Key study-Zimbardo

• The aim of this experiment is to see whether people will conform to social roles they are assigned to.
• Firstly, they were randomly picked between prison guards and prisoners. The participants were the told to act like the roles they were given. Then were then put under prison like conditions for 6 days and were mentally totured. It was meant to run for 2 weeks but stopped after 6 days. Both had to wear uniforms and had a number.
• Zimbardo found that several prisoners broke down by 5 days. Both prisoners and prison guards conformed. Prisoners did there tasks. They used divide and rule tactics. Prisoners rebelled together and followed instructions.
• Conclusions-

  People will conform to what people expected of them participants were given a role and they behaved how people thought they would behave
• One positive of Zimbardo's experiment was Control. Zimbardo could control what participants were in the experiment. They could check if they are mentally stable which means they can see what the affects are on the participant. More control will lead to a more accurate result.
• Another positive is that the participants felt it was real. They believed they were in the roles they assigned. This leads to the participants behaving more naturally which will lead to more accurate findings for zimbardo
• Another positive is that it is not biased. There no biased towards the prison guards or prisoners which means all the actions were actions that the participants. They were in full control of what they did which means a more accurate experiment
• Another weakness is that after the study the participants said they were acting. This means that they weren't acting like they would if they were a prisoner or prison guard which means that Zimbardo experiment does not show how people would act to social roles they were assigned to
• Another weakness is that the experiment cannot translate to real life. This is because the participants knew it was fake so the findings would not be able to fully generalised into real life as they were acting.
• Another weakness of the Zimbardo experiment is that the participants were not protected from psychological harm. The prisoners especially were mentally tortured and were not allowed to leave. This is unethical and would not be able to run in todays world. In a experiment, the participants health should be the highest priority.
• Another weakness of Zimbardo's experiment is that Zimbardo duel role got to involved. Zimbardo was a authoritive figure and him being involved means that the experiment results would be manipulated which means they would not be accurate.
• Another weakness was the bias in samples. There was a gender bias as they were all males, culture bias as they were all white American males and there was a age bias as they were all young. This means that these results cannot be generalised to everyone as different people with different upbringing will act differently in the scenarios. This means that the results aren't accurate.