Social Influence : Zimardos Research Into Social Roles

Question 1

What are Conformity to social roles?

Answer 1

Describes a phenomenon where people alter their behaviour to fit with what they perceive are particular social role demands.

Question 2

What was Zimbardo’s Aim?

Answer 2

Zimbardo was tasked by the US Millitary to investigate the cause of violence in military prisons. Aimed to investigate whether a persons disposition or their situation could explain the behaviour seen in prisons.

Question 3

What were the two roles in Zimbardos experiment?

Answer 3

1. Social role of a prisoner
2. Guard

Question 4

What steps did Zimbardo take in order to make his prison realistic?

Answer 4

Established a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University, complete with cells with bars to hold prisoners.

Question 5

What steps did Zimbardo take in order to make the two roles realistic?

Answer 5

1. Role of the prisoner= prisoners where arrested in their homes, stripped and searched and given a uniform and prison number.
2. Guards were given uniform, clubs, handcuffs, keys and mirror shades.

Question 6

What were Zimbardos findings?

Answer 6

• The guards quickly conformed to their social roles. E.g frequent head counts.
• Prisoners conformed to their social role by rebelling against their treatment, ripping uniform, swearing at guards.
• Several prisoners were released due to psychological disturbance.
• Guards threatened to force feed the prisoner on hunger strike then punished him by putting him in the whole.

Question 7

What were Zimbardos conclusions?

Answer 7

Zimbardo concluded that participants had conformed to their social roles and argued that this showed their situation rather than their disposition had affected their behaviour as they all conformed to their role, even though these had been randomly assigned.

Question 8

What is a Strength of Zimbardo’s Study?

Answer 8

It controls participant EV. As participants were randomly assigned to either guard or prisoner roles, this strengthened the internal validity of Zimbardos research. Random Allocation was used to enjsure that participants didn’t take on a role they might have wanted to play as it matched their disposition. It also controlled Investigator effects as it ensured Zimbardo didn’t deliberately allocate people he thought would match each role. Random allocation would ensure that there was an even distribution of disposition all types within the prisoners and guards. Finally, this allowed Zimbardo to infer that when prisoners/guards performed to their role, this was due to the power of situation rather than individual dispositions. However evidence to oppose this would be the fact that some guards acted differently towards the participants, 1/3 were brutal, 1/3 fairly and another 1/3 sympathetic. This shows their dispositional differences led them to conform to the situation in different ways, concluding that intact dispositions do still affect their behaviour.

Question 9

What is a limitation of Zimbardos research?

Answer 9

Zimbardos research could be viewed as unethical. Zimbardos dual role in the experiment as both a researcher and prison superintendent meant that when one prisoner asked to leave he did not immediately agree. Zimbardos role as a superintendent interfered with his duty to protect the rights of the participants. However it could be argued that Zimbardo did take steps to protect the participants as he ensured they all took mental screenings before the study. The ethical issues did not undermine the study’s internal validity meaning Zimbardos conclusions of the power of the situation causing conformity to social roles was accurate.

Question 10

What is a limitation of Zimbardos research?

Answer 10

It didn’t control for demand characteristics . Due to the researchers being informed prior to the study, what the aim of the investigation was, this could’ve resulted in participants acting as a real life guard or prisoner. Since participants are likely to have guessed the aim of the study, the behaviour of the participants could have been caused by the desire to please the researcher rather than the role of the situation causing participants to conform to their social role. However, even if participants did guess the aim of the study, this doesn’t necessarily undermine Zimbardos conclusions as the participants were still being influenced by the power of the situation to understand the nature of their role. Therefore the unique nature of this study means demand characteristics may have not undermined Zimbardo conclusions.