Conformity to social roles (booklet 2) Flashcards
(23 cards)
Social roles
A pattern of behaviour expected of a person in a group or setting
De-individuation
A state where a person has a lower self awareness and a weaker sense of responsibility due to the anonymity of being in a large group
Sadistic behaviour
Cruel, vicious, inhuman aggression towards others
Dehumanisation
Degrading and humiliating other people by reducing their human qualities
Why did Zimbardo conduct his prison study?
To understand the brutal and dehumanising behaviour in American prisons
He wanted to test the two explanations (dispositional and situational) that had been proposed
Define and describe the dispositional hypothesis
Dispositional= a person’s character
Argued that the prison brutality and violence was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards and prisoners
Define and describe the situational hypothesis
Situation= the environment’s conditions
Argued that the prison’s brutality and violence was due to the harsh conditions of the prison environment
What was the aim of Zimbardo’s study?
To investigate if people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role playing exercise in a mock prison
Describe Zimbardo’s procedure
Stamford University basement converted to mock prison
Students responded to ads in the newspaper asking them to play role of guard/prisoner for 2 weeks
Sample was 21 male college students - payed
Vetted beforehand using psychological screening to prevent violent people being involved
Random allocation used to assign participants to prisoner or guard
Prisoners treated like criminals- arrested at home, taken to police station, blindfolded, finger printed, stripped, personal possessions locked away, provided with a uniform and referred to as a number
Describe Zimbardo’s findings
Within hours guards began harassing prisoners
Behaved brutally and sadistically
Some prisoners turned against each other
The more submissive and dependent prisoners were, more hostile and aggressive guards became
Experiment ended early as became unsafe
What was Zimbardo’s conclusion?
Concluded ‘evil’ behaviour was due to the situation
In other words good people do bad things when placed in a brutal environment
Which sampling technique was used by Zimbardo?
Volunteer sampling- an advert was placed in university newspaper
Evaluate Zimbardo’s sampling technique
All P’s willing to take part, won’t feel coerced in any way
Volunteer bias- the people who volunteered may not represent target population
Explain why participants weee randomly allocated to their role (guard/prisoner)
To reduce researcher bias
Would prevent other factors eg personality affecting why the roles behaved a certain way
How did Zimbardo ensure his participants were ‘normal law abiding people’ with no tendency to brutal cruelty?
Participants were vetted before hand- given psychological tests
Only the mentally healthy and emotionally stable were selected for the study
Is Zimbardo’s study valid? Explain
Lacks ecological validity
Artificial setting (Stamford University) so findings can’t be generalised to guard and prisoner behaviour in real prison settings
What was Zimbardo’s role in the study?
Prison superintendent and lead researcher
Roles were incompatible which compromised his judgment
Prevented him seeing participant’s distress, prolonging their suffering
When did the experiment stop and why?
After 6 days
Zimbardo’s colleague visited
Told him the study had to stop due to participants severe distresss
Why were critics not satisfied with Zimbardo’s claim that his study showed important findings about human behaviour?
Critics argued participants were showing demand characteristics
Many guards expressed they wouldn’t actually behave this way in a similar situation
Participants based their behaviour on a brutal film popular at the time
What did Reicher et al (2006) find in their replication of Zimbardo’s study?
Prisoners didn’t conform to their roles
Guards were challenged but eventually took control
Guards were uncomfortable with their roles- didn’t identify with the power and authority over the prisoners
Guards failed to form a group identity
Could be explained by Tajfel’s (1981) identity theory- guards brutality in Zimbardo’s study was due to shared social group identity rather than conformity to social roles
How can Zimbardo’s study be applied to real life?
Changed way prisons run in America
Youths accused of crime no longer housed with prisoners before trial due to fear of aggressive acts towards them
Specialist recruitment and training procedures for guards
Realisation of importance of ethical guidelines in psychological studies- creation of ethics committees
What ethical issues were apparent in Zimbardo’s study?
Informed consent
Right to withdraw
Protection from psychological harm
Privacy
How could ethnocentrism have affected the results of Zimbardo’s study?
Findings may only be applicable to individualist cultures, may be different in collectivist cultures
