Zimbardo

• What are situational variables?

  
  

  Features of an environment the affect the degree to which individuals yield to group pressures
• What are social Roles?

  
  

  A part individuals play as members of a social group, which meets the expectations of that siuation
• What study demonstrates social roles?

  Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment
• What were the aims of Zimbardo's experiment?

  
  

  The extent to which people conform to roles of guard/prisoner in a simulation of prison life.

  Testing dispositional vs situational hypothesis

  -Will the guards be sadistic

  -Brutal conditions of prison environment
• What was the sample in Zimbardo's study?

  
  

  75 male university student volunteers

  (Told they will be paid $15 a day)
• What was wrong with Zimbardo's sample?

  
  

  -Small sample

  -Androcentric

  -Same Age

  -Volunteers are different: Only doing it for the money
• What was the method of Zimbardo's study?

  
  

  -Took place in a psychology basement- mock prison

  -Prisoners arrested by real police and processed

  -Dehumanisation was used- Chain around ankle

  -Guards in Khaki Uniforms

  -Meant to run for 2 weeks
• What is deindivduation?

  Taking away someone's identity- prisoners had numbers
• What happened to the prisoners after around 36 hours?

  
  

  The participants in the study started to cry and have a mental breakdown
• How many days did it take for the study to be over?

  
  

  6 days
• What were the conclusions for Zimbardo's study? Individuals conform readily to social roles

  
  

  Situational is preffered over dispositional- none of the participants had shown these traits before
• What are the positive evaluation points for Zimbardo?

  
  

  Experiment- Control over the variables

  -Emotionally stable individuals were chosen

  this increases the external validity
• What are the negative evaluation points for Zimbardo's Study?

  
  

  Individual differences- Not all the guards were brutal

  Lab experiment- Lack of realism

  Lack of research to support- The BBC prison experiment showed very different results

  Ethical issues- Psychological harm, deception, right to withdraw, observer bias
• Fromm et al.

  only 1/3 of guards were brutal: some were sympathetic so Zimbardo overexaggerated extent of brutality
• Cost benefit analysis

  cost of psychological harm is not as great as the benefit of knowing how people conform to roles
• McDermott et al

  90% of conversations were about prison life so high ecological validity