Conformity to social roles

• Social roles

  the parts individuals play as members of society which meet the expectations of that situation
• Zimbardo 1973

  • AIM- to investigate the extent to which people would conform to the roles of prisoner and guard in a simulation of prison life
  • to test dispositional v.s. situational hypotheses
• Zimbardo - procedure

  • 75 volunteers responded to a newspaper advert
  • 21 male university students were rated as the most physically and mentally healthy
  • Ps were randomly assigned to their roles as prisoner or guard (11 prisoners and 10 guards)
  • arrested at home and dehumanised, stripped of their personal identities and referred to by numbers
  • study was planned to run for 2 weeks
• Zimbardo - findings

  • both guards and prisoners settled quickly into their social roles
  • the guards emplyed the divide and rule tactics by playing the prisoners against each other
  • prisoners became submissive and guards became oppressive
  • study originally meant for 14 days but stopped after 6 because of aggressive nature of the guards
• Zimbardo - conclusions

  • Stanford prison experiment concluded that individuals conform readily to social roles demanded of a situation, even if the role overrides moral belief
  • situational > dispositional as none of the Ps exhibited this behaviour beforehand
• Zimbardo - A03

  • experimental realism as it was seen that Ps got quite immersed in the study
  • lacks generalisability as only males were studied
  • demand characteristics - some Ps created their role and stirred things up
  • not all guards behaved brutally so we cannot claim it is just due to situational factors alone- Fromm accused Zimbardo of exaggeration of the dispositional factors. For example only one thirds of the guards behaved brutally towards the Ps and the other third actively tried to help the prisoners, sympathising with them and reinstating privileges
• Zimbardo -1973

  • there was mundane realism as well due to the replication of a real prison, meal times, cells, parole, visiting times etc
• Zimbardo

  There is a lack of research support. Reicher and Haslam tried to replicate the findings in their BBC prison study but did not find similar results to Zimbardo. IN their study not all Ps readily conformed to the expectations of their social role. Guards were not aggressive and prisoners eventually took control of the prison and subjected them to harrassment and disobedience. They created a system of collective control.