Zimbardo, Conformity to social roles

• Zimbardo's classical study


  Stanford Prison Experiment
• Purpose of Zimbardo's study

  • To find out the reasons for high levels of aggression in the American prison system - whether it was due to prisoners and guards' personalities/dispositions or something to do with the prison environment itself
• Zimbardo's study procedure


  1. Created a fake prison at Stanford University

  2. Had 21 male students, rated as physically and mentally stable, participate

  3. Randomly selected 10 guards and 10 prisoners

  4. Prisoners given realistic arrest, fingerprinted, stripped, deloused, and given prison uniforms to dehumanize them

  5. Prisoners had to follow strict role rules, guards given complete control over them with uniforms, clubs, handcuffs, and mirrored sunglasses
• Prisoners and guards conformed to their social roles quickly
• After 2 days, prisoners revolted against the bad treatment by guards
• After 6 days, the experiment was cancelled due to concerns for prisoners' mental health
• Zimbardo's study showed


  The situational power of a prison environment to change people's behaviour
• Attempts to recreate Zimbardo's study

  • BBC TV program where prisoners became dominant over guards
• In the BBC recreation, the guards were unable to control the prisoners' behaviour
• This could suggest a problem with Zimbardo's findings, as the prisoners may have just defined their social role as disobedience
• Students who weren't assigned roles may have acted based on their preconceptions of prisoners and guards from media, like the film Cool Hand Luke
• Only a third of the guards in Zimbardo's study became excessively aggressive, a third were relatively neutral, and a third tried to help the prisoners
• Zimbardo's study failed to achieve its aim of reducing violence in American prisons, as prisons remain even more violent today