Conformity to social roles as investigated by Zimbardo

• 1= Zimbardo investigated conformity to social roles in a mock prison study in which participants were randomly assigned to the role of either prisoner or prison guard
• 2= Prisoners were given a jumpsuit to wear and a hat to cover their hair, they were only identified by a number, and the prison guards were given a khaki uniform, a wooden bat and mirrored sunglasses (making eye contact impossible).
• 3= Both of these uniforms were designed to de-individualise the participants and make them conform to their new social roles.
• 4= Zimbardo observed the participants conform to their new social identity, with the prison guards, over time, coming up with increasingly violent punishments to discipline the prisoners
• 5= The study even had to be abandoned early because the behaviour became too violent.
• Findings- These results suggest that because the participants were not previously like this, that the social role of an individual can shape and change their behaviour
• Advantage- Zimbardo's study led to massive changes in psychology with the introduction of an ethical code of conduct, which ensured that researchers experimented ethically without causing harm or exploiting participants.
• Although these rules were not in place during Zimbardo's prison study, they are now and so the study cannot be replicated to check the original findings for reliability.
• Disadvantage- study may be subject to observer bias, this is because Zimbardo ran both the experiment and the prison and even said himself afterwards that he became too personally involved in the study
• Disadvantage- the issue with being too involved is that Zimbardo could have promoted particular behaviours that go along with the trend etc, potentially reducing the validity of the study.
• Disadvanatge- not all participants did conform to their social roles, and Zimbardo had no explanation for this. And in one case a prison guard being interviewed after the study said that he based his “performance” on the prison guard from the movie “cool hand luke”. This may mean that the study lacked ecological validity, as it was a mock prison and not real life, the behaviour observed may not generalise to real world conformity to social roles