AO3: Zimbardo: Conformity to Social Roles

• High internal validity and control due to lab experiment


  This means the extent to which the assigned roles lead to the behaviours shown. Zimbardo did a psychological test beforehand to ensure that behaviour was due to the environment and not mental health. This is a strength because he can say that the situation that caused the behaviour and not internal dispositional characteristics.
• Real world applications


  Zimbardo believes the same conformity in the prison experiment also occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. During the Iraq war, US military personnel committed crimes of both physical and sexual abuse against prisoners. Soldiers were removed from duty, charged, demoted or sent to military prison. As well as this, there is less accountability to higher authority figures, making abuse more likely. Suggesting that certain situational factors combined with an opportunity to misuse power associated with conforming to social roles can lead to tyrannical behaviour.
• Ignores the role of disposition


  Meaning that there is a overemphasis on the situation and not enough on free will. For example, two thirds of the guards were not brutal, some even tried to help the prisoner. This demonstrates that the guards 'chose' how to behave and that conformity to social roles was not automatic. Furthermore, not all participants in the Abu Ghraib Prison participated. This shows that people have free will over the right or wrong choices despite situational pressure.
• Ethical issues


  Participants were not protected from harm. When a student wanted to leave, Zimbardo spoke to him as if he were a prisoner. The ppts were not prepared for the psychological harm and mental torment they experienced during their time in the prison, experiencing intense distress and humiliation on multiple occasions. Due to this violation of ethics, the experiment cannot be replicated and therefore lacks reliability. This means there is little evidence to support Zimbardo's findings and so the situation is not an appropriate explanation for conformity to social roles.