CONFORMITY TO SOCIAL ROLES

• A social role is a set of expected behaviour that is attached to a position in society
• conformity to social roles involves a person changing their behaviours to fit in with what is expected within their position in society
• what was the aim of zimbardos prison experiment

  To investigate the exent to which people conform to their role of prisoner guard + prisoners in a role playing simulation of prison life
• where was the experiment performed

  basement of the psych department at Stanford uni
• Zimbardo was the lead researcher + superintendent
• how did he recruit people for the experiment

  he advertised for students willing to volunteer + selected those who he deemed emotionally stable after psychological testing
• how did zimbardo heighten the realism

  the prisoners were arrested in their homes by local police and taken to the mock prison
• prisoners routines were highly regulated, they had 16 rules to follow, referred to by numbers
• results - guards became increasingly more brutal and issued sever punishments

  prisoners became increasingly compliant, depressed and had breakdowns

  study abandoned after 6 days
• conclusion - the guards and prisoners conformed to their social roles
• AO3 STRENGHT - Researcher had some control over variables

  assessed emotional and psychological well being

  ensured behaviours observed were not due to an unfair advantage such as differing personalities
• AO3 LIMITATION - SPE has been contradicted by other studies
• Reicher + Haslam partially replicated the SPE with different findings, they found that prisoners bonded as a group and became aggressive towards guards, the guards seem reluctant to use power - ao3
• tajfels social identity theory explains that the guards in the replication failed to form a shared social identity as a group but the prisoners did, the guards brutality was due to a shared group identity rather than conforming to roles - ao3
• AO3 LIMITATION - major ethical issues, zimbardo breached right to withdraw when prisoners asked to leave as he was too immersed in the role. decreasing validity of study