Stanford prison experiment Flashcards
by zimbardo
who were the participants
24 american male undergrad students
aim
to see how readily people would conform to social roles in a stimulated environment as an attempt to explain the violent and brutal conditions found in prison
what helped him investigate conformity in this (things implemented) (4)
zimbardo watched them and recorded their behaviour throughout so he could see how they conformed to their social roles and how slow/fast they did so
the guards wore sunglasses so it was impossible for them to make eye contact with the prisoners in order for them to not feel any sort of sympathy
prisoners had to shave their heads and refered to as a number showing a loss of social identity
guards could run prison as they saw fit- only thing not allowed is physical harm
findings (3)
identification to roles occurred very fast- they adapted to their roles in a very short amount of time
guards rapidly increased having control over prisoners lives
guards began to torment and harass prisoners- they later reported that they enjoyed doing so
guards became more demanding of obedience whilst the prisoners became more submissive showing social roles became more internalised
evaluation- strengths (2)
ecological validity- zimbardo went to extreme measures to make it as realistic as possible e.g prisoners were arrested from their homes
lab experiment that was tightly controlled therefore no extraneous variables could interfere with the experiment
evaluation- limitations (2)
ethical issues- psychological harm as 2 prisoners got ptsd from it
unrepresentative sample was used- used 24 normal, healthy american college students who were all predominantly white and middle classed
whats a real life example
Abu Ghraib (2003–2004)
what happened in this
A real-world example Deindividuation and authority pressure led U.S. soldiers to commit human rights abuses. This is what Zimbardo predicted.
real life example bbc thing find in notes!
strengths of the Stanford prison experiment
Real life applications – This research changed the way US prisons
are run e.g. young prisoners are no longer kept with adult prisoners
to prevent the bad behaviour perpetuating. Beehive-style prisons,
where all cells are under constant surveillance from a central
monitoring unit, are also not used in modern times, due to such
setups increasing the effects of institutionalisation and over
exaggerating the differences in social roles between prisoners and
guards.
Ecological Validity (to some extent) – Despite being a simulated environment, the participants’ emotional and psychological responses suggested that they truly experienced their assigned roles, making the study somewhat reflective of real-life behavior in prisons BUT MAY WANT TO COUNTER THIS WITH Artificial Setting – A simulated prison does not fully replicate real-life prison conditions, limiting the generalizability of the findings.
weaknesses of Stanford prison experiment
Lacks ecological validity - The study suffered from demand
characteristics. For example, the participants knew that they were
participating in a study and therefore may have changed their
behavior, either to please the experimenter (a type of demand
characteristic) or in response to being observed (participant
reactivity, which acts as a confounding variable). The participants
also knew that the study was not real so they claimed that they
simply acted according to the expectations associated with their role
rather genuinely adopting it. This was seen particularly with
qualitative data gathered from an interview with one guard, who said
that he based his performance from the stereotypical guard role
portrayed in the film Cool Hand Luke, thus further reducing the
validity of the findings.
cant really replicate findings -Reicher and Haslam’s (2006) BBC Prison Study, found different results, suggesting that the conclusions of the SPE lack reliability and may not always be valid.
