zimbardo

• Social role


  The parts people play in social groups and the behaviour expected of a person in that role
• Zimbardo study


  • 24 male, middle class Americans
  • Conducted at Stanford University
  • Randomly assigned to prisoner or guard roles
• Zimbardo study


  1. Prisoners arrested in their homes

  2. Given smocks to wear

  3. Referred to by a number

  4. Guards wore uniform, sunglasses, carried a baton

  5. Guards worked 8 hour shifts with 3 guards to the prisoners

  6. Zimbardo was prison Superintendent

  7. No physical violence allowed
• Prisoners and guards quickly conformed to their roles
• Prisoners talked about prison life, rebelled
• Guards harassed and humiliated prisoners, made them complete pointless tasks
• 4 prisoners left the study due to emotional distress
• The study was shut down after 6 days, when it was meant to last 2 weeks
• Zimbardo's study 1acks ecological validity
• Ecological validity


  The extent to which the findings of a study can be generalized to real-world settings
• Participants may have known it wasn't a real Prison so may not have behaved how they would if it was a real prison
• So the study can't be applied to conforming to social roles in real life
• However, Zimbardo argued the prsioners showed real emotions + reactions
• and responded as if it were a real prison, as 90% of convos were about prison life
• Zimardos reserach is hard to generalise
• as he only used American males
• and other cultures, or genders may produce different results, so lacks population validity
• Zimbardo argued it is a real world example
• as it is an explanation for violence in prison's
• therefore is generalisable in some aspects
• Zimbardos research has ethical issues
• ethical issues include - psychological harm (4 had to leave due to emotional distress), participants couldn't give informed consent, lacked right to withdraw (made it hard for pps to leave)
• Zimbardo argued he 1acked awareness of ethics
• 1. Psychologically healthy people recruited and he didnt know it would turn violent the do stopped it before it could get worse