stanford prison study, zimbardo (1973)

• stanford prison experiment

  a = see whether people will conform to new social roles

  p = male psychology students at stanford, volunteered to take part and randomly allocated roles (guard or prisoner), planned duration of 2 weeks locked in cell for 23hrs

  prisoners were arrested unexpected at homes and taken to university prison. stripped, deloused and given prison uniform and number

  only referred to by number not name

  guards given uniforms, sticks, mirrored glasses (worked shifts and went home at end)
• stanford prison experiment

  f = called off after 6 days as guards became too brutal- 2 prisoners nervous breakdowns, 1 nervous rash, 1 hunger strike

  prisoners became apathetic, didn't stand up to guards, did as told even if it caused them distress

  c = extreme reactions due to conformity to social roles.

  deindividuation causes guards to become sadistic as they didn't feel what happened was down to them personally, it was a group norm
• role

  • a part you play during life
  • each role requires different behaviour
  • given a new role, you will change your behaviour to suit it
  • the students conformed to the behaviour of their new role
• deindividuation

  state when you become so immersed in the norms of the group, you lose your sense of identity and social responsibility
• highly controlled variables

  • selected emotionally stable ppt (which removes individual personality differences, in turn removing confounding variables) and randomly assigned to roles of guard or prisoner
  • as the guards and prisoners behaved differently and were put into role by chance, the behaviour is due to the role
  • high validity means more confidences in drawing conclusions
• artificial task / lack of realism

  • ali banuazizi and siamak movahedi (1975) suggested that ppt were play acting rather than conform to the role.
  • performance based on stereotypes of roles- one guard admitted to taking on the role of brutal character from film 'cool hand luke', prisoners rioted as they thought that's what prisoners do
  • findings of SPE tell us little about conforming to social roles in actual prisons
• counterpoint to lack of realism

  • mark mcdermott - ppt did behave as if the prison was real to them
  • prisoners discussed that it was impossible to leave before the end of their 'sentence'
  • 'prisoner 416' - believed it was a real prison but run by psychologists instead of government, suggests that SPE replicated social roles of prisoners and guards in a real prison, meaning hugh internal validity
  • continued behaviours when they weren't being filmed - shows they weren't acting
• dispositional influences (fromm 1973)

  • zimbardo may have exaggerate power of social roles to influence behaviour
  • 1/3 brutal, 1/3 applied rules fairly, 1/3 tried to help and support prisoners even by offering cigarettes
  • most guards were able to resist situational pressures to conform to a brutal role
  • zimbardo overstated view that SPE ppt were conforming to social roles and minimised the influence of dispositional factors (personality)
• social identity theory (SIT)

  tajel (1979)
• social identity theory

  • zimbardo explanation doesn't account for the behaviour of non- brutal guards
  • used SIT to argue that guards had to actively identify with their social roles as they did (alex haslam + steve reicher 2006)
• SIT

  • groups (social classes, family, football team) which people belonged to were important for pride and self-esteem
  • groups give a sense of belonging to social world
  • social categorisation- divided world into 'them' and 'us'
• ethics

  • informed consent - there was consent, but not informed as they didn't know what would happen in the experiment (abuse etc)
  • deception - didn't know the details (arrested at homes, wear smocks, be deloussed/ stripped, which role they would be)
  • RIGHT TO WITHDRAW - ppt asked to leave and were refused, it was hard to leave, shouldn't been punished
  • protection from harm - 2 had nervous breakdowns, 1 nervous rash, physical and mental harm