Zimbardo Conforming To Social Roles Flashcards
Context
1960s
Lots of police brutality from guard to prisoner
Argued this was due to sadistic personalities
Zimbardo wanted to see if guards had a brutal personality (dispositional explanation) or if the situation they were in made them behave brutally (situational explanation)
Stanford prison study procedure
1971
21 male student volunteers
Mock prison in basement of Stanford uni
Students randomly assigned to play guard or prisoner Told to conform
Guards given:
Uniform reflecting status of role, handcuffs, mirrored shades, wooden clubs
Prisoners referred to as number
Prisoners allowed in hallway which acted as yard
Guards allowed to control behaviour to show complete power
No physical violence permitted
Stanford prison study timeline
36 hours- one prisoner released due to fits of crying and rage
(zimbardo quotes that he began to acts crazy and out of control, took a while to realise he was really distressed and had to release him)
Day 4- several other prisoners developed similar crying and rage, also released. Another went on hunger strike. Another developed a severe rash when parole was denied
Day 6- Study stopped- prisoners happy but guards upset. Supposed to last 2 weeks
Two definitions (d+d)
Deindividuation- reduced awareness of yourself as an individual and your identity
Dehumanisation- making people feel less than humans
Findings
How is this study and example of conformity
All confirmed to their social roles (guards, prisoners and researchers)
Guards began to harass and torment
Prisoners only talked of prison life, snitched, tried to please guards
Seemingly forgot of previous life/thought was real
‘John Wayne’ acknowledged he was following guard roles which is where his sadistic behaviour came from
Less aggressive guards conformed to his aggression but were less harsh when he wasn’t t around- compliance
Guards became more demanding of obedience and assertive as and prisoners became more submissive, shows increasing internalisation
Limitation Zimbardo study (ethics+method)
Huge ethical and methodological issue
Zimbardo dual role of superintendent and researcher.
Ethical
Refused to allow distressed prisoner to leave as ‘superintendent’ was worried about running of prison rather than his responsibility as researcher for the participants well-being
Issue as was under immense stress but felt couldn’t leave. BPS guidelines now state this is ethically unacceptable
Methodological issue
Zimbardo ceased to be objective in role of researcher. Shows bias in actions and so may interpret his results with same bias
Strength zimbardo SPE (high control)
Able to control extraneous variables due to controlled setting and random allocation of emotionally stable people to roles of guard and prisoner removing role of personality as a potential reason for different behaviour between groups
Therefore we can be more confident that conformity to social roles was the cause of behaviourover other things like… personality type, …
Limitation zimbardo (realistic?)
Banuazizi and Mohavedi
Argued it was only play acting rather than genuinely conforming to a social role
One participant later said he based his character off ‘cool hand Luke’ from a film.
This decreased validity of results as not actually measuring/explaining confirming to social roles etc…
However
Zimbardo argued that in the qualitative date gathered from the study, the participants did believe it was a real prison just run by psychologists
Increaes validity? Actually did conform?
