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CONFORMITY TO SOCIAL ROLES: ZIMBARDO'S RESEARCH - Coggle Diagram
CONFORMITY TO SOCIAL ROLES: ZIMBARDO'S RESEARCH
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THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT (SPE)
Procedure
Zimbardo and his colleagues set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University to test whether the brutality of prison guards was the result of sadistic personalities or whether it was created by the situation
They recruited 24 'emotionally stable' students determined by psychological testing - randomly assigned roles or guards and prisoners
To increase realism, 'prisoners' were arrested in their homes and delivered to the 'prison' - blindfolded, strip-searched, deloused and issued a uniform + number
The prisoners' daily routines were heavily regulated. There were 16 rules to follow, enforced by guards working in shifts, three at a time
De-individuation (losing a sense of personal identity):
Prisoners' names were never used, only their numbers
Guards had their own uniform - wooden club, handcuffs, keys and mirror shades. They were told that they had complete power over the prisoners, for instance deciding when they could go to the toilet
Findings
Dehumanisation occurred = guards taunted prisoners by walking them at night to carry out demmanding jobs e.g. cleaning toilets with bare hands
Guards = more abusive
Prisoners = submissive + didn't question guards behaviour
Some prisoners sided with the guards against the other prisoners who rebelled
Prisoners + guards settled into their roles
Prisoners referred to each other by their prison ID's instead of their actual names + de-individuation was apparent
5 prisoners = released early because of extreme behaviours e.g. crying, anxiety, rage
Study stopped after 6 days because of the harm being caused by the aggressive behaviour of the guards + submissive behaviour of the prisoners
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RESEARCHERS HAD SOME CONTROL OVER VARIABLES
The guards + prisoners had those roles only by chance. So their behaviour was due to the pressures of the situation and not their personalities
Control increases the study's internal validity. We can be more confident in drawing conclusions about the influences of social roles on behaviour
Emotionally stable participants were recruited + randomly assigned the roles of guard or prisoner
REAL WORLD APPLICATION
Additionally, Conditions have improved primarily in young offending situations which means they promote human values rather than destroy them
In 2003, the events in the Abu Ghraib prison saw American soldiers partake in the torture + even murder of some prisoners
This provides evidene for Zimbardo's claim that good people do bad things when assigned a role seemingly calling for these things to be done
LACK OF REALISM
One guard based his role on a character from the film Cool Hand Luke. Prisoners rioted because they thought that is what real prisoners did
But Zimbardo's data showed
90% of the prisoners'
conversations were about prison life. The simulation seemed real to them, increasing the study's internal validity
Banuazizi + Mohavedi (1975)
suggest participants were play-acting. Their performances reflected stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave
MAJOR ETHICAL ISSUES
A student who wanted to leave the study spoke to Zimbardo, who responded as a superintendent worried about the running of his prison rather than a researcher
This limited Zimbardo's ability to protect his participants from harm because his superintendent role conflicted with his lead researcher role
One issue arose because Zimbardo was both lead researcher + prison superintendent