Evaluation - conformity to social roles

• Control


  Strength = Zimbardo and his team had control over important variables - selected emotionally stable individuals and randomly assigned them to be guards or prisoners - this helped eliminate personality differences as an explanation for the findings.
• Control


  If the guards and prisoners acted differently but were assigned their roles by chance then their behaviour must of been influenced by the roles themselves.
• Control


  This control increased the study’s internal validity making us more confident in concluding how roles affect conformity.
• Lack of realism 


  Limitation = lack the realism of a prison - Ali Banuazizi and Siamak Movahedi (1975) argued that participants were just play-acting based on stereotypes of how prisoners and guards should behave - one of the guards based his role on a brutal character from the film Cool Hand Luke.
• Lack of realism 


  Limitation = explains why the prisoners rioted - they thought thats what real prisoners did - suggests that the findings of the SPE tell us little about conformity to social roles in actual prisons.
• Lack of realism counterpoint

  Mark McDermott (2019) argues that the participants acted as if the prison was real to them - 90% of the prisoners’ conversations were about prison life - discussed how they couldn't leave the SPE before their sentences were over - One prisoner even believed the prisoner was real but run by psychologists instead of the government.
• Lack of realism counterpoint


  Suggests that the SPE did replicate the social roles of prisoners and guards in a real prison - giving the study a high degree of internal validity.
• Exaggerates the power of roles


  Limitation = Zimbardo may have exaggerated the power of social roles to influence behaviour (Fromm 1973) - only 1/3 of the guards behaved brutally - 1/3 tried to apply the rules fairly - the reset actively helped and supported prisoners by sympathising, offering cigarettes and reinstalling privileges.
• Exaggerates the power of roles

  Limitation - oat guards resisted the pressure to conform to a brutal role - suggests that Zimbardo overstated his view the SPE participants were conforming to social roles and minimised the influence of personality factors.