Conformity to Social Rules

• Zimbardo is most famous for the 'Stanford Prison Experiment' (1971)
• Zimbardo aimed to find out why people conform to their roles in society
• 24 male students were assigned to either guard or prisoner
• Set up a realistic mock prison within Stanford University
• The only instruction given to guards was that they had to keep law and order in the prison by whatever means necessary
• Planned to last 2 weeks, only lasted 6 days
• Guards wore sunglasses to create a barrier between prisoners
• Social role- the parts individuals play as members of a social group which meet the expectation of that situation
• De-individuation- individuals lower their morals to take part in actions others are participating in. Have a weaker sense of personal responsibility
• Dehumanisation- Degrading people by lessening their humanity
• A participant said he saw the experiment as an "improv exercise", however psychologists have said that people cannot keep up an act for that long
• Someone shared their experiences in a "spanish jail section of San Quentin", which Zimbardo took and shared with the guards (bags over heads, being chained together, etc)
• Participants did not give informed consent
• Took 1 day for guards to abuse their power
• Guards used psychological and physical abuse: sleep deprivation, fire extinguishers in cells, etc
• One prisoner broke down on day 3 and had to be removed from the experiment. 2 other prisoners also had to be removed
• Zimbardo claims no participants suffered long term damage
• Transcripts showed researchers "coached" guards to "act tough"
• Generalisability

  • Only male, uni students
  • Men and women do not share prisons- so it is accurate
  • American prison
• Sampling Method

  • Volunteer
  • The most mentally stable people were picked by Zimbardo
  • Randomly allocated to be a prisoner or guard
• Research method

  • Overt observation- may have played up the roles
  • Participant observation- could not view it all objectively, also conformed to his social role
  • Naturalistic observation- could not control anything
• Validity

  • Ecological- men and women do not share prisons in real life
  • Concurrent- Reicher and Haslam
• Reicher and Haslam

  • For the BBC in collaboration with the BPS
  • Found that there was very little abuse of power
  • Had more rules: couldn't physically abuse them
  • British participants
  • showed less conformity
• Reliability

  • Cannot be recreated
  • Did not change any rules once it had started