Conformity to social roles

• Conformity to social roles

  Conformity to social roles means changing your behaviour to suit that of the role you are given in a situation or society. It can therefore be used to explain identification as a type of conformity.
• Conformity to social roles results from two things

  Deindividuation and Situational factors
• Deindividuation

  when an individual loses their sense of individual identity, their moral constraints on their behaviour are loosened. This makes them more likely to conform to social roles expected of them, even if they go against their values.
• Situational factors

  Variables in the environment can trigger or cause a change in behaviour e.g. providing a person with a uniform can influence them to conform to the social role that is expected of people who wear that uniform.
• what was the aim of Zimbardo’s research into conformity to social roles


  To investigate how readily people would conform to new roles assigned to them.
• what is the Procedure of Zimbardo’s research

  Twenty-four healthy American male volunteers joined a two-week simulated prison study. After psychological evaluations, they were randomly assigned as guards or prisoners. Local police "arrested" prisoners at home and brought them to a mock prison in Stanford’s basement, where prisoners wore smocks and were addressed by numbers. Guards, in uniform with reflective sunglasses, had full authority over prisoners, supervised by Zimbardo as the warden, but could not use physical aggression.
• what were the findings of Zimbardos research

  • The prisoners rebelled against the guards after 2 days, however, the guards stopped the rebellion using fire extinguishers.

  • Some of the prisoners became depressed and anxious, causing mental breakdowns.

  • The guards harassed the prisoners and conformed to their perceived roles with such dedication (e.g. attempting to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike and locking them in dark closets similar to solitary confinement) that the study, which was planned to last 2 weeks, had to be discontinued after 6 days.
• conclusions of Zimbardos research

  The deindividuation of the participants and prison environment played a crucial role in creating the guards’ brutal

  behaviour as none of them had shown these tendencies before the experiment. People therefore readily conform to

  social roles they are expected to play.
• evaluate Zimbardo’s research into conformity to social roles

  • there was a high level of control
  • Zimbardo has been accused of exaggerating the power of situational factors, while minimising the role of personality factors, when explaining his participants’ conformity to social roles
  • there is a high risk of demand characteristics.
  • it is criticised for being unethical
  • that it resulted in positive applications in society