conformity to social roles - zimbardo

• social roles:

  • individual adopts particular belief or behaviour while in a particular situation
• stanford prison experiment:

  • 1970s america
  • brutality in prisons
  • are guards naturally brutal or does the situation create the behaviour?
• stanford prison experiment procedure:

  • 24 male participants who volunteered in response to newspaper advert - collected from 75 volunteers on basis of mental + physical ability, paid $15
  • randomly assigned to prisoner or guard roles
• guard roles:

  • uniforms, sunglasses, handcuffs + truncheon
  • instructed to run prison without violence
• prisoner roles:

  • stripped + given a numbered smock, chains around ankles
  • fingerprinted + arrested
  • basement of stanford turned into mock prison
• standford prison experiment findings:

  • quickly identified roles - prisoners rebelled, crushed by guards who become more abusive + guards dehumanised prisoners, made them submissive
  • 5 prisoners released early - set to run for 2 weeks
  • terminated after 5 days - christina maslach convinced zimbardo conditions were inhumane
• zimbardo's conclusion:

  • people quickly conform to roles even when theyre against moral principles
  • situational factors were responsive - no participants displayed behaviours previously
• social identity theory:

  • people in group have a collective identity
• EVALUATION: real world application to real life atrocities

  • Abu ghraib - military prison in Iraq known for abuse + torture 2003/4
  • lack of training, unrelenting boredom, no accountability present in zimbardo + prison
  • understand situational influences, apply findings to real life prevent brutality
• EVALUATION: demand characteristics

  • Banuazizi + Mohavedi - action = consequences of demand characteristics, presented evidence to large sample unaware of experiment - correctly guessed purpose
  • guard from experiment = based behaviour of cool hand luke
  • behaviour is result of demand characteristics + not environment
• EVALUATION: lack of research support

  • reicher + haslam contradictory findings - 15 men assigned to role of prisoner/guard, participants didnt conform automatically
  • refused to impose authority, power shift + collapse of prison system
  • social roles may not be automatic, more down to shared social identity of group
• EVALUATION: individual differences:

  • Fromm accused zimbardo of exaggerating power of situation to influence behaviour - minimised personality
  • behaviour of guards varied dramatically - 1/3 extremely sadistic, few helped prisoners
  • dispositional factors e.g personality played a role - conclusion may be overstated
• EVALUATION: ethical issues

  • conditions + behaviour = sadistic, inhumane - prisoners had mental breakdowns, 5 left within 6 days
  • Maslach had to convince zmibardo to end experiment - meant to last 2 weeks
  • could be said that research failed to outweigh broken ethical guidelines