zimbardo - conforming to social roles

• aim - to explore the impact of situational factors vs dispositional factors on human behaviour
• Participants were randomly assigned as either guards or prisoners, with no prior knowledge about their role.
• Zimbardo's aim was to investigate how people would behave when placed into specific social roles.
• Zimbardo's aim was to investigate how people would behave when placed into specific social roles.
• method - prisoners were issued a uniform, and referred to by their number only. guards were issued a khaki uniform, with whistles, handcuffs and dark glasses, to make eye contact with prisoners impossible. guards worked shifts of eight hours each. no physical violence was permitted.
• participants encouraged to conform to the roles through uniforms which created a loss of personal identity (deindividualisation)
• guards treated prisoners harshly and closely identified with their role as their behaviour became increasingly brutal and they enjoyed the power they had over prisoners
• prisoners became more submissive as guards demanded more obedience from them
• prisoners became more depressed and anxious - 1 participant released early after psychological disturbances
• zimbardo ended the study early 8 days
• prisoners rebelled after 2 days
• X low ecological validity - findings can't be generalised to real world
• X gender bias and population bias - study only completed on american students
• X unethical - created mental distress and participants not protected from psychological harm
• X lack of informed consent - prisoners didn't consent to being arrested