Psychology AS: Social Influence Revision

Conformity To Social Roles

Key Study: Stanford Prison Experiment/ Zimbardo (1971)

Aim: To investigate whether or not people will conform to social roles.

Procedure:

-21 male students volunteered in response to a newspaper article and were selected on the basis of stable, mental health. They were paid $15 a day to take part.

-Participants were randomly assigned to 'prisoner' or 'guard' and taken to a mock prison in the basement of the Psychology Dept. at Stanford University.

-Guards were given military style uniforms to wear with reflective sunglasses to avoid eye contact with the prisoners and prisoners were dressed in smocks with no underwear.

Findings:

-Prisoners and guards quickly identified with their social roles and within days, prisoners rebelled but this was quickly crushed by the guards who grew increasingly abusive towards prisoners.

-Guards dehumanised prisoners, waking them up in the middle of the night to force them to clean the toilets with their bare hands and prisoners become increasingly submissive.

-The study was meant to last 14 days but was stopped after 6 days.

Conclusions: People will conform to social roles, even when it defies their moral beliefs and Zimbardo concluded that this could lead to people doing evil things.

Evaluation of Stanford Prison Experiment:

A limitation is that the study is unethical. Although Zimbardo obtained approval from the ethical committee and participants were aware of the nature of the research, it could be argued they were exposed to more stress than they would encounter in everyday life. Furthermore, following prisoner 8612's request to leave the study, Zimbardo (acting as the role of the superintendent) encouraged him to stay by offering protection from the guards in exchange for information. This made the prisoner believe that he could not leave the study meaning his right to withdraw was not made clear. Therefore there were clear breaches of ethical guidelines (despite there not being any) and it could be argued that the study should have not been conducted.

A strength of this research is that it can help us understand real life events. Abu Ghraib was a military prison in Iraq which was notorious for the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. Zimbardo suggested the guards were victims of situational factors that made the abuse more likely. He said that boredom, lack of training and accountability were all present in both Abu Ghraib and the Stanford Prison experiment. These factors combines with conformity to the role of the guard can explain what happened at Abu Ghraib and Stanford.

Therefore, a further strength is that the findings of Zimbardo's study is that it has real life applications. Zimbardo's study is now used in the training of naval officers to warn them about the dangers of blindly conforming to social roles and how this could lead to abuses of power. This is a strength because it can reduce the chance of prisoner abuse in situations similar to Abu Ghraib therefore guards and officers know how to act and are unlikely to dehumanise and abuse prisoners.

A limitation is that all participants were male American students. This means that the sample is unrepresentative because students may behave differently to older adults and females in the same situation. This is a problem as the sample limits the extend to which the findings can be generalised to explain conformity to social roles in other groups of people (decreased population validity).