Zimbardo’s experiment Flashcards
What was the procedure of Zimbardo’s study?
21 emotionally stable Stanford students were randomly allocated to the roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison. Social roles were reinforced through uniforms and behaviour (e.g., prisoners applied for parole)
What was the aim of Zimbardo’s study?
To research how people conform to social roles
What are social roles?
The parts people play as members of society, e.g, child, parent, student and each role is associated with a set of expected behaviours
What were Zimbardo’s findings?
Guards treated prisoners harshly and harassed them constantly, e.g, night-time headcount’s and prisoners rebelled and failed so they became more depressed. This meant the study stopped after 6 days.
What were Zimbardo’s conclusions from his study?
That social roles have a strong influence on behaviour - brutal guards and submissive prisoners and that social roles can be easily adopted (including by volunteers)
What are situational factors?
Features of the immediate physical, social environment which may influence a person’s behaviour (e.g, social roles and other peoples behaviour)
What are dispositional factors?
How behaviour is explained in terms of personality
What are strengths of Zimbardo’s study?
There was random role allocation, participant observations allowed a better insight and potentially external validity, link to identification, it informed prison guard training which reformed American prisons and the observations were overt.
What are limitation of Zimbardo’s study?
There was only male participants (low populational validity), Zimbardo’s became too involved, there were participant observations which are subjective, dispositional factors ignored (someone’s personality and how it effected their role), not replicated and there was little protection from harm (unethical)
What is social identity?
The portion of an individual’s self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group
What is social identity theory?
It describes the cognitive processes related to social identity and how social identity impacts inter group behaviour.
