Social Influence: Conformity To Social Roles

Question 1

What are social roles?

Answer 1

The parts people play as members of various social groups. These are accompanied by expectations we and
others have of what is appropriate behaviour in each role (e.g. policeman, professional)

Question 2

What was Zimbardo’s aim of the Stanford Prison experiment (1973)

Answer 2

Police brutality reports throughout America in 1960s, Zimbardo wanted to answer the question Do prison guards behave brutally because they have sadistic personalities, or is it the situation that creates such behaviour, and if good people conform to become bad?

Question 3

Describe and explain Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment (1973)

Answer 3

24 healthy male uni students volunteer sampling, study into ‘prison life’, randomly allocated to either a ‘prisoner’ or ‘guard’. $15 a day in a mock prison. ‘Prisoners’ were arrested in their homes, taken to the police station, booked and taken to ‘prison’. Guards were allowed to make the rules and harassed prisoners with a lack of privacy, comfort, and degrading chores such as night counts. Acts derived from scripts.

Question 4

What were the findings from Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment (1973)?

Answer 4

Experiment started slowly but guards soon changed their behaviour. Their behaviour became a threat to the prisoners’ psychological and physical health. Study was stopped after 6 days instead of 14 due to ethical concerns. Guards employed ‘divide and rule’ tactics by playing the prisoners off against each other. Enforced rules and punish small misdemeanours. Guards were authoritarian, prisoners submissive. Even Zimbardo acted like the prison was real. The prisoners showed signs of mental breakdown, however none of them showed long term suffering as they were later debriefed.

Question 5

Evaluations of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment (1973)

Answer 5

Positive: Real world application as it demonstrates how easily individuals conform to assigned social roles, highlighting the power of situational forces to shape behavior. From 2003- 2004, the US Army Military police personnel committed series human rights violations against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Prisoners were tortured, physically and sexually abused, routinely humiliated and some were murdered. One of the torture culprits said that she was only doing so as her husband told her to, which suggests conformity to social roles.

Zimbardo and his colleagues had some control over variables. Seen in the selection of participants, emotionally stable individuals were chosen and randomly assigned to the roles of guards and prisoners. Behaviour must have been due to the pressure of the situation as they were randomly assigned. Increases the internal validity of the study, and cause and effect can be drawn.

Negative: Serious ethical issues. Participants didn’t give informed consent, they were humiliated. Do the ends justify the means? Prisoners became subdued, depressed and anxious. Some prisoners showed psychological disturbance.

Question 6

What can we conclude from Zimabrdo’s Stanford Prison experiment (1973)?

Answer 6

Guards and prisoners adopted their social roles quickly. Zimbardo claims this shows that our social role can influence our behaviour. Seemingly, well-balanced men became unpleasant and aggressive in the role of guard