Zimbardo: Conformity to social roles Flashcards
(11 cards)
Social roles definition
Social roles is a socially defined pattern of behaviour that is expected of someone occupying a certain social position or belonging to a certain social category
Conformity to social roles
-Conformity to social roles in when an individual adopts beliefs and behaviours that are associated with their particular social position or category
-This involves a change in public behaviour but not necessarily private behaviour; for example, a police officer may be harsh and strict while working, but kind and care free when at home
-Social roles provide a social identity (individual’s sense of who they are) therefore people feel a stronger connection to the group
Reasons that Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison experiment
Zimbardo was concerned about the violence in US prisons
-He suggested that the violence was not a result of dispositional factors (personalities of prisoners or guards) but that it was the results of the prison environment and the conformity to social roles that it caused
-Therefore Zimbardo (1971) designed the Stanford prison experiment to investigate conformity to social roles
Aims of the Stanford Prison Experiment
-The aim of the Stanford prison experiment was to test the psychological effects of situational factors by observing how healthy, typical individuals conformed to social roles of guards (oppressive) and prisoners (submissive)
Zimbardo (1951) Process
Zimbardo’s (1951) Prison experiment was an observational study including 24 male college students who had volunteered for a 7-14 day experiment paying 15 dollars an hour from an ad in the newspaper
-These participants were psychologically screened to make sure they were healthy and stable before randomly assigning them to the role of either prisoner or guard
-Prisoners experienced unexpected arrests at home, were deloused, given prison uniforms and ID numbers, and three prisoners were placed into each small mock prison cell
-Guards were given uniforms, whistles, batons, and reflective sunglasses to establish authority. They were instructed to manage the prison without harming the prisoners. The guard worked in groups of three for 8 hour shifts; after their shifts they were permitted to leave the site
-Zimbardo oversaw the investigation in his joint role as chief prison superintendent and lead investigator
Findings of Zimbardos prison study
-Zimbardo found that prisoners quickly lost their sense of personal identity and conformed to the social roles assigned to them:
-The prisoners, after an initial failed attempt at resistance, showed signs of stress, anxiety, and submissiveness; some participants had to be removed from the study early due to emotional breakdowns
-Guards displayed sadistically aggressive and abusive behaviour, and were very domineering
-The study had to be halted after just six days due to the ethical concerns raised by the intense reactions
Conclusions of Zimbardo’s study
-The results of Zimbardo’s study suggest that situational factors, rather than dispositional factors influence behaviour, as people who were considered healthy and normal before the experiment, engaged in abusive or submissive behaviour as a result of social roles assigned and the prison environment
Positive evaluation of Zimbardos prison study (initial set up highly controlled)
-An advantage of Zimbardo’s prison experiment is that the initial set up was highly controlled
-Zimbardo carefully selected the participants through psychological screening to make sure that they were healthy, psychologically stable, and had no criminal history. Additionally, the roles of guard or prisoner was randomly assigned to prisoners
-These controls reduce the likelihood of participant variables
Positive evaluation of Zimbardo’s prison study (practical appliaction)
Zimbardo’s findings on how situation factors influence human behaviour has led to practical applications; for example an increase in training for military and law enforcement officers to prevent abuse
Negative research evaluation of Zimbardo’s prison study (Reicher and Haslam)
-Reicher and Haslam replicated the Stanford Prison Experiment for a BBC documentary and found that participants did not instantly conform to their assigned social roles and resisted behaviour that was conflicted with their personal identities
-The results of this study and that fact that only one third of participants in the original stanford prison experiment displayed sadistic aggressive behaviour, suggests that social roles have a limited influence on human behaviour and that individuals have agency over their actions
Negative evaluation of Zimbardo’s prison study
-Zimbardo had a dual role in the experiment as both the chief prison superintendent and the lead investigator, this dual role could’ve led to experimenter bias, as the presence of Zimbardo may have influenced participants to act in a certain way, furthering the expectations of the experiments
-Demand characteristics were also likely to occur, with prisoners altering their behaviour to try and match the research expectations of Zimbardo
