Zimbardo - conformity to social roles

Zimbardo - conformity to social roles

1. Aim

   • to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life (situational hypothesis)

2. Procedure

   • Advertised for male undergraduate students at Stanford University to take part in a 'psychological study of prison life
   • He received 75 applicants and to get it down to 24 he conducted a battery of psychological tests
   • Participants were randomly allocated the role of a guard or prisoner by a flip of a coin
   • The prison simulation was kept as 'real life' as possible, this included: routine counts, bars on the doors, the hole, parole board, guards choosing their uniform and helping to design the prison and prisoners being arrested at their homes.

3. Findings

   • Within a very short time both guards and prisoners were settling into their new roles, guards were stern and prisoners became withdrawn.
   • Prisoner #8612 had to be released after 36 hours as he was showing signs of psychological harm
   • Zimbardo has intended for the experiment to last for 2 weeks, but it was ended after just 6 days
   • He later noted that 'It wasn't until much later that I realised how far into my prison role I was, I was transformed, I had become part of the experiment.'.

4. Evaluation

   • High internal validity - he had a lot of control
   • Underestimated dispositional factors
   • Carnahan and McFarland
   • Lacked realism
   • Abu Ghraib - revealed convincing parallels

5. Conclusion

   • Findings support the situational explanation of behaviour rather than the dispositional hypothesis
   • Zimbardo suggested that deindivdualisation explains the quick adaption of social roles, prisoners were stripped of their identity and guards wore a uniform. They didn't have any of themselves left going into the experiment.