Conformity to Social Roles: Zimbardo (AQA A Level Psychology)

Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment

• Zimbardo's (1973) famous (some would say infamous) study used the idea that people will conform to social roles if they are assigned a distinct social identity

  • The social identity of a teacher requires someone to dress smartly, reinforce school rules and procedures and be assertive

  • The social identity of a nurse requires someone to wear the appropriate uniform, attend to medical tasks and have a caring demeanour

• Zimbardo wanted to investigate how readily people would conform to the assigned social roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life

• Zimbardo et.al. (1973) converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison

• The study proceeded as follows:

  • 24 male students were recruited via volunteer/self-selected sampling

    • The participants were tested for psychiatric vulnerabilities and were deemed 'emotionally stable'

  • The participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard

  • The 'prisoners' were 'arrested' in the early hours of the morning at their homes and taken off to the 'prison' (they were unaware that this was going to happen)

  • Prisoners and guards were encouraged to conform to their social roles which was reinforced by the uniforms which were as follows:

    • the guards wore a standard khaki uniform with mirrored shades and each of them carried a nightstick, keys and handcuffs

    • the prisoners wore a shapeless smock with a sock cap covering their heads and no shoes

  • The guards were instructed to set prison rules, hand out punishments (although physical punishments were not allowed) and control the prisoners (e.g. deciding who could go to the toilet, when they could exercise etc.)

  • The prisoners were referred to by their assigned number rather than their name

  • The uniforms were designed to erode personal identity and to emphasise each participant's social role (a process known as deindividuation)

• The study's findings are as follows:

  • Both guards and prisoners settled into their new roles very quickly

  • The guards adopted their social role quickly, easily and with enthusiasm

  • Within hours of beginning the experiment, some guards began to harass prisoners and treat them harshly

  • Two days into the experiment the prisoners rebelled by ripping their uniforms and shouting and swearing at guards

  • The guards employed an array of tactics to bring the prisoners into line:

    • they used fire extinguishers to bring the prisoners to order

    • they used psychological warfare, harnessing the 'divide-and-rule' principle by playing prisoners off against each other

    • they instigated headcounts, sometimes at night, by blowing a whistle loudly at the prisoners

    • punishments were meted out for the slightest transgression

  • The prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behaviour, e.g.:

    • they became quiet, depressed, obedient and subdued

    • some of them became informants, 'snitching' to the guards about other prisoners

    • they referred to themselves by number rather than by name

    • one prisoner had a mental breakdown to the extent that Zimbardo had to remind the participants that the prison was not a real prison

  • As the prisoners became more submissive, the guards became more aggressive and abusive

  • A colleague of Zimbardo's visited the study and was horrified at the abuse and exploitation she saw

  • Zimbardo ended the experiment after six days instead of the 14 originally planned

• Zimbardo came to various conclusions as a result of running the study:

  • Social roles exert a strong influence on individual identity

  • Power corrupts those who wield it, particularly if environmental factors legitimise this corruption of power

  • Harsh institutions brutalise people and result in deindividuation (for both guards and prisoners)

  • A prison exerts psychological damage upon both those who work there and those who are incarcerated there

Evaluation of Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment

Strengths

• A good degree of control was exerted over the procedure:

  • The 'vetting' of participants to factor out prior psychiatric conditions

  • The random allocation to role

    • both of the above measures ensured that individual differences did not confound the results e.g. it was pure chance who ended up as prisoner or guard

• The study may have genuine mundane realism (which is rare for an experiment)

  • 90% of the prisoners’ private conversations revolved around prison life

  • The guards talked about ‘problem prisoners,’ or other prison topics on their breaks; they never discussed home life or other topics

Limitations

• The study is (rightly) known for its atrocious ethics

  • Informed consent did not cover all aspects of what the participants could expect about the procedure (e.g. the arrests at night)

  • The right to withdraw was given but the routines and mechanisms of the prison world set up by Zimbardo made this difficult for all involved

  • Protection from harm was almost absent:

    • Zimbardo actively encouraged the guards to be cruel and oppressive prior to the start of the study

    • the prisoners suffered in their role, both physically and psychologically

    • the guards had to live with the knowledge of their potential for brutality after the study was over and the prisoners may have suffered PTSD as a result of their experience

• Some, or possibly all, of the participants, may have been acting according to demand characteristics

  • The participants may have been able to guess the aim and behaved accordingly e.g. 'I am a guard therefore I must behave brutally'

  • If the participants were playing out expected roles then this lowers the validity of the findings (e.g. the prisoner who appeared to be having a mental breakdown immediately snapped out of it when Zimbardo reminded him that the prison wasn't real)