Question 2

what is the dispositional hypothesis?

Answer 2

people behave as they do because of the inbuilt personality characteristics they have.

Question 3

what were the procedures of this study?

Answer 3

• Student male participants volunteered for the study through newspaper adverts.
• 24 of them were judged to be emotionally stable and physically healthy and had no background of psychiatric problems.
• Those allocated to prisoner rolls were unexpectedly arrested by the local police and blindfolded and taken to the mock prison where they were stripped naked and given the same clothes and a number which they were reffered to as.
• Guards wore the same unifrom with reflective sunglasses and had complete control over prisoners.

Question 4

what were the findings from the study? 

Answer 4

Zimbardo found that it is the situation that people find themselves in that make them act in extreme ways and not their personalities.

Question 5

What were the findings with regard to prisoners?

Answer 5

• Prisoners rebelled against the guards after two days however after that the prisoners became submissive and subdued.
• A number of prisoners had to be released early due to extreme stress reactions.
  

Question 6

What were the findings with regard to the guards?

Answer 6

• The use of force harassment and aggression increased steadily.
•  The guards conformed so well to their roles that because of their harassment to the prisoners the study had to be discontinued after six days.
• There were individual differences in the guards behaviour, e.g. One third became brutal whilst other guards did not harass prisoners.

Question 7

How can research be questioned in terms of internal validity?

Answer 7

Banuazizi & Movahedi:

Low internal validity behaviour may have been the result of demand characteristics and participant reactivity.

Question 8

How can research be defended in terms of internal validity?

Answer 8

reactions of both guards and prisoners to the situation were very extreme therefore questions the idea that behaviour was simply down to demand characteristics. 

Question 9

Was there a lack of external/ ecological validity?

Answer 9

The study was an artificial situation because participants knew they were in a study hadn’t committed a crime and were free to leave any time.
Therefore may not be able to generalise findings to a real prison.

Question 10

Is there support in terms of external validity?

Answer 10

• An outsider observer of the study w
  with history of imprisonment believed the study and participants behaviour to be very similar to real prison life.
• Abu Ghraib real world application:
• Suggests the study has ecological validity as behaviour in this study was similar to that in the Abu Ghraib prison.

Question 11

How was the study ethical?

Answer 11

• Volunteer sample- participants chose to be in study.
• Gave consent.
• There was no deception as they werent lied to.
• Protection from harm as they made sure the participants were mentally stable.

Question 12

How can this study lack population validity?

Answer 12

• Participants were all males therefore may not be able to generalise findings to females (gender bias).
• Lacks population validity.

Question 13

How might this study be unethical?

Answer 13

• Role play went too far e.g. guards were aggressive.
• High level of stress (psychological harm) ln prisoners.
• May have had physical harm.
• Prisoners not aware that they would be fake arrested.