Conformity to Social Roles

• AO1 Zimbardo's Study


  Aim - to find out why prison guards behave brutally, was it heaven of their personality or social roles

  
  

  Method - He selected 21 men (student volunteers) who were tested as emotionally stable and they were randomly assigned to play the role of the prison guard or a prisoner.

  • Prisoners were given lose clothes a hat and were intensified by a number. This creates a loss of personal identity - de-individuation

  • Guards carried a wooden club, wore uniforms and had dark glasses which also de-individualised them

  
  

  Results - The guards took up their roles treating the prisoners harshly. However after 2 days the prisoners started to rebel. Guards harassed the prisoners more by making them do exercise in the middle of the night or highlighting the differences in social roles. The guards intensified more with their roles and the experiment was shut down after 6 days and some prisoners had already left

  
  

  Conclusion - Social roles have a strong influence on people's behaviour. The guards became brutal and the prisoners submissive.
• AO3 Zimbardo's Study


  Strength

  P - Zimbardo had control over key variables

  E - He only selected emotionally stable people and they were randomly assigned to roles. This rules out individual personality differences and reduces bias.

  C - This increases the internal validity of the study

  
  

  Weakness

  P - There were many ethical issues in his study

  E - Ethics such as deception, protection from harm, the right to withdraw were not followed in his experiment. Some participants left with psychological or physical damage from the experience. Also some participants wanted to leave the experiment but at first Zimbardo did not let them. As well as this participants were told that there would be no physical violence in the experiment even when there was.

  C - This means the study has many issues

  
  

  Weakness

  P - Zimbardo may have exaggerated the power of social roles to influence behaviour

  E - Only 1/3 of the guards behaved in a brutal manner and most guards were able to resist situational pressures

  C - This suggests that he minimised the influence of dispositional factors such as personality and overstated the view of social roles