Zimbardo: Conformity to social roles

• • We all have a number of social roles that we play.
  • These roles guide our behaviour - Social roles allow us to understand how to function in a situation

  We are socialised to conform to our social roles, otherwise we are rejected by our group
• Zimbardo (1973)

  • The study for ‘conformity to social roles’
  • As well as NSI & ISI, this is another explanation for conformity
• Method

  • Mock prison set up in the basement of Stanford University
  • 24 male student volunteers, psychologically & physically healthy – Participants were randomly allocated to either the role of a prisoner or a guard
  • Prisoners arrested at home and then were taken 

  to a real police station to be processed

  Taken to the ‘prison’ and given ID number and prison uniforms
• • Guards were given uniform, sunglasses and a night-stick
  • Told to refer to prisoners by their numbers
  • Prisoners were allowed 3 meals a day
  • Guards were told not to use physical control but to 

  maintain order in the prison

  Study planned to continue over a two week period
• Results

  • Participants quickly began to conform to their social roles
  • Guards became more tyrannical, mistreated prisoners, who allowed themselves to be mistreated.
  • Participants began to forget they were in a study, referring to themselves as ‘guard’ or ‘prisoner’
  • 5 prisoners released early due to extreme reactions.
  • Cancelled after 5 days
• Conclusion

  • People will conform to their social roles
  • The study illustrated how people see themselves based on their social roles and conform to the characteristics believed to be associated with that role
  • People will also justify their behaviour as ‘this is how I’m supposed to behave’

  This means they don’t always need to understand/agree with what they’re doing
• AO3 - Control

  • People selected were physically and psychologically healthy. 
  • They were all randomly allocated to roles therefore, rules out any personality differences as an EV
  • Control increases internal validity. This means we can be more confident that the results are due to IV (social roles) rather than personality differences
• AO3 - Real life examples

  • Abu Ghraib – US military prison for Iraqi POWs
  • Guards tortured and abused prisoners
  • Zimbardo argued that the guards were victims of situational factors (lack of training, boredom, no consequences for this behaviour) that were responsible for the behaviour they exhibited and not personal factors
  • The guards had opportunity to abuse power associated with role of ‘guard’
• AO3 - Ethics

  • The researchers did followed the University’s 

  ethics guidelines however, Zimbardo now accepts that he should have stopped it earlier.

  • A debrief was carried out years

  later and found there to be no 

  long lasting damage done to 

  participants

  Deception 

  Lack of informed consent

  Protection from harm 

  Right to withdraw
• AO3 - Lack of realism

  • Banuazizi & Movahedi (1975) suggest that participants were play acting and not actually conforming to social roles
  • Participants behaved based on stereotypes of prisoners and  guards
  • Suggests that study tells us little about 

  conformity to social roles.
• AO3 - Supporting Research

  • McDermott (2019)
  • Participants acted like the prison was real to them
  • 90% of prisoners’ conversations were about prison life
  • Talked about it wasn’t possible to leave until their ‘sentence’ was served
  • Maybe study replicated the social roles of prisoners and guards in a real prison
  • Potentially resulting in high internal validity
• AO3 - Conformity to roles is not automatic

  • Zimbardo argued that when we assume our social role we automatically conform to the expectations of that role.
  • Demonstrated by Guards who became sadistic when they took on the role
  • But Haslam & Reicher (1012) said that not all guards did this, some held back from abusing/degrading the prisoners.
  • These guards chose not to conform to their roles.
  • Maybe Zimbardo exaggerated the power of roles?