Zimbardo Stanford Prison experiment

• Social roles


  Behaviours expected by an individual who occupies a given social position or status
• Procedure of the Stanford Prison Experiment

  1. Advertised for students to take part and selected the 24 most emotionally stable who were randomly assigned to the role of either prisoner or guard

  2. Prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home by local police and were blindfolded, strip-searched, deloused, given a uniform and a number on arrival to the prison

  3. The prisoners were given 16 rules they had to follow

  4. Guards were given uniforms, wooden clubs, handcuffs, keys and wore reflective sunglasses to prevent eye contact and told they had complete power over prisoners

  5. Guards referred to prisoners by their numbers

  6. Zimbardo took on the role of Prison Superintendent

  7. The study was planned to last for two weeks
• Strengths of the Stanford Prison Experiment

  • The study has real life applications (e.g. Abu Ghraib prison)
  • Study had a high degree of control
• Weaknesses of the Stanford Prison Experiment

  • Reicher and Haslam (2006) replicated the study and found contradictory results
  • The study is considered unethical (participants were not protected from emotional and physical harm, and did not have the right to withdraw)
• Aim – to test whether ordinary people would conform to the social roles of prison guard and prisoner in a mock prison as part of the Stanford Prison experiment.
• Findings:

  • Guards grew increasingly abusive towards the prisoners; waking them in the night and forcing them to clean toilets with their bare hands.
  • Five prisoners were allowed to leave the study early due to extreme reactions
  • Study was terminated after 6 days
  • Both the guards and prisoners conformed to their social roles
  • All participants appeared to lose their sense of personal identity, identifying instead with the social role they were given.
• Conclusion:

  Social roles have a strong influence over behaviour.
• a strength is that The study has real life applications. For example, the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq 2003 & 2004 where US soldiers abused and tortured Iraqi prisoners. The prison had the same findings as Zimbardo due to the soldiers having a lack of training, lack of accountability and boredom.
• a strength is the Study had a high degree of control. Zimbardo had control over who was selected. This is positive as the study has high internal validity.
• a weakness is Reicher & Haslam replicated the Stanford Prison Experiment & their findings contradict Zimbardo's. participants did not conform to their social roles automatically. guards did not identify with their status & refused to impose their authority; prisoners identified as a group to challenge guards’ authority which resulted in a shift of power & a collapse of the prison system. These results suggest that conformity to social roles may not be as automatic as originally implied but may be down to the shared social identity of a specific group.
• a weakness is The study is considered unethical. The participants acting as prisoners were not protected from emotional and physical harm to the point participants were distressed and having emotional breakdowns and the experiment was forced to be terminated early on day 6. Participants also did not have the right to withdraw in this study. This is a weakness because it violates the BPS code of ethics.