Conformity to social roles

• Define social roles 


  the part we play as a member of a social group based on certain expectations about the behaviour that is appropriate
• Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment Aim - to investigate the extent to which people would conform to the role of a guard and prisoner in a simulation of prison life.
• Zimbardo's SPE - evaluation (G) the findings cannot be generalised . The sample was only of US, male, middle class, University students. We cannot claim all people would conform to these social roles the same way these men did
• Zimbardo's SPE - evaluation (R) the study doesnt have reliability. The study was replicated by Reicher and Haslam in 2002 and didnt find consistent results. the prisoners didnt accept the position of little power and status and showed aggression and undermined the guard who showed submission.
• Zimbardo's SPE - evaluation (A) A strength is that it's useful in explaining real life abuse. E.g. the Abu Graib military prison in Iraq, notorious for torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. Zimbardo was an expert witness at these soldiers trials for their war crimes and proposed that the individuals were victims of the situation that made their abuse more likely.
• Zimbardo's SPE - evaluation (V) Ecological validity is weak. It was experiment, not a real life prison. Therefore it can be argued that the participants did not behave naturally as they would if they were put in a real prison.
• evaluation - demand characteristics could explain findings of study as most of guards later claimed that they were just acting their role as requested, making the experiment less valid.
• Zimbardo's SPE - evaluation (E) Lack of fully informed consent. Zimbardo didnt know what would happen in the experiment meaning participants were unaware of what to expect when giving consent. Prisoners also were consent to being arrested at home because researchers wanted the arrests to come as surprise
• Zimbardo's SPE method 24 US men were paid £15 a day to participate in a experiment where they would play a role of a prisoner or a guard. Prisoners were arrested at home and taken to local police station. They were driven to Stanford University where they were stripped naked and had their belongings taken and were only called by their ID number.