Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment Flashcards
What are social roles
The parts people play as parts of various social groups and are the sets of behaviours and expectations that come with holding these positions
Procedure of the Stanford prison experiment
-set up mock prison in basement of Stanford university and advertised for students willing to volunteer to take part and selected those deemed emotionally stable after extensive psychological testing
-students randomly assigned to either prisoner or guard
-prisoners blindfolded, strip-searched, deloused and issued a uniform and number
-social roles of prisoners and guards were strictly divided and prisoners had 16 rules they had to follow enforced by guards and were only referred to using numbers
-guards had uniform, wooden clubs, handcuffs and mirror shades and were told they had complete power over the prisoners
Findings of stanford prison experiment
-after a slow start, behaviour of guards eventually became a threat to prisoners psychological and physical health and the experiment was stopped after six days rather than 14
-within two days the prisoners rebelled against their harsh treatment by the guards who employed divide amd rule tactics by turning prisoners against each other
-they harassed prisoners constantly and conducted frequent headcounts including in the middle of the night
-behaviour of guards became more brutal with some appearing to enjoy the power they had over the prisoners
Conclusions of Stanford prison experiment
-reveals power of a situation to influence behaviour
-all participants conformed to their roles within the prison which were very easily taken on by the participants
Expand on strength that Zimbardo and his colleagues had some control over variables
-eg in the selection of participants, emotionally stable individuals were chosen and randomly assigned to the roles of guard and prisoner which is one way the researchers tried to rule out individual differences as an explanation of the findings
-increases the internal validity of the study so can be more confident in drawing conclusions about the influence of social roles on behaviour
Expand on limitation that there is a lack of realism
-some argue that the participants were merely play-acting rather than genuinely conforming to a role, their performances were based on their stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave
-eg one of the guards claimed he had based his role on a brutal character from the film Cool Hand Luke
-this also explains why prisoners rioted as this is what they thought real prisoners did
-suggests Ppts were not truly conforming to their social role which challenges validity of Zimbardo’s conclusions
Expand on limitation that Zimbardo has exaggerated the influence of situational variables and minimised the role of dispositional factors (personality)
-eg only a minority (one third) of the guards behaved in a brutal manner while another third were keen on applying the rules fairly and the other third actively tried to help and support the prisoners
-suggests conclusions about the influence of situational variables on behaviour may be over-stated and the differences in guards’ behaviour indicates they were able to exercise right and wrong choices despite situational pressured to conform to a role
Expand on advantage that the study has many real world applications
-for example, the findings could help explain the behaviour of those in Abu Ghraib prison/the actions of Nazi soldiers in WW2
-consequently using this knowledge psychologists may be able to train soldiers, prison officers etc to act individually and educate them of the dangers of behaving how they think they are expected to
