Conformity to social roles

• Social roles are the roles we play in society as members of specific social groups eg. teachers and students. They are accompanied by expectations that we have on what is appropriate behaviour.
• Zimbardo (1)

  > aim - to investigate how freely people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role playing exercise that recreated prison life

  > Sample - a volunteer sample of 24 emotionally stable US male university students

  Procedure -

  • Volunteers randomly allocated each student to prisoner or guard
  • Prisoners - arrested at their homes, searched, given smock dresses and numbers
  • Guards - Given uniform, a night stick, mirrored sunglasses and told to keep the prisoners under control but to use no violence
• Zimbardo (2)

  > Uniforms created a loss of personal identity

  > Prisoners were placed in cells and a regular routine was established

  Findings -

  > Within a day prisoners rebelled and ripped off their numbers - guards locked them in cells and took blankets away

  > Prisoners deprived of sleep

  > Identification was noticeable by the prisoners - referred to each other by their numbers

  > prisoners became subdued and depressed

  > lasted for 6 days rather then 2 weeks
• Zimbardo (3)

  > Guards, prisoners and researchers conformed to their role within a prison

  > Social roles have extraordinary power over an individual, making the most adapted extremely brutal towards each other
• Zimbardo AO3 -

  :) High control over extraneous variables

  > emotional stability assessed and randomly assigned roles

  :( Gender bias - androcentric

  :( Major ethical issues

  :( Prone to demand characteristics