Conformity to social roles-Stanford prison experiment (1971)

• Conformity to social roles


  The stanford prison experiment 1971
• Participants


  • 24 american male undergraduates - healthy and psychologically normal
• Location

  basement of stanford prisons psychology department
• Roles: randomly issued....

  prisoner or prison guard
• How long did the experiment last and why?

  6 days and terminated due to extreme pathological behaviours emerging in both groups
• Aim


  to examine whether people would conform to the social roles of a prison guard or prisoner, when placed in a mock prison environment
• How much were participants paid

  $15 a day - however prisoners had to take part in experiments for 24hrs a day and prison guards could take 8hr shifts
• Prisoners uniform

  only referred to as a number - no underwear and large smocks- large chain or right ankle
• Guards uniform


  prison guard uniforms - mirrored shades (anonymity) - batons from local prison
• What type of experiment

  Lab experiment
• No physical violence to keep inline with ethical guidelines of the study
• type of observation

  overt, participant, controlled
• Findings

  Participants adopted there roles very quickly after around a day, starting a riot refusing to leave their cells

  Guards became more abusive of powers doing routinely prisoner counts throughout day and night. Also making prisoners do things such as naked press ups
• strength - real life application


  changed how prisons are run in USA e.g young prisoners not housed with older prisoners to prevent bad behaviour perpetuating
• Strengths - Debriefing

  participants fully debriefed about aims and results of study - deception is not breached

  debriefed, separately and together
• Strength - Amount of ethical issues

  the amount of ethical issues left in the study led to the formal recognition of ethical guidelines - further studies are safer and less harmful (BPS ethical guidelines create 1985 - SPE 1971)
• limitations - lacks ecological validity

  suffered from demand characteristics - participants knew they were in the study - therefore could change the way they participated in the study, to please experimenter or or in response to being observered

  also, knew it was real so could have acted accordingly to role
• limitation - lacks population validity


  sample only consisted of American male undergrad students with healthy physical and mental wellbeing - findings cannot be generalised to any other gender, age and culture
• limitation - Ethical issues

  lack of fully informed consent - prisoners didn't know they where going to be arrested and blindfolded from home or strip searched - deception required to avoid demand characteristics + participant reactivity

  
  

  However, Zimbardo didn't know what was going to happen, so couldn't inform customers about everything - possible justification
• Limitations - psychological harm

  participants were not protected from stress, anxiety or emotional distress and embarassment

  • e.g one participant released due to excess signs of distress and uncontrollable screaming + crying
  • being made to clean toilet with bare hands and sent to a cupboard for punishment, also disrupting sleeping patterns