Outline and evaluate Zimbardo's study (8) Flashcards
outline
24 male student participants were randomly allocated to the role of prisoner or guard and given clothing and experiences that removed their personal identity.
For example, guards wore uniforms, mirrored glasses and carried truncheons.
- Prisoners were arrested and dressed in degrading smock uniforms whilst being referred to as a number whilst having to follow rules enforced by the guards.
The guards were instructed to keep prisoners under control without physical violence and were told they had complete control over the prisoners, even deciding when they could go to the toilet.
Both the prisoners and guards quickly conformed to their social roles; guards becoming aggressive and psychologically harming prisoners through public humiliation and physically harming them by depriving them of sleep.
After 2 days, prisoners started to rebel by ripping their uniforms and shouting at the guards.
- Many showed signs of distress after the rebellion was stopped as they became passive and depressed.
The experiment was stopped after 6 days instead of 14 due to the extreme distress. Zimbardo’s study showed evidence that we conform to social roles as well as identification with participants changing behaviour to show membership to the prisoner or guard group.
They displayed a public and private change in their behaviour only whilst they identified with the group (duration of experiment).
strength
A strength of Zimbardo’s study is that it had high control over extraneous variables which is when the procedure doesn’t include uncontrolled variables that could randomly or systematically affect the DV, lowering internal validity.
This is because Zimbardo chose only emotionally stable participants to take part who were randomly allocated to the role of prisoner or guard.
This increases internal validity as the prisoners and guards behaved very differently but were assigned to these roles by chance so, behaviour was a result of pressures of the situation they were in rather than personalities.
limit
A limitation of Zimbardo’s research however is that there were several ethical issues with the study, including psychological harm and the right to withdraw.
This was due to the dual role Zimbardo undertook as both the head researcher and prison superintendent.
For example, when a participant wanted to leave, he responded as a prison superintendent who was worried about the running of his prison rather than as a researcher who had responsibilities towards his participants.
This limited Zimbardo’s ability to protect his participants from harm because his role as the superintendent conflicted with his role as the head researcher.
