P1 Social Influence: Topic 3: Conformity to Social Roles (Zimbardo's Research)

Question 1

What is a social role?

Answer 1

• A part people play as members of a social group.
• With each social role you adopt, your behaviour changes to fit the expectations that you and others have of that role.

Question 2

What was Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 2

An attempt to explain the violent and brutal conditions often found in prisons.

Question 3

What are the two different explanations for why prisons are often violent and brutal?

Answer 3

Dispositional hypothesis - Guards & prisoners are just ‘bad seeds’, and this violence is due to the nature/personalility of people in prison.

Situational hypothesis - Brutality due to the environmental conditions of the prison.

Question 4

What were the aims of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 4

• To investigate how people would conform to the social roles of prisoner & guard in a simulation.
• To test the dispositional vs situational explanation of brutality seen in prisons.

Question 5

In order to start the experiment realistically, what procedures were the prisoners put through?

Answer 5

They were ‘arrested’ from their homes and put in a cell.

Question 6

What was Zimbardo interested in? (Why was he carrying out the research?)

Answer 6

The effect on the environment on people’s personality.

Question 7

What was ‘the hole’?

Answer 7

Solitary confinement.

Question 8

Why were the guards given uniforms and sunglasses?

Answer 8

Uniforms - Authority/power.

Sunglasses - To dehumanise the guards by a barrier.

Question 9

How did Zimbardo recruit participants?

Answer 9

Newspaper advert.

Question 10

What did potential participants have to do before they could be selected? Why?

Answer 10

Psychological test to test for emotional stability.

Question 11

What two roles did Zimbardo take on?

Answer 11

Prison superintendent & lead psychologist.

Question 12

What were Zimbardo’s instructions to the guards regarding maintaining order?

Answer 12

• No physical violence.
• Can create a sense of total power over prisoners.

Question 13

Explain what Zimbardo means when he says ‘the degradation process’.

Answer 13

Humiliation, delousing, stripping and blindfolding.

Question 14

What kind of activities did the guards have the prisoners perform?

Answer 14

• Clean toilets with bare hands.
• Line up and receive insults.

Question 15

What did Zimbardo say to prisoner 8612 when he asked to leave?

Answer 15

He will get the guards off his back if he became an informant (snitch).

Question 16

What did 8612 go back to the prisoners and say?

Answer 16

That they cannot leave and are stuck here.

Question 17

What happened to 8612 after thinking he was stuck here?

Answer 17

He became mentally disturbed and was released early.

Question 18

What problems arose for Zimbardo in terms of his role(s)?

Answer 18

He was so obsessed with his role he forgot he was a psychologist.

Question 19

Dave Eshelman was nicknamed the ‘John Wayne’ guard. Why?

Answer 19

His macho attitude.

Question 20

Esehlmen had recently seen ‘Cold Hand Luke’. What impact did this apparently have on his behaviour?

Answer 20

The prison guard was his inspiration.

Question 21

What did prisoner 416 do to try to ‘push the guards’ limits?

Answer 21

Hunger strike.

Question 22

Christina Maslach visited the experiment. What impact did her arrival have?

Answer 22

Zimbardo realised the boys were suffering and ended the experiment.

Question 23

In the wake of the studies like Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s, how did research change?

Answer 23

• Ethics of human subjects.
• Safeguarding to protect.

Question 24

Eshelman was ‘running his own particular experiments’. What impact does this have on the results?

Answer 24

• Accelerated abusive behaviour.
• Extraneous variable.

Question 25

What was the procedure of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 25

• Mock prison in Stanford Uni basement.
• Selected ‘emotionally stable’ student volunteers.
• Randomly allocated to guard or prisoner.
• Conformed to social roles through uniforms.
• Prisoners wore loose smock and cap and called by number only.
• Guards had clubs, handcuffs, keys, and sunglasses.
• Unforms created deindividuation so participants conform.
• Each role should play their role well.

Question 26

What were the findings of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 26

• Stopped after 6 days (threat to health).
• Guards constantly harrased prisoners to highlight social role differences.
• As time went on, guards identified with role more, becoming more aggressive.
• Prisoners rebelled after 2 days by ripping unforms, the guards retaliated with fire extinguishers.
• Prisoners felt depressed and anxious after.
• 1 prisoner released on 1st day for psychological disturbance signs.
• 2 more prisoners released on 4th day.
• Prison #819 went on hunger strike, so guards sent him to ‘the hole’, he was shunned by other prisoners.

Question 27

What two processes did Zimbardo propose that can explain the prisoner’s ‘final submission’?

Answer 27

Deindividuation - So immersed in group norms you lose sense of identity & personal responsibility.

Learned helplessness - Participants learned whatever they did had little effect on what happened to them. The guards unpredictable decisions led to prisoners giving up responding.