Zimbardo

• What are social roles?


  The parts people play as various members of social groups. These are accompanied by expectations that we have of ourselves and what other people think of us.
• How was Zimbardo's prison study set up?

  • Participants took part in psychological testing, 24 men were chosen - healthiest, had no history of mental illness, no extreme views
  • Random allocation of participants as either guard or prisoner (reducing effect of individual differences)
  • Guards had sunglasses, whistles, uniforms and billy clubs
  • Prisoners had chain around ankle, mock arrests, were stripped and put in a smock outfit and given numbers to replace their names
  • Zimbardo acted as the prison superintendent
• What happened during Zimbardo's prison study?

  • To start with, guards didn't have much authority, by day 2 prisoners started to revolt by ripping off numbers & shouting at guards
  • Guards retaliated against prisoners with fire extinguishers
  • Guards increased levels of harassment of prisoners after this - carried out frequent head counts, used various punishments & embarrassed prisoners
  • Prisoners began to have psychological breakdowns & had to be released from the study
  • Guards became power hungry and aggressive, Zimbardo became engrossed in role of superintendent, prisoners significantly stressed
• How long did Zimbardo's prison study last?

  It was meant to last for 2 weeks, but it became too dangerous to participants involved and had to be shut down after 6 days.
• Strengths of Zimbardo's prison study:

  • High levels of control - only selected 'healthiest' and most mentally average men and randomly allocated them to roles. Reduces chance of individual differences affecting the results.
  • Real world application - US troops at Abu Gharib torturing and humiliating prisoners. Zimbardo's findings backed up by what happened there.
• What are the weaknesses of Zimbardo's prison study?

  • Androcentric and culturally biased - has a lack of populational validity as all participants were American men of around the same age
  • Ethical issues - psychological harm to participants, lack of informed consent (e.g. mock arrests), lack of protection from harm
  • Investigator effects - Zimbardo acted as superintendent and influenced results by acting as the prison superintendent which reduces internal validity
• What study can be compared to the Stanford prison study?

  The BBC prison study.
• what was the procedure of the BBC prison study?

  Controlled observation set in a mock prison. 15 participants - 10 prisoners and 5 guards. Was knowingly filmed for broadcasting in UK. Stress levels measured daily. One prisoner had the ability to be promoted to a guard on day 3. Ethics committee set up to oversee the experiment.
• What were the results of the BBC prison study?

  • Guards didn't form a group, didn't always have the authority
  • Unequal system eventually failed as guards had a weak group identity and prisoners had a strong group identity
  • Day 1-3 prisoners acted in ways to try and get promoted
  • Day 4 onwards prison group became stronger as couldn't get promoted anymore
  • Day 6 the prisoners rebelled and participants then formed a democracy
  • Democracy failed because of group tensions and some ex-prisoners tried to establish a hierarchy
  • Ethics committee stopped study early because stress levels became too high
• Strengths of BBC prison study:

  • Good ethics - had an ethics committee overseeing the entire study and could stop it at any point, participants not deceived and were protected from harm
  • High levels of control - procedure can be replicated, roles were randomly allocated, selected most 'average men' so combined reduces the effect of individual differences on results
• What were the weaknesses of the BBC prison study?

  • Low ecological validity - was an artificial setting and filmed so behaviours witnessed not likely to represent those seen in real life
  • Staged for TV - claims that parts of the study were staged to entertain a TV audience and that behaviours weren't authentic as they were playing to the cameras so reduced internal validity
  • Lack of empowerment - Zimbardo's guards were promoted to keep order but BBC guards were not which may explain why guards had a weak group identity