Conformity of social roles
Identification
As stated at the top of this page, Identification occurs when a person conforms to the role that society expects them to play. As with compliance there does not have to be change in private opinion.
Zimbardo – Stanford Prison Experiment (not an experiment though :/)
In the exam, if it asks you for a description of the study, try to stick to the key details such as the way the guards were empowered by their dress (khaki uniform, dark glasses etc.), and the way the prisoners were humiliated by being strip searched. Here is a summarised description of the Zimbardo study:
Aims:
To look at the processes which motivate aggressive and submissive behaviour within a ‘total institution’ (e.g. a prison).
Participants:
24 male college students selected from a pool of 75 respondents. Self-selecting sampling method – advert placed in a newspaper asking for ‘Male college students for psychological study of prison life’ in return for $15 per day. Completed a range of self-report measures about family background, physical and mental health, prior experience, attitudes and propensity towards psychopathology • 22 students participated (two were on ‘stand-by’).
Method/Design:
Participants randomly allocated to role of ‘guard’ or ‘prisoner’. A Mock prison was created in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University with a cot as the only furniture for the prisoners’ cells and several rooms used as ‘guards’ quarters’ . ‘Prisoners’ remained in the mock prison for 24 hours per day. ‘Guards’ worked three-man, eight-hour shifts. The assigned task was to “maintain the reasonable degree of order within the prison necessary for its effective functioning”. Subjects in each group were administered uniforms.
Results:
Guards and prisoners went in to the study with some enthusiasm and a bit of awkwardness, but this quickly turned sour. The study planned to last for two weeks but stopped after six days due to negative behaviour.
Prisoner behaviour:
Prisoners who showed signs of ‘Pathological prisoner syndrome’ in which disbelief of the situation was followed by an attempt at rebellion and then by very negative emotions and behaviours such as apathy (lack of interest) and excessive obedience. Many showed signs of depression such as crying and some had fits of rage. Zimbardo put these effects down to deindividuation. This is when an individual suffers with a loss of personal identity and lack of control. One prisoner was withdrawn from the study due to having a mental breakdown on the first day of the study!
Guard behaviour:
The guards who conversely showed the ‘Pathology of power.’ Many abused their power refusing prisoner’s food and toilet visits, removing their bedding etc. Extreme punishment was handed out with little justification. For example, when a prisoner refused to eat, the guards attempted to force feed him and then put him in ‘the hole’ which was a tiny closet that was so small, you could only stand in it! Guards became aggressive and brutal very quickly. They humiliated prisoners by making them do push ups, putting bags over their heads and making them clean toilets with their bare hands! When prisoners rebelled, the guards reacted with extreme force. They got more guards on the scene and tried to turn the prisoners against each other to create a divide. Most notable was the way in which the ‘good guards’ never questioned the actions of the ‘bad guards.’ After the first day all prisoner rights became redefined as privileges, and all privileges were cancelled.https://www.youtube.com/embed/fQnOkmvigi0?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&start=12&wmode=transparent
Conclusions:
A situational explanation of behaviour – the prisoners’ and guards’ behaviour changed due to the roles that they had been assigned. The participants found them selves behaving as if they were in a prison, rather than a psychological study. Zimbardo believes that the study demonstrate the powerful effect roles can have on peoples’ behaviour. Basically the participants were playing the role that they thought was expected of, either a prisoner or prison guard. (It is in fact a simulation of what we expect prison life to be, rather than what it is, as none of the participants had previously been in prison as a guard or prisoner).
If you haven’t watched the film – I would highly recommend that you do!https://www.youtube.com/embed/7LviGTHud5w?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent
Evaluation
Strengths:
- Internal Validity – Control: Zimbardo did attempt to control for extraneous variables. For example, the selection process of the participants by ensuring that participants were emotionally stable and were randomly assigned to prisoner or guard. This is how they try to remove the effect of individual differences. Although this is quite difficult to achieve! It can be argued that the study has good internal validity because Zimbardo could be more sure that it was the situation that caused the behaviour.
- Ethics: Although there were clear issues with ethics, there were some positives. Consent was obtained in advance and participants were told the nature of the research! But, participants were not told that they would be arrested by real police officers and strip searched. Participants were clearly subjected to physical and psychological harm and There is still a debate as to whether the experiment should have been stopped sooner, which brings into question Zimbardo’s dual role as researcher and self appointed ‘prison governor.’ However, in defence of Zimbardo you can mention the therapeutic debrief given to all those who took part.
- Ecological validity: The experiment was a role play so it lacks realism with participants behaving as they think they should behave. However, there is evidence for the guards not just simply role playing, for example their brutal behaviour wasn’t there at the start but developed over the first few days and they did not play up to the cameras as might be expected. In fact their behaviour was worse when they knew they weren’t being observed. The participants were arrested by real police officers and this added to the experience of it being real!
Weaknesses:
- Validity: Zimbardo has since spoken out about the study and has admitted to becoming overinvolved in the research. He admitted to given instructions to the guards which may have led to the excessive brutality that they showed. In addition, Zimbardo was a participant in the study because he performed the role of the warden of the prisoner. He admitted that he himself suffered the effects of his social role. This means that he compromised the study, because the situation may not have occurred without his involvement.
- Research that opposes: Reicher and Haslam replicated Zimbardo’s research by randomly assigning 15 men to the role of prisoner or guard. In this replication, the participants did not conform to their social roles automatically. For example, the guards did not identify with their status and refused to impose their authority; the prisoners identified as a group to challenge the guard’s authority, which resulted in a shift of power and a collapse of the prison system. These results clearly contradict the findings of Zimbardo and suggest that conformity to social roles may not automatic, as Zimbardo originally implied. This study supported a theory called social identity theory. This is the idea that the guards failed to develop a shared identity as a cohesive group, but the prisoners did. Have you heard of the term ‘divide and conquer’? This is what happened! If you see that a group is disagreeing, it is much easier to over power that group!
- Cause and Effect: Zimbardo may have placed too much emphasis on the situational factors and not enough attention to the dispositional. For example only a minority of the guards behaved in a brutal manner. The rest tried to support the prisoners and sympathised with them. Therefore it makes it difficult for Zimbardo to assume that the situation was the only cause of behaviour.
- Ethics: The right to withdraw was denied to one participant for a short time: “Less than 36 hours into the experiment, Prisoner #8612 began suffering from acute emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, uncontrollable crying, and rage. In spite of all of this, we had already come to think so much like prison authorities that we thought he was trying to “con” us — to fool us into releasing him.” “When our primary prison consultant interviewed Prisoner #8612, the consultant said that he was weak, and told him what kind of abuse he could expect from the guards and the prisoners if he were in San Quentin Prison. There were many issues mainly surrounding the problem with causing psychological and physical harm.
CGS Psychology Blog: Mrs Harris 