Conformity to social roles as investigated by Zimbardo

Stanford Prison Experiment

- Zimbardo (1973) set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford

- The aim was to find out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to their personalities (dispositional) or had more to do with the prison environment (situational)

Procedure

- 21 'emotionally stable' male students randomly allocated to roles of prisoners and guards

- Participants were treated like every other criminal; they were arrested at their own homes, without warning, and taken to the local police station. They were fingerprinted, photographed and 'booked'

- Social roles were reinforced through uniforms and instructions about behaviour, they were also referred to by their ID numbers only, making them feel anonymous

Findings

- Guards treated prisoners harshly- harassed and degraded them constantly (e.g. frequent night headcounts)

- Prisoners revolted, however this failed and they had become more depressed. Some started to show signs of emotional distress

- Guards became excessively aggressive as the experiment went on

Conclusion

- According to Zimbardo, the experiment revealed how people will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are strongly stereotyped

- Because the guards were placed in a position of authority, they began to act in ways they would not usually behave in their normal lives

- The "prison" environment was an important factor in creating the guards' brutal behaviour, supporting the situational explanation of behaviour rather than the dispositional one

Strengths

- Zimbardo and his colleagues had control over key variables, which is shown through the selection of participants where emotionally-stable individuals were chosen and randomly assigned to roles -

These include participant screening for emotional stability, random assignment to roles, and a high degree of control over the procedureThe study also demonstrated a high level of mundane realism, with prisoners engaging in private conversations almost entirely about their prison experience. 

- As a result, this ruled out individual personality differences

- This increases internal validity of the study, so we can be more confident with the influence of roles on conformity

Weaknesses 1

- Did not have the realism of a true prison -

- Argued that the participants were merely play acting rather than genuinely conforming to a role

- Participant's performances were based on their stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are expected to behave

- For example, a guard had stated he had based his role on a brutal fictional character from a film

- This suggests that the findings of the experiment tell us little about conformity to social roles

HOWEVER, pps behaved as if the prison was real, for example feeling as if they couldn’t leave until their sentence was over. This shows they did feel like it was a real prison and gives high internal validity.

Weakness 2

• Exaggerates the power of roles.

• Only 1/3 guard abused their power, 1/3 acted fairly and 1/3 tries to help the prisoners.

• Had researcher bias and minimised the impact of dispositional factors.

Strength 2

• All future experiments are to be placed under review

• The ethic boards now review research before it is conducted to ensure protection for participants from psychological harm

• The ethic boards are now able to tell the researchers to change anything or deny the proposal altogether

• whenever you do research you have to gain approval

• more safety procedures have come to light