social roles Flashcards
Explain what is meant by a social role. Use examples in your answer.
The parts people play as members of different social groups e.g. teachers, teenagers, students, etc. This is accompanied by the expectations people have have of how individuals in these roles should be behave.
Outline the procedure, findings and conclusions of the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Mock prison created + PPTs randomly assigned to guards or prisoners. PPTs arrested from home + blindfolded strip searched etc.
Roles clearly divided - prisoners had 16 rules to follow, which were enforced by guards, who were all dressed in uniform with tinted glasses. Guards had total control.
Guards took to their roles quickly - constantly harassing and abusing prisoners (fire extinguishers, head counts, isolation, reminders of who is in charge). Prisoners rebelled against the guards - rebellion was put down and prisoners became subdued and depressed. Experiment had to be ended after 6 days instead of the intended 14.
One strength of the Stanford Prison Experiment is the level of control. Outline what is meant by this and why this is a strength.
The most obvious example of this is the PPT selection - psychologically tested and randomly assigned.
This meant that individual differences could be minimised and the behaviour displayed would be down to the role and not down to personality.
Increases the internal validity as is means it is easier to draw conclusions about the cause of the behaviour.
Critics have argued that Zimbardo exaggerated the role of the situation - explain this point.
The role of the situation could have been exaggerated and the role of personality could have been minimised.
Not all guards behaved the same - some were brutal, some were fair and some were kind.
Social roles may not have caused the behaviour, as guards still seem to know the difference between right and wrong. → Dispositional factors are important.
Why has it been argued that the Stanford Prison Experiment lacked realism?
Banuazizi & Mohavedi. The performances of PPTs during the study was based on stereotypes of how people are supposed to behave. E.g. one guard based his character on ‘Cool Hand Luke’. This means that the results may not have been down to social roles.
However Zimbardo claimed quantitative data gathered during the study indicated that prisoners thought the prison was real - just run by psychologists. It seems on balance the situation was real to the participants which contradicts claims by Banuazizi and Mohavedi.
Outline ethical issues with Zimbardo’s research.
Ethical issues arose due to Zimbardo being part of the study - when ppts asked to leave the participant he was responding as a prison warden would and not like a researcher.
Protection from harm was the biggest issue - although prisoners were eventually allowed to leave, it was much later than it should have been.
Zimbardo should have remained detached
Outline the study done by Haslam and Reicher and explain why this challenges Zimbardo’s conclusions about conformity to social roles.
Replicated the SPE - but in Britain.
Findings were different - prisoners formed a collective identity and took over the prison → Attributed to social identity theory → The guards did not manage to do this.
In the SPE, Zimbardo argued that the people conformed to their roles quickly and easily and the behaviour of the PPT stemmed from these roles.
However we can see from the BBC prison study that social roles are not taken on easily or naturally → which was also seen in the SPE where some of the guards were actually helping the prisoners.
