SOC 05 - Zimbardo Evaluation

Question 1

What is a situational factor?

Answer 1

Features of the immediate physical and social environment which may influence a person’s behaviour (such as proximity, location and uniform)

Question 2

What is a dispositional factor?

Answer 2

An explanation of behaviour in terms of an individual’s personality (i.e. their disposition)

Question 3

What are the strengths of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 3

• Control: Zimbardo and his colleagues had control over key variables
• Counter point for Lack of realism: Mark McDermott (2019) argued participants did behave as if the prison was real
• Prison guards were briefed before hand
• It was an overt observation making it ethical as consent would have been given
• Participant observation: gave insight

Question 4

What are the limitations of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 4

• Lack of realism: it did not have the realism of a true prison
• Exaggerates the power of roles: Zimbardo may have exaggerated the power of social roles to influence behaviour
• Social identity theory: Steve Reicher and Alex Haslam (2006) criticised Zimbardo’s explanation of the participants’ behaviours
• Participant observation: subjective
• Has not been replicated, decreasing reliability
• Has poor population validity as it is all men
• Allowed participants to be harmed (little to no protection) sparking ethical issues

Question 5

Explain how Zimbardo had control over his study.

Answer 5

• Only emotionally stable participants were selected through a structured test
• Participants were randomly assigned to their roles increasing the internal validity as it allowed for a valid comparison between, he guards and prisoners, which aided in ruling out individual personality differences allowing them to note that any change in behaviour was due to their social role
• Roles being randomly allocated controlled for individual differences (personality factors) as possible extraneous variables that could potentially affect the outcome of the study

Question 6

Explain how Zimbardo’s study did not lack realism.

Answer 6

• 90% of conversations were about prison life
• Prisoners discussed how it was impossible to leave the prison until their “sentences” were over
• Prisoner 416 believed that the prison was real, but run by psychologists rather than the government
• It replicated social roles of prisoners and guards giving it high internal validity

Question 7

Explain how Zimbardo’s study gave insight.

Answer 7

Because the SPE was a participant observation it gave Zimbardo an insight into the lives of the guards and prisoners and, using himself as an example, how easy it can be to conform to social roles.

Question 8

Explain how Zimbardo’s study lacked realism.

Answer 8

• Ali Banuazizi and Siamak Movahedi (1975) argued that participants were merely play-acting rather than genuinely conforming to their role.
• Participants’ performances were based on their stereotypes of how prisoners and guards should behave (e.g. one guard claimed he’d based his role on a brutal character from the film Cool Hand Luke)
• In addition, it could explain why the prisoners rioted -> they may have believed that what actual prisoners do

Question 9

Explain how Zimbardo’s study exaggerates the power of roles.

Answer 9

• Only 1/3 of the guards behaved in a brutal manner, another 1/3 tried to apply rule fairly, and the rest attempted to help and support the prisoners (e.g. offered cigarettes and reinstated privileges)
• Most guards were able to resist situational pressures to conform to their social roles
• Showing Zimbardo overstated the participants conforming to social roles and minimised the influence of dispositional factors

Question 10

Explain Zimbardo’s study in terms of the SIT.

Answer 10

• Zimbardo’s explanation for the guards’ and prisoners’ behaviours was the conforming to a social role comes naturally and easily
• Reicher and Haslam criticised Zimbardo because his explanation did not account for the non-brutal guards
• They used the social identity theory that the guards had to actively identify with their social roles to act as they did

Question 11

Explain how Zimbardo’s study was subjective.

Answer 11

• Because Zimbardo was a super intendent the line between reality and experiment began to blur as he switched between being a super intendent and a psychologist
• Zimbardo put his own research interests before the welfare of the participants
• Scientists often refer to it as ‘going native’