conformity to social roles: Zimbardo's research

conformity to social roles: Zimbardo's research

1. the Stanford prison experiment

   • do prison guards act brutally due to their personality or the situation?
     • procedure
       • basement of the psychology department at Stanford university
       • volunteer sample
       • psychological tests - emotionally stable
       • randomly assigned the roles
       • prisoners
         • arrested at home
         • wore uniform - included number
       • guards
         • uniform - handcuffs, club, keys, mirror shades
         • complete power over prisoners
     • findings
       • started slowly
       • lasted 6 days instead of 14
       • prisoners rebelled so guards fought back
         • harassed prisoners, frequent head counts, had to say their number
           • more brutal as time went on
             • enjoying the power
     • conclusions
       • people re influenced by situations
         • everyone conformed

2. evaluation

   • control
     • full control over the variable
       • full control over who was picked (emotionally stable)
         • tried to rule out individual personality differences
     • so high internal validity
   • lack of realism
     • Banuazizi & Mohavedi
       • participants were acting roles
         • based on stereotypes
           • one of the guards claimed to act like a character form cool hand luke
     • however
       • Zimbardo found 90% of conversation were abut prison
   • role of dispositional influences
     • Fromm
       • Zimbardo exaggerated results
         • 1/3 of guards were brutal
         • 1/3 stuck to the rules
         • 1/3 helped the prisoners

3. evaluation +

   • lack of research support
     • Reicher & Haslam
       • recreated the experiment
         • very different results
           • prisoners took control as they shared social identity
   • ethical issues
     • major issue
       • psychological and physical harm
         • wouldn't let people leave more bothered about results