zimbaro social roles

• Zimbardo set up a mock prison in the psychology department of Standford University in the USA. He scanned male student volunteers and 24 of the most stable were then picked to either be the role of prisoner and guard. The prisoners were unexpectedly arrested from their homes and given ID numbers which the guards only referred to. The guards worn reflective sunglasses to prevent eye contact with uniform and clubs.
• The study was planned to last 2 weeks. The pt did automatically conform to their roles. The guards grew increasingly abusive towards the prisoners, who let it happen and were very passive. The guards even conformed when they were unaware of being watched, such as making the prisoners wash the toilets with their bare hands. 5 prisoners were released early due to extreme reactions (eg crying). The study was then terminated after just 6 days.
• An issue with this study is the demand characteristics.

  Details of the study were shown to a large sample of student who had never heard of the study. The vast majority correctly guessed the aim of the study and how the guards and prisoners would act (hostile and passive).

  This suggest that the behaviour views by Zimbardo was due to demand characteristics rather than just the conformity to social roles.
• There is also a challenge to Zimbardos belief that the guards drift into sadistic behaviour due to automatic consequences of embracing their role.

  However, the guards ranged from being fully sadistic to a few being ‘good guards’ who did not degrade or harass the prisoners, even some did small favours for them.

  This shows that the guards chose to behave rather than blindly conforming to their social role, which was what was suggested by Zimbardo
• Zimbardo’s study is very much criticised due to it being very unethical.

  It did follow the University's ethics committee guidelines who approved it. Zimbardo did acknowledge the study should have been stopped earlier due to pt experiencing distress during the study. He attempted to make amends by carrying out debriefing sessions for several years and concluded there were no long lasting effects. This suggests that even though distress was caused by the study, there were no long lasting effects, the study wasn’t too unethical and studies after this were more carefully planned.
• The reflective glasses may be a confounding variable.

  Reflective glasses are know to be a way of disguising themselves in a group and not being identified. This is de-individualisation which is proven to make people more aggressive and perform worse acts such as Zimbardo’s study on this where unidentified people held a shock buzzer down for twice as long as identified people. Therefore, the reflective glasses may be allowing the guards to perform aggressive/abusive acts towards the prisoners.

  This may reduce the validity of Zimbardo’s study and question whether results are reliable.