Social influence- Zimbardo Flashcards
What was the aim of the study of Zimbardos Prison?
To investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guards ans prisoners in a role playing excercise that simulated prison life
What was the sample?
24 male college students
How was the sample collected?
-Newspaper advertisement put out by stanford university
-‘Male college students needed for a psychological study of prison life’
-‘$15 per day for 1-2 weeks’
-75 responses
-All aplicants were interviewed
-Those who appeared the most stable were accepted
How were the 10 prisoners and 11 guards assigned their roles?
Randomisation
What was the uniform of the prisoners?
-Smocks
-Rubber flip flops
-Stocking on their head
-Light chain around their ankle
What were the guards’ uniforms?
-Khaki shirts and trousers
-Caps
-Reflective sunglasses
-White batton
-Whistle
What was the purpose of the prisoners’ uniform?
To make them feel humilitaed and emasculated
What was the purpose of the guards uniform?
-Demonstrated their power and control
What was the method of the experiment?
-Prisoners arrested from their homes
-The uniforms were designed to erode personal identity and to emphasise each participant’s social role- deindividuation
-The guards were instructed to set prison rules, hand out punishments (although physical punishments were not allowed) and control the prisoners (e.g. deciding who could go to the toilet, when they could exercise, etc.)
-Prisoners told they could only be addressed/adress other prisoners by their number
-Both behaviours of the guards and prisoners were recorded
-Each participant was interviewed during the study, and most of them before the end
What were the results of the experiment?
-Prisoners became more passive as the guard’s actions became more hostile
-Within 4 days, 4 prisoners had to be released as they were showing signs of extreme emotional disturbance
-A colleague of Zimbardo’s visited the study and was horrified at the abuse and exploitation she saw, which lead to the termination of the experiment on day 6
-Prisoners attempted to fight back by barracading themselves in a cell but guards broke this up with fire extinguishers; prisoners were stripped and had their bedding removed
What did Zimbardo conclude from the results?
-Both the guards and prisoners conformed to the expected social roles
-Both groups became dehumanised
-Supports the situational explanation (of agression) rather than the dispositional one
-Social roles exert a strong influence on individual identity
-A prison exerts psychological damage upon both those who work there and those who are incarcerated there
Give an evaluation point (unethical)
-Informed consent did not cover all aspects of what the participants could expect about the procedure (e.g. the arrests at night)
-The right to withdraw was given but the routines and mechanisms of the prison world set up by Zimbardo made this difficult for all involved
-Protection from harm was almost absent:
-Zimbardo actively encouraged the guards to be cruel and oppressive prior to the start of the study
-The prisoners suffered in their role, both physically and psychologically
-The guards had to live with the knowledge of their potential for brutality after the study was over and the prisoners may have suffered PTSD as a result of their experience
Give an evaluation point (demand characteristics)
-Demand characteristics
-The participants may have been able to guess the aim and behaved accordingly e.g. ‘I am a guard therefore, I must behave brutally’
-If the participants were playing out expected roles then this lowers the validity of the findings (e.g. the prisoner who appeared to be having a mental breakdown immediately snapped out of it when Zimbardo reminded him that the prison wasn’t real)
-Researcher Bias
- Zimbardo, acting as both principal investigator and the prison superintendent
-became emotionally invested and delayed halting the experiment, which many see as a direct conflict of interest
-Lack of bjectivity.
-Lacks population valdity
-The sample consisted of white, middle-class (as they attended college), young men
-Cultural bias
-Gender bias
-Sample not representive of whole population so findings cant be generealised
-Would assume everyone conforms in the same way
