Zimbardo - identification

Question 1

Background - Zimbardo

Answer 1

1. Italian immigrant family
2. Went to high school with Milgram
3. Professor at stanford university
4. President of american psychological association

Question 2

Background - extending the social influence paradigm

Answer 2

1. Zimbardo wanted to conduct a more dynamic study that Asch or Milgram
2. More participants
3. More interaction
4. More time
5. Despite Asch and Milgram, psychologists and the public still believed it was a personality such as authoritarianism
6. “Bad apple” hypothesis - bad people
7. “Bad barrel” hypothesis - normal people in bad situations
8. “Bad apples make bad barrels” hypothesis - bad people create bad situations

Question 3

Background - social context

Answer 3

1. US prisons
2. Public concern about prisons in early 70s
3. Specifically related to civil rights cases
4. Mass beatings and abuse by guards
5. Sanctioned by prison authorities

Question 4

The study - participants

Answer 4

1. recruitment through newspaper ad
2. male student volunteers
   told it was a study of prison life
3. Reimbursement - $15 a day
4. N=70, screened for psychological problems, disabilities, history of crime or drug abuse
5. N=18 (+6) healthy, intelligent, middle class males
6. This demographic as they are supposedly “good apples”
7. Random assignment to prisoners and guards
8. Arrested at home, charged, identified at real police station before transfer to stanford prison

Question 5

The study - the prison

Answer 5

1. Basement of uni building
2. Turned into prison with the help of an ex prisoner
3. Cells with steel bars and cell numbers
4. The hole - solitary confinement cell (2ft x 2ft x 7ft)
5. Secret cameras and intercom
6. No windows or clocks

Question 6

The study

Answer 6

1. Day 1 - humiliation with a strip search, dress uniform with ID number, only referred to by ID, law enforcement with guards wearing uniform and sunglasses and were free to make up their own rules on how to do their job, asserting authority by doing counts during the day, push ups given as punishment for the prisoners
2. Day 2 - rebellion by prisoners barricading themselves into cells with the beds, solitary confinement for the ringleader, breaking solidarity by giving privileges for better behaved prisoners and to bad guys to raise suspicion on who is with the guards
3. Day 3 - first release, one participant had an acute emotional disturbance, groomed prisoners are allowed to meet family and friends, mass escape plot of people from outside breaking them out, leads zimbardo to try to foil the plot by moving the prisoners, payback with harassment and humiliation
4. Day 4 - visit from a priest who offers to get legal help, release of further prisoner
5. Day 5 - parole board, stand in prisoner goes on hunger strike
6. Day 6 - parents send lawyers, experiment is stopped, zimbardo’s wife comes in and says it needs to stop

Question 7

Observations

Answer 7

1. “We did not have to teach the actors how to play their roles” - Zimbardo
2. “Guard aggression … was emitted simply as a natural consequence of being in the uniform of a “guard” and asserting the power inherent in that role” - Zimbardo
3. Powerful roles corrupt normal people into committing inhumane acts of evil

Question 8

Conclusions

Answer 8

1. Negative view of the group - loss of personal identity and moral standards through deindividuation
2. Corrupting nature of power and groups to act tyrannically
3. Loss of capacity for intellectual and moral judgements in groups
4. “The question now is how to change our institutions so they promote human values rather than destroy them”

Question 9

Debate and controversy - ethical considerations

Answer 9

1. Right to withdraw from the study - technically had the right but were told they couldn’t
2. Distress to participants and parents

Question 10

Debate and controversy - questioning the empirical account

Answer 10

1. Did the guards succumb blindly to their role?
2. Zimbardo’s briefing “you can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree… their life is controlled by us”
3. Bartels - experimental comparison of stanford orientation (Script for guards in original study) and found that exposure to this script increased expectations of hostility and oppressive behaviour from investigators, guards and themselves
4. Haslam, Reicher and Van Bavel - SPE archive material indicates identity leadership rather than role conformity, encouragement of guards to identify with the noble in group, creation of a belief that cruel actions are necessary
5. Zimbardo & Hanley - response in american psychologist, acknowledges the different interpretations of why cruelty by guards occurred (role conformity or identity leadership)
6. Blum - were participants just conforming to the demands of the experimenters or behaving naturally - prisoner who was released early for mental breakdown said he acted because he wanted to get out
7. Normal college students as participants - Carnahan and McFarland used a similar newspaper ad and found that those who volunteered were more socially dominant, higher in aggression and more narcissistic than would be expected in a normal population

Question 11

Debate and controversy - questioning the theoretical account

Answer 11

1. Testing alternatives to the “role” account - self categorisation theory suggests that people do not passively accept roles but only do so after they have internalised them as an aspect of their social identity
2. Social groups can have both positive and negative consequences for the individual

Question 12

Debate and controversy - questioning the moral account

Answer 12

Accountability for abuse - if not the person but the situation, then prison as an environment is called into question, cannot be held accountable for abuse when in power and for not resisting abuse when not in power

Question 13

Debate and controversy - empirical quality

Answer 13

Findings were never published in mainstream peer-review academic journal so data cant be scrutinised

Question 14

debate and controversy - theoretical contributions

Answer 14

1. How does tyranny evolve
2. Complexity of evi

Question 15

BBC prison experiment

Answer 15

1. Haslam and Reicher - tested the social identity account
   Studying tyranny and resistance
2. Participants - 15 decent men out of 322 screened - 5 guards 10 prisoners
3. Methods - differential in status and power, planned interventions
   Found guards reduce identification with the role
4. Prisoners increase, revolt
   Were being filmed on tv
5. No evidence that guards blindly conform to role
6. Zimbardo criticised that it was more a game and not scientific

Question 16

Impact and legacy

Answer 16

1. Prisons have become even more punitive and destructive
2. Public consciousness - SPE has had more impact on public than any other single piece of research
3. Accountability