Zimbardo, Conformity to Social Roles

Question 1

What did Zimbardo want to investigate?

Answer 1

He wanted to investigate if the reasons for high levels of aggression in American prisons was due to personality or the enviroment

Question 2

Procedure

Answer 2

-

Question 3

Results

Question 4

Evaluation-Limitation

Answer 4

-lacks the realism of true prison, so lacks ecological/external validity
-Pps were merely acting, their behaviour was based on stereotypes of guards and prisoners
-One of the guards based his behaviour on a popular movie
-Explains the riot the prisoners staged, they thought this is what prisoners did
-Suggests that the findings of the SPE tell us little about conformity to social roles in actual prisons

Question 5

Evaluation-Strength

Answer 5

-Zimbardo had control over key variables
-One being the selection of pps
-Emotionally stable people were chosen and randomly assigned a role
-Meant that researchers could rule out personality differences as explanation for findings
-Increased internal validity, so we have more confidence on drawing conclusions about influences of roles in conformity