Social Roles (conformity)

Question 1

What did zimbardo want to find out ?

Answer 1

If abuse and violence in prisons in America was due to personality(dispositional)
Or
Situational(prison environment)

Question 2

What was the aim ?

Answer 2

To see whether people would conform to social roles of prisoner or guard

Question 3

What was the method?

Answer 3

Mock prison in university basement
75 uni students volunteered and were paid. The 21 most physically and mentally fit were selected
Randomly selected as guards or prisoners (prisoners were arrested my zimbardo a friend (a policeman)
Guards dressed of authority /prisoners stripped chained and given numbers instead of names
Study was supposed to last 2 weeks
Zimbardo acted as superintendent

Question 4

Findings

Answer 4

Both groups conformed to social roles
Guards became more and more sadistic
Prisoners lost their identity , became submissive and unquestioning
Prisoners started to have break downs
After 36 hours one had to be released and more and more of them broke down
After 6 days the experiment was stopped due to harm occurring and guards getting more and more aggressive
Interviews afterwards both groups were surprised at their behaviour

Question 5

Conclusion

Answer 5

Situational prison environment led to conformity to social roles as non were sadistic before. Social roles can override a persons identity and morality

Question 6

Individual differences

Answer 6

Some guards were more brutal , one third of the guards didn’t try to control them and were sympathetic so personality was important. Fromm 1973

Question 7

Banuazizi & mohavedi (1975)

Answer 7

Participants didn’t conform they just play acted the way they thought they did from movies(demand characteristics)

Question 8

Contradictory evidence

Answer 8

Reicher & Haslam (2006) did a similar experiment called the bbc prison study and the guards were completely not brutal and the prisoners ended up with the power so they didn’t conform and contradicts zimbardos study

Question 9

Ecological validity

Answer 9

Participants reported high degree of realism (they thought it was a real prison and a real situation which means we can apply the findings to real prisons

Question 10

What was zimbardos study called and when was it made ?

Answer 10

The Stanford prison experiment (1973)