Social Influence: conformity

Conformity to social roles

Phillip Zimbardo

Conformity to social roles: Stanford Prison Experiment

Stanford Prison Experiment

•This study was funded by the US Navy.

•The US Navy & the US Marine Corps were interested in investigating the causes of conflict between guards and prisoners in naval prisons.

Bad People Do Bad Things

•Prison life is horrible because of the people that are in prisons.

•It is not the prison environment that makes people aggressive and violent but the disposition of the people who live and work there: their personality.

•This is a dispositional hypothesis.

BUT….•Zimbardo argues

that the situation can have a major effect on individual behaviour.

•Zimbardo calls this the ‘power of the situation’.

AimAim: To find out if student participants would conform to the role they were given and behave like a prisoner or prison guard.

Conformity to social roles: Stanford Prison Experiment

ProcedureThe study is usually described as an experiment. IV: The roles the participants were randomly assigned: prisoner or guard.DV: The behaviour of the participants.

Conclusion•The prison environment was an

important factor in creating the guards brutal behavior.

•People will conform to the social roles they are expected to play.

•The role that people have in a situation has a significant effect on their behavior.

Stanford prison experiment

• Read p.12-13 and complete the key study table.

Evaluation: Strengths

• A controlled prison environment.

• High ecological validity.

• Evidence that many of the participants did believe that they were in a prison.

• Detailed qualitative data collected: film, audio recordings, observational records.

Evaluation: limitations

• A volunteer sample: may not be representative of the general population.

• Male, young, students.

• Lacks some ecological validity: could not fully recreate a prison.

• Zimbardo ignored individual differences in the guards behaviour: some of the guards were not aggressive.

Evaluation: limitations

• The experiment has been replicated but with very different findings.

• The BBC prison study found that the prison guards and prisoners did not conform to their roles.

• The prison guards did not behave aggressively.

• The prisoners worked together to take control of the prison.

Evaluation: ethical issues

• Zimbardo did not protect the participants from physical and psychological harm.

• Zimbardo took on the role of prison governor and actively encouraged the prison guards to do some of the things they did.

• Zimbardo only stopped the experiment after external intervention by another psychologist.

Evaluation: ethical issues• Zimbardo argues that:

• The experiment was approved by the ethics board of the Navy and Stanford University.

• Participants were fully informed and signed consent forms.

• The participants were fully debriefed.

• The findings were important.