conformity to social roles: Zimbardo's research

the Stanford prison experiment
1. do prison guards act brutally due to their personality or the situation?
  1. procedure
    1. basement of the psychology department at Stanford university
    2. volunteer sample
    3. psychological tests - emotionally stable
    4. randomly assigned the roles
    5. prisoners
      1. arrested at home
      2. wore uniform - included number
    6. guards
      1. uniform - handcuffs, club, keys, mirror shades
      2. complete power over prisoners
  2. findings
    1. started slowly
    2. lasted 6 days instead of 14
    3. prisoners rebelled so guards fought back
      1. harassed prisoners, frequent head counts, had to say their number
        more brutal as time went on
        enjoying the power
  3. conclusions
    1. people re influenced by situations
      1. everyone conformed
evaluation
1. control
  1. full control over the variable
    1. full control over who was picked (emotionally stable)
      1. tried to rule out individual personality differences
  2. so high internal validity
2. lack of realism
  1. Banuazizi & Mohavedi
    1. participants were acting roles
      1. based on stereotypes
        one of the guards claimed to act like a character form cool hand luke
  2. however
    1. Zimbardo found 90% of conversation were abut prison
3. role of dispositional influences
  1. Fromm
    1. Zimbardo exaggerated results
      1. 1/3 of guards were brutal
      2. 1/3 stuck to the rules
      3. 1/3 helped the prisoners
evaluation +
1. lack of research support
  1. Reicher & Haslam
    1. recreated the experiment
      1. very different results
        prisoners took control as they shared social identity
2. ethical issues
  1. major issue
    1. psychological and physical harm
      1. wouldn't let people leave more bothered about results

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conformity to social roles: Zimbardo's research

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	Created by Daisy U about 8 years ago