Zimbardo explanation/ study

• What is conformity to social roles?

  Conformity to social roles is about adopting the norms and behaviour of how you think someone in that role would act. Zimbardo wanted to investigate whether police brutality was due to conformity to social roles or a sadistic (cruel) personality.
• What did Zimbardo do for his study?


  He asked for volunteers and assigned them to guard/prisoner roles using a coin flip. He told them they would be in the study for two weeks, gave them uniforms and told them to not refer to it as a study to make it feel more realistic and had set up a fake prison to observe their behaviours in.