Social Influence - Zimbardo and Conformity to Social Roles

Question 1

What are social roles?

Answer 1

The parts that individuals play as members of a social group, which meet the expectations of the situation
- Conformity to social roles involves identification, involving public and private acceptance of the behaviour and attitudes exhibited but only whilst in those particular situations.

Question 2

What was the background of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 2

• He was attempting to understand the brutal and dehumanising behaviour found in prisons and reported on a regular basis in American media
  He had two explanations to test:
  1. Dispositional hypothesis -
• the violence and degradation of prisons was due to the nature of people found within the prison system; both guards and prisoners were ‘bad seeds’ possessed of sadistic, aggressive characteristics which naturally ended in brutality

2. Situational hypothesis -
   - Violence and degradation as a product of ‘prison soil’ the interactions between environmental factors that supported such behaviour; the brutal conditions of prison led to brutal behaviour (dehumanising and brutalising conditions)

Question 3

What was the preparation for the experiment?

Answer 3

• Zimbardo built a mock prison that used ‘average people’ with no record of violence or criminality to play both prisoners and guards
• These roles were randomly determined, and aimed to separate the effects of the prison environment from those in the system
• If no brutality occurred, the dispositional hypothesis would be supported
• If brutality did occur, then the situational hypothesis would be supported, with the environment driving normal and law abiding people into this behaviour

Question 4

What was the aim of Zimbardo’s experiment?

Answer 4

• To investigate the extent to which people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing simulation of prison life
• To test the dispositional vs situational hypotheses that saw prison violence as either due to the sadistic personalities of the guards and prisoners or to the brutal conditions of the prison environment

Question 5

What was the method of Zimbardo’s experiment?

Answer 5

• 75 male university students responded to a newspaper advertisement asking for volunteers for a study of prison life paying $15 a day
• 21 students rated as the most physically and mentally stable, mature and free from anti-social and criminal tendencies were used (10 as guards and 11 as prisoners)
• Selection as to who would be guards and who would be prisoners was on a random basis, with all participants initially expressing a wish to be prisoners, with Zimbardo himself played the role of the prison superintendent
• The basement of the psychology department at Stanford University was converted into a mock prison, and the experience was made as realistic as possible with the prisoners being arrested by the real local police and then fingerprinted, stripped and deloused
• Dehumanisation (removal of individual identity) was increased by prisoners wearing numbered smocks, nylon stocking caps (simulate shaved heads) and a chain around one ankle
• Guards wore khaki uniforms, reflective sunglasses (to prevent eye-contact) and were issued with handcuffs, keys and truncheons (despite physical punishment not being permitted)
• 9 prisoners were placed 3 to a cell and a regular routine of shifts, meal times etc was established as well as visiting times, a parole and disciplinary board and a prison chaplain - the study was planned to run for two weeks

Question 6

Zimbardo’s findings

Answer 6

• Both guards and prisoners settled quickly into their social roles
• After an initial rebellion was crushed, dehumanisation was increasingly apparent with the guards becoming more sadistic, taunting the prisoners and giving them meaningless and boring tasks to do, whilst they became more submissive and unquestioning of the guard’s behaviour
• Some prisoners sided with the guards against any prisoners who wanted to rebel
• Deindividuation was also noticeable in the prisoners referring to each other and themselves by their prison numbers instead of their names
• After 36 hours, prisoner #8612 was released due to fits of crying and rage over not being able to be released after requesting parole from Zimbardo after punishment for leading the initial rebellion and being in the ‘hole’ (solitary confinement)
• Three more prisoners developed similar symptoms and were released on successive days
• A fifth prisoner developed a severe rash after his parole was denied
• Scheduled to run for 14 days, the study was stopped after 6 when a colleague caused Zimbardo to realise the extent of the harm that was occurring and the increasingly aggressive nature of the guards behaviour
• The remaining prisoners were delighted at their good fortune, while the guards were upset - the dynamics between both the prisoners and guards and the guards themselves (one was a clear leader) showed obedience and conformity to social roles
• In later interviews, both guards and prisoners said they were surprised by the uncharacteristic behaviours they had shown

Question 7

Zimbardo’s conclusions

Answer 7

• The situational hypothesis is favoured over the dispositional hypothesis, as none of the participants had ever shown such character traits or behaviour before the study
• It was the environment of the mock prison and the social roles that the participants had to play that led to their uncharacteristic behaviour
• Individuals conform readily to the social roles demanded of the situation, even when such roles override an individuals moral beliefs about their personal behaviour
• Both guards and prisoners demonstrated social roles gained from media sources and learned models of social power

Question 8

Evaluation of the Stanford Prison Experiment - weaknesses

Answer 8

• Individual differences are important, as not all guards behaved brutally - some were hard but fair, and some were brutal, with others rarely exerting control over the prisoners; prisoner behaviour was not identical either
• Zimbardo hoped his research would lead to beneficial reforms within the prison system; beneficial reforms in the way prisoners were treated, particularly in juveniles, did initially occur - however, he regards his study as a failure in the sense that prison conditions in the US are now even worse than when he performed the study
• Unethical as it caused psychological harm and damage to people’s identity because of the abuse faced; it also caused long-lasting issues of disassociation and trauma from the abuse faced and emotional damage (it was so bad that ethical guidelines were changed after the study)
• Deceit - the participants had no idea what they would be subjected too, and were also told they could not leave, which further affected their behaviour and ability to distinguish real life from the experiment
• Researcher bias - Zimbardo became too involved and forgot his primary role of researching, aiding the brutal nature of the environment (he should of had a fellow researcher acting in one of his roles)
• Extraneous variables - gender, personality

Question 9

What is deindividuation?

Answer 9

A state in which individuals have lower self-awareness and a weaker sense of personal responsibility for their actions, which may result from the relative anonymity of being part of a crowd

Question 10

What is dehumanisation?

Answer 10

Degrading people by lessening their human qualities

Question 11

Evaluation of the research method - strengths

Answer 11

• Has been instrumental in understanding conformity to social roles and how different environments create behaviour
• Independent group design and random role allocation is a strength of the study design, as it was less time consuming and had no order effects, along with increasing validity due to the random nature of volunteer sampling (also ensured there was consent)
• There was also a preliminary survey to ensure participants were mentally sound, a controlled variable and a positive methodological choice
• Well controlled, had mundane realism, but this was also an issue for experimenter bias / over-involvement
• The volunteer nature also attracts a certain personality, so it is hard to generalise results to the whole population

Question 12

Evaluation of Zimbardo’s study - Strengths

Answer 12

1. Zimbardo argues that the same conformity to social roles effect from the SPE was also present in Abu Ghraib, a military prison in Iraq notorious for the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers in 2003-04 - he believed that the guards who committed the abuse of the victims of situational factors that made abuse more likely, such as unrelenting boredom, lack of training and no accountability to a higher authority, which were present in both situations, and these are combined with an opportunity to misuse the power associated with the assigned role of ‘guard’ led to prisoner abuse in both situations
   - This suggests that the findings of Zimbardo’s study on conformity to social roles have powerful external validity, and could be used to ensure such abuses do not recur
2. There was good control over variables e.g. the selection of participants - emotionally stable individuals were chosen and randomly assigned to the roles of the guard and prisoner, and this was a way to rule out individual personality differences as an explanation of findings. If guards and prisoners behaved differently, but their roles were assigned by chance, and so their behaviour must have been due to the pressures of the situation
   - This suggests that the study had strong methodological design to reduce extraneous variables along with good internal validity, as participants must have responded to the independent variable, improving our understanding of conformity to social roles
   - Also provides good reliability / replicability

Question 13

Evaluation of Zimbardo - Weaknesses

Answer 13

1. Researchers have argued that the behaviour produced was due to demand characteristics rather than a compelling prison environment. In one study, a large sample of participants who were unaware of the SPE were presented with some details of the experimental procedure - the vast majority of the students guessed the purpose of the experiment and they predicted the behaviour of the guards being hostile and dominant and the prisoners being passive accurately, and in addition to this some guards admitted to acting in accordance to stereotypes of their roles, as did the prisoners (riots)
   - Counterargument - However, Zimbardo presented quantitative data that suggested that the situation was real to the participants - for example, 90% of the conversations in the study were about prison life, with Prisoner 416 expressing that the prison was real, run by psychologists rather than the state
   - This suggests that the study lacks external validity as the results may have been affected by demand characteristics, and therefore limits our understanding of how people conform to social roles
2. Zimbardo has been accused of exaggerating the power of the situation to influence behaviour, and minimising the role of personality factors (dispositional influences) - for example, only a minority of guards behaved in a brutal manner, with another third being keen to apply rules fairly and the rest trying actively help and support the prisoners, sympathising with them and restoring privileges
   - This suggests the study may not have fairly tested the hypothesis, and had experimenter bias, and also lacked mundane realism and external validity