Conformity to social roles

the Stanford prison experiment - Zimbardo 1971 - aim

To see whether behavior would change when in particular roles of society

participants - SPE

24 males out of 75 selected in the US

procedure of SPE

a mock prison was set up in the basement of the psychology department at stanford university. 24 males selected after being screened psychologically and physically and assigned roles randomly to either play ‘prisoner’ or guard’. Prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home and on entry to the ‘prison’ were they were put through a delousing procedure, given prison uniform and assigned an ID number and only referred to by this number for the rest of the time there. Prisoners allowed certain rights, 3 meals, 3 supervised toilet trips a day, and 2 visits per week. Guards given uniforms, clubs, whistles and reflective sunglasses (to prevent eye contact). Zimbardi took the role of Prison superintendent and planned to last 2 weeks.

findings of SPE

over the first few days guards grew increasingly tyrannical and more violent/abusive towards the prisoners.

They woke the prisoners in the night and forced them to clean the toilets with their bare hands and carry out other degrading activities like this. Some guards even offered to do more hours without pay from the enthusiasm from their role.

Participants seemed to forget this was a psychological study and this was acting. Even when unaware of being watched, they still conformed to their role of prisoner or guard. 5 prisoners released early due to their extreme reactions (acute anxiety, crying, rage) - seen after only two days, and a guard rather than withdrawing asked to go on ‘parole’.

Study finally terminated after 6 days due to the intervention of post grad student Chritsina Maslach, reminded the psychological researchers this is a study and doesn't justify the abuse towards the participants .

Conclusion of SPE

study demonstrated that both guards and prisoners conformed to their social roles. Guards became increasingly cruel and sadistic and the prisoners became increasingly passive and accepting of their plight. 

The BBC prison study - Reicher and Haslam 2006 - AIM

to see whether behavior would change when in a particular role of society

participants of BBC PS

15 male particpants

procedure of BBC PS

15 males divided into 5 groups of three people who were closely matched as possible on key personality variables, and from the group of 3 two were picked to be a prisoner and one was picked to be a guard randomly. And this study was run for 8 days. 

findings of BBC PS

participants did not conform automatically assigned to their roles as had happened in the SPE. Over the course of the study, the prisoners increasingly identified as a group and worked collectively to challenge the authority of the guards and establish a more egalitarian set of social relations with the prison. The guards also failed to identify with their role, which made them reluctant to impose their authority on the prisoners. This led to a shift of power and the collapse of the prisoner-guard system

AO3 - conformity into roles is not automatic

-Not all the guards behaved sadistically so such behaviour may not be due to an automatic embracing of the role.

For example they pointed out that , in the SPE, guard behavior varied from being fully sadistic to a few, being ‘good guards’, who did not degrade or harass the prisoners, and even did small favors for them.

Haslam and Reicher 2012 argue that the guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conforming to their social role, as suggested by zimbardo

This suggests that Zimbardo was wrong to claim the guards’ behaviour was an automatic consequence of them conforming to their role

AO3 - demand characteristics

Demand characteristics may have affected the SPE weakening its internal validity.

they presented some of the details of the SPE procedure to a large sample of students who had never heard of the study. The vast majority correctly guessed that the purpose of the experiment was to show that ordinary people assigned the role of guard or prisoner would act like real prisoners and guards, and they predicted that guards would act in a hostile, domineering way and the prisoners would react in a passive way.

This suggests that the behaviour of zimbardo's guards and prisoners was not due to their response to a compelling prison environment, but rather it was a response to powerful demand characteristics in the experimental situation itself.

This suggests that the internal validity of the SPE might have been seriously threatened by the presence of demand characteristics.

AO3 - ethical issues

The SPE was a controversial study but it was conducted ethically.

despite this, Zimbardo acknowledges that perhaps the study should have been stopped earlier as so many of the participants were experiencing emotional distress. He attempted to make amends for this by carrying out debriefing sessions for several years afterwards and concluded that there were no lasting negative effects.

Recognising the potential for harm in studies such as this, Reicher and Haslam used the same basic set up as Zimbardo, but took greater steps to minimise the potential harm to their participants. They created a situation that was harsh and testing, but not harmful.

 Even though Zimbardo claims there were no lasting negative effects, the SPE highlights the importance of ethical considerations in psychological research.