Zimbardo (SPE)

• Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment shows how people conform to different social roles depending on situational factors.
• Zimbardo grew up around crime in the Bronx and was inspired by the Attica Prison Riots in New York against the inhumane treatment of prisoners.
• Procedure of SPE:

  • 24 male volunteers were chosen and were screened to make sure they were stable.
  • They were assigned the role of prisoner and guard.
  • Prisoners had to wear smocks and guards wore a khakis uniform with sunglasses.
  • Prisoners were arrested from their home by cruel police without knowledge.
  • Zimbardo took the role of Superintendent.
• The guards wore sunglasses so the prisoners could not see their eyes, this gave them an air of authority.
• The prisoners were stripped naked and denounced as soon as they arrived in the prison. To further humiliate them they were also not allowed to wear underwear under their garments.
• Over the first few days the guards grew increasingly tyrannical and abusive towards the prisoners.
• How the guards were abusive:

  • Forced them to clean toilets with their bare hands.
  • Woke prisoners in the night and made them do push ups.
  • Put prisoners into solitary confinement.
  • Stripped their beds.
• Prisoners seemed to forget that it was just a study to the point where one even asked for parole rather than withdrawal.
• Five prisoners had to be released early due to extreme emotional reactions.
• The study was terminated after six days, following the intervention of a postgraduate student who was appalled at the treatment of the volunteers.
• Guards and prisoners conformed to their social roles very quickly.
• Haslam and Reicher conducted a similar study on the BBC. The prisoners in this were much more flexible in their roles and did not stick to their assigned positions.
• Generalisability was low as the people in the study were white, male, Americans and the sample size was low, only containing 24.
• The sample was also a volenteer sample.
• There were some elements of control - such as the uniforms being standardised, the students being arrested in the same way and the artificial setting of the environment.
• Low in reliability as due to the ethical concerns it could not be conducted in the same way again.
• The guards did not all display the same behaviour. There were some sadistic guards and others who helped the prisoners.
• The study is useful as it gives us a better understanding of why people commit evil acts. It also may lead to better training for those working in prisons.
• The experiment led to ethical guidelines being formally recognised by the APA (the American version of the BPS).
• The study‘s ecological validity:

  • Low ecological validity as prison environment was artificial.
  • The ecological validity was slightly higher as they conformed even when they thought they weren’t being observed, and the prisoners were causally arrested.
• Demand characteristics may be present as some of the guards seemed to have figured out the aim of the study and were playing up to their sadistic role.
• Investigator effect was present as Zimbado’s role of superintendent interfered with the projects validity.
• Ethical dilemmas…

  • Protection from harm broken - five prisoners had emotional breakdowns and all were subjected to abuse from the guards.
  • Deception - the volunteers were not told they would get arrested by real police officers.
  • Confidentiality - participants recorded.
  • Informed consent - they did not know the studies true aim.
• The study was ethical in its debrief, where the volunteers were told everything about the study, and their emotional wellbeing was checked on for months after.
• Abu Ghraib

  • Real life demonstration of conformity to social role.
  • Horrific crimes committed by American soldiers running a prison in Iraq.
  • Zimbardo believes the guards committed the crimes due to the unfamiliar situation which they were not trained to handle (blames the situation rather than the people).
• Zimbardo concluded that when people are assigned social roles they subconsciously internalise the associations of these roles.
• While Zimbardo believed that conformity to roles was automatic, not all guards drifted into the sadistic role he had expected. Following Haslam and Reicher’s study, they concluded the guards chose how to behave rather than blindly conforming.