Conformity to social roles

• Zimbardo's prison study (1971)

  • Participants - 24 male undergraduates
  • Procedure - Basement of the Stanford University psychology building was converted into a simulated prison. Paid volunteers. Randomly issued roles. Prisoners were called by their assigned number. Guards were given handcuffs and sunglasses (limiting eye contact with prisoners and reinforcing boundaries between the social roles). Prisoners only allowed in the hallway (their yard) and to the toilet - guards were allowed to control such behaviour. No physical violence was permitted. The behaviour of the participants was observed.
• Zimbardo's prison study (1971)

  • Findings - Identification occurred very fast (both adapted their new roles in a short period of time).

  Guards began to harass prisoners - they later confessed how they enjoyed their 'new-found' power.

  Prisoners only spoke of prison issues, forgetting previous life, and told on other prisoners to please guards. Evidence suggested prisoners believed prison was real and were not acting as demand characteristics.

  Guards became more demanding and assertive, prisoners became more submissive, suggesting the roles became internalised.
• Strengths of Zimbardo's study:

  • Real life applications – The research changed the way US prisons are run (e.g. young prisoners are no longer kept with adult prisoners to prevent the bad behaviour occurring). Beehive-style prisons (cells under constant surveillance) are also not used in modern times, due to such setups increasing the effects of institutionalisation and over exaggerating the differences in social roles between prisoners and guards.
• Strengths of Zimbardo's study:

  • Debriefing – Participants were fully debriefed about the aims and results of the study. This is important when considering that the BPS ethical guidelines of deception and informed consent had been breached. Dealing with ethical issues in this way makes the study more ethically acceptable, but does not change the quality (in terms of validity and reliability) of the findings.
• Strengths of Zimbardo's study:

  • Amount of ethical issues with the study led to the formal recognition of ethical guidelines so that future studies were safer and less harmful to participants due to legally bound rules. This demonstrates the practical application of an increased understanding of the mechanisms of conformity and the variables which affect this.
• Limitations of Zimbardo's study:

  • Demand characteristics - Participants knew that they were in a study and so may have changed their behaviour, either to please the experimenter or in response to being observed (participant reactivity, which is a confounding variable).
• Limitation of Zimbardo's study:

  • Participant bias- Participants also knew that the study was not real and claimed they acted according to the expectations associated with their role rather adopting it. This was seen particularly with qualitative data gathered from an interview with one guard, who said that he based his performance from the stereotypical guard role portrayed in the film Cool Hand Luke, thus further reducing the validity of the findings.
• Limitations of Zimbardo's study:

  • Lacks population validity – Sample only consisted of American male students so the findings cannot be generalised to other genders and cultures. For example, collectivist cultures, such as China or Japan, may be more conformist to their prescribed social roles because such cultures value the needs of the group over the needs of the individual. This suggests that such findings may be culture-bound.
• Limitations of Zimbardo's study:

  • Ethical issues - Psychological harm. Participants were not protected from stress, anxiety, emotional distress and embarrassment. One prisoner has to be released due to excess distress and uncontrollable screaming/ crying. Another was released on the first day due to showing signs of psychological disturbance, and a further two were released the next day. This would be deemed unacceptable according to modern ethical issues.