Zusammenfassung der Ressource
conformity to social roles
- social roles
- parts people play as members of social groups
- come with expectations of appropriate behaviour
- the extent to which we conform to expectations that others have
- research into conformity to social roles
- zimbardo
- aim
- to see if people would conform to given social roles
- prison guards and prisoners
- procedure
- mock prison in stanford uni's basement
- participants = volunteers that were deemed to be "emotionally stable"
- participants randomly assigned roles
- prisoners' routines regulated and decided by guards
- prisoners were arrested at their homes
- guards had their own weapon and uniform
- wore sunglasses
- hid identity
- allowed them to abuse their power without being recognised
- originally to run for 2 weeks, had to be stopped after 6 days
- results
- participants conformed to given social roles
- guards' behaviour became a threat to prisoners' physical and psychological health
- prisoners rebelled but became obedient after being subdued
- conclusion
- power of situation influenced people's behaviour
- evaluation
- :) high internal validity
- lab experiment
- control EVs
- establish cause and effect relationship
- :( ethical issues
- protection of participants
- participants were subject to psychological and physical harm
- must be a more ethical way to research conformity into social roles
- :( ecological validity
- unrealistic task
- most people will not be prison guards or prisoners
- none of the participants were prison guards or prisoners before either
- can't be applied to real life
- :) evidence to support
- abu ghraib
- US soldiers tormented iraqi prisoners during iraqi war
- electrocution
- having dogs bite them
- shows soldiers conformed to social roles
- further validity - was not an experiment
- :( evidence to contradict
- BBC prison study
- similar to zimbardo's study
- 15 men randomly allocated roles of prisoners or guards
- participants didn't conform to social roles
- treated each other respectfully
- not everyone conforms to social roles