Conformity to social roles: Zimbardo's research

• Zimbardo and his colleagues set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University to test whether the brutality of prison guards was the result of sadistic personalities or it was created by the situation.
• They recruited 24 'emotionally stable students determined by psychological testing- randomly allocated roles of guards or prisoners.
• to increase realism, 'prisoners' were arrested in their homes and delivered to the 'prison'- blindfolded, strip-searched, deloused and issues a uniform and number.
• The prisoners' daily routines were heavily regulated. there were 16 rules to follow, enforced by guards working in shifts, three at a time.
• de-individualisation (losing a sense of personal identity):

  • prisoners' names were never used, only their numbers.
  • guards has their own uniform- wooden club, handcuffs, keys and mirror shades. they were told they had complete power over the prisoners, for instance deciding when they could go to the toilet.
• Within two days, the prisoners rebelled against their treatment. they ripped their uniforms and showed and swore at the guards, who retaliated with fire extinguishers.
• guards harassed the prisoners constantly by conducting frequent headcount, sometimes in the middle of the night.
• guards highlighted the differences in social roles by creating opportunities to enforce the rules and punish slight misdemeanours.
• the guards took up their roles with enthusiasm. their behaviour threatened the prisoners' psychological and physical health. for example:

  1. after the rebellion was put down, the prisoners became subdued, anxious and depressed.
  2. three prisoners were released early because they showed signs of psychological disturbance.
  3. one prisoner went on hunger strike; the guards attempted to force-feed him and punished him by putting him in the 'hole', a tiny dark closet.
• the study was stopped after six days instead of the planned 14 days
• the simulations revealed the power of the situation to influence people's behaviour. guards, prisoners and researchers all conformed to their social roles within the prison. the more the guards identified with their roles, the more brutal and aggressive their behaviour became.
• strength of the SPE: researchers had some control over variables

  emotionally stable participants were recruited and randomly allocated the roles of guard and prisoners. the guards and prisoners had those roles only by chance. so their behaviour was due to the pressures of the situation and not their personalities. control increases the study's internal validity. we can be more confident in drawing conclusions about the influences of social roles on behaviour.
• potential limitation of the SPE: lack of realism

  banuazizi and mohavedi suggested participants were play-acting. their performances reflected stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave. one guard based his role on a character from the film Cool Hand Luke. prisoners rioted because they thought that is what real prisoners did. but zimbardo's data showed 90% of the prisoners' conversations were about prison life. the simulation seemed real to them, increasing the study's internal validity.
• major ethical issues with the SPE

  one issue arose because zimbardo was both lead researcher and prison superintendent. a student who wanted to leave the suited spoke to zimbardo, who responded as a superintendent worried about the running of his prison rather than as a researcher. this limited zimbardo's ability to protect his participants from harm because his superintendent role conflicted with the role of lead researcher.
• limitation: lacks research support and has been contradicted by subsequent research

  reicher and haslam partially replicated the SPE, with different findings. prisoners eventually took control. tajfel's social identity theory explains this. guards in the replication failed to develop shared social identity as a group, but prisoners did and refused to accept limits of their assigned roles. so the brutality of the guards in the SPE was due to a shared social identity as a cohesive group, rather than conformity to their social roles