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1.3 conformity to social roles

Social roles= the parts people play as members of various social groups. These are accompanied by expectations we and others have of what is appropriate behaviour in each role

Zimbardos research

The Stanford prison experiment

  • set up a mock prison in the basement at Stanford university

  • 21 male volunteers, all were tested as ‘emotionally stable’

  • Students were randomly assigned to play the role as guard or prisoner

  • Both encouraged to conform to social roles through uniform and instructions

Uniforms

  • prisoners — given a cap to cover their hair, identified by a number

  • Guards — a club, handcuffs, mirrored shaded

  • This created a loss of personal identities (de-individuation), which made them more likely to conform

Findings

  • guards took up their roles, within 2 days the prisoners rebelled

  • Guards then used ‘divide and rule’ tactics. Such as constant harassment and head-counts (mostly at night). This was to remind prisoners of their powerlessness

  • After their rebellion failed, the prisoners became subdued, depressed and anxious

  • One was released due to psychological disturbance, 2 more were released on the 4th day. One went on hunger strike (he was force fed then put in ‘the hole’)

  • The study ended after 6 days rather than the intended 14

Conclusions

  • shows that social roles have a strong influence on individuals behaviour

  • Guards became brutal and prisoners became submissive

Application

  • Jean Orlando

  • Selected staff at a psychiatric ward to play the role of patients

  • After 2 days they began experiencing symptoms of psychological disturbance

  • The study was ended early because some ‘patients’ were losing their sense of self-identity

Evaluation

Control over key variables

  • by randomly assigning people to their role, it rules out individual personality differences. So the results were due to the role itself not the person

  • This increased the internal validity, so we can be confident drawing conclusions

Lack of realism

  • Banuazizi and Movahedi argued that participants were play acting. They performed based on stereotypes

  • One of the guards admitted he based his role of a character from ‘cold hand Luke’

  • However McDermott argued they did believe it was real. 90% of conversations were about prison life. One prisoner explained how he thought the prison was real, but was run by psychologists instead of the government. This suggests high internal validity

Exaggerates the power of roles

  • overstate the effects of social roles and minimised the influence of dispositional factors (e.g personality)

  • For example only 1/3 of the guards behaved in a brutal way. They rest were able to resist situational pressures to conform to brutal roles

Alternative explanation

  • Reicher and Haslam used social identity theory to explain this behaviour. Suggesting that the guards had to actively identify with their roles to act as they did