Zimbardo - conformity to social roles

Question 1

(AO1) The Stanford Prison Experiment - the procedure…

Answer 1

• Zimbardo in 1973, a notorious psychologist, experimented with young men from Stanford university.
• 21 men were chosen, they were student volunteers who were found to be mentally stable.
• A mock prison in the basement of the school was set up, where students were randomly assigned to the role of a prison guard or prisoner.
• Both prisoners and guards were encouraged to conform to their assigned roles.
• Both prisoners and guards were given clothing attire to match their roles. Prisoners loose mock and a cap to cover their hair, they were only referred to by numbers. Guards had sophisticated uniforms, wooden clubs, mirrored glasses and handcuffs.
• The use of uniforms causes a loss of personal identity (called de-individualisation), meaning they were all more likely to conform to their social roles.
• People were encouraged into their roles, with prisoners when being asked if they could leave being told they could apply for parole, and prison guards being told they had complete power over the prisoners.

Question 2

(AO1) Findings related to social roles

Answer 2

Prisoners:
- They had a rebellion two days into the experiment.
- One prisoner went on hunger strike.

Guards:
- They were found to be enthusiastic with their role, treating prisoners harshly.
- They would try to break them down, getting them to stand in line while they called out their number to do a headcount, sometimes at night.
- Harassing the prisoners.
- Using divide and rule tactics to pit them against one another.
- In response to the hunger strike guards tried to force feed the person in question, and when he wouldn’t budge threw him into the hole. A dark cramped closet.

Question 3

(AO1) Conclusions related to social roles

Answer 3

• A person’s social role was shown to have an impact on a person’s behaviour, with the guards becoming brutal and the prisoners becoming submissive.
• Every role was easily taken on by participants, even volunteers for being the prison chaplain found themselves behaving like they were in a prison experiment rather than a psychology study.

Question 4

(AO3) Control

Answer 4

Both Zimbardo and his colleagues had control over key variables.
- Emotionally stable people were chosen, and given random roles in the prison.
- This was to rule out individual personality differences amongst the group, so the findings could have an explanation.
- If a person’s(guard/prisoner)behaviours were different and were in those roles merely by chance that would mean that their social role has an impact on their behaviour.

Variable controls increase internal validity of study.

Question 5

(AO3) Lack of realism (Limitation)

Answer 5

Limitation of SPE is that it did not have the realism of a real prison.
- (1975) Ali Banuazizi and Siamak Movahedi both said that people in the study were only play-acting, performing the stereotypes of their social roles.
E.g, one guard said he based his brutal behaviour of of a movie character.
- This might give reason as to why the prisoners rioted, as they thought that was what they had to do.

This could mean that the findings in SPE tells us little about conformity to social roles in real prisons.

Question 6

(AO3) Lack of realism Counterpoint (Limitation)

Answer 6

• (2019) Mark McDermott argues participants did behave like they were in a prison that was real to them.
• 90% of the prisoners’ conversations were about prison life. They would discuss how it was possible to get out of SPE before their sentences ended.
• Prisoner 416 said later on how he truly believed the prison was real, but instead of being government run it was run by psychologists.
• This all suggests the SPE did replicate the same social roles found in prisons, with the guards and prisoners, this gives the study a high degree of internal validity.