Conforimity to social roles zimbardo

What are social roles?

Social roles are the parts people play as members of various groups. It’s accompanied by expectations of what we and others consider appropriate behaviour.

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• Zimbardo wanted to see whether the brutality of the prison guards was because of their sadistic personalities or because the context of the situation creates that,

• The research aimed to investigate how far people will conform to social rules

• A mock built prison was built in the basement of Stanford university in their psychology department.

• University students that agreed to take part were screened and deemed to be normal and healthy, this was done to ensure that it wasn’t individual differences like personality influence the participants conformity.

• They were randomly allocated to either the role of a prisoner or guard.

• The experiment was anticipated to last for 14 days however it only lasted 6 days as the guards behaviour were becoming demeaning and inhumane towards the prisoners

• The participants were paid $15 a day

• The prisoners were given 16 rules to follow and were never addressed by their names only numbers

• The guards had their own outfits with wooden bats and were told that they had control over prisoners

• In order to increase the realism of the study, the prisoners were arrested from their own home.

• Zimbardo concluded that people conform to social roles very quickly especially when those roles are associated with power and status

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• One weakness of Zimbardo study is that it lacks realism because of the artificial prison environment.

• Some psychologists argued that participants were simply acting based on stereotypes of how guards and prisoners are supposed to behave rather than genuinely conforming to social roles. For example, one guard reported that he based his role on a character in a movie. This limits how well the study reflects real world conformity to social roles

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• A strength of Zimbardos study is its high internal validity.

• Participants were randomly assigned to their roles, meaning differences in behaviour were likely due to the situation not personality.

• Since the roles were randomly assigned and the environment was tightly controlled, we can be more confident that the behaviour observed was due to the influence of the prison setting and social roles.

• This supports zimbardos conclusion that the situation, not individual differences, caused the extreme behaviour.

• However, despite its internal validity, zimbardos study faced major ethical critism.

• Participants experienced extreme stress, emotional breakdowns and even humiliation.

• Zimbardo also admitted to becoming involved in the role of a prison superintendent and failed to protect participants.

• This violated key ethical guidelines including protection from harm and the right to withdraw.

• Therefore, despite its insights, the ethical flaws reduce the credibility and moral acceptability of the research.

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• Another strength is that Zimbardos findings have real world relevance.

• The study has been used to explain abuses in real prisons.

• This supports the idea that situational factors and social roles can lead ordinary people to commit inhumane acts especially in environments with power imbalances and lack of accountability.

• This shows the practical value of the research in understanding and preventing institutional abuse