Conformity to social roles

Key example of conformity taking place through identificaiton with "social roles" - prisoners and officers. All have expected behaviours from role itself + how people would be expected to respond to them.

Original aim to understand why brutal + dehumanising behaviour occured in prisons. Z testing 2 possible explanations:
 - dispositional hypthesis -  suggested due to guards + prisoners being "bad seeds" with sadistic, aggressive tendencies
 - whether due to situational hypothesis - suggested behaviour due to prison setting itself + roles imposed which suported the behaviour

Recruited 75 male university students - responded to newspaper ad asking volunteers for a study investigating prison life, paying $15/day. Basement of Stanford converted into mock prison + schedule to last 2 weeks.

21 students assessed being mentally + physically stable with no criminal tendencies chosen - 11 prisoners, 10 guards (random allocation).

Prisoners arrested by real police officers at home + given prison uniform w/ designated ID number. Only referred to by numbers + chained around 1 ankle.

Guards - khaki uniforms, reflective sunglasses (no eye contact) + issued handcuffs, truncheons + keys.

Prisoners allowed certain rights eg 3 meals/day + 3 supervised visits to toilet. Allowed to be visited twice per week.

Each cell allocated 3 prisoners from total 9.

Prisoners + guards settled into roles - guards more abusive + tyrannical. Apparent dehumanisation w/ guards taunting prisoners + waking them at night to carry out demeaning jobs eg cleaning toilets w/ bare hands. Some guards volunteered for extra hours w/o pay.

Prisoners became submissive + didn't q guards behaviours - some sided w/ guards against other prisoners who revelled. Prisoners began referring to one another by ID's instead of names. De-individuation apparent.

5 prisoners released early due to displaying extreme behaviours eg crying, anxiety + rage. Study stopped after only 6 days after it became clear the significant harm that was being caused by the aggressive behaviour of the guards and the submissive behaviour of the prisoners

Ethical concerns - level of distress showed by participants. Z acknowledged study should have been ended sooner. Ethical concerns left LT psych effects on participants although Z offered debrieging for many years after. Was deemed ethically sound as it had been approved by Stanford ethics committee.

Individual differences - not all guards sadistic + brutal. Behaviour between prisoners not idenitcal, therefore cannot generalise findings. Supported by BBC study recreating experiment, only to find guards did not identify w/ their role + prisoners challenged their authority. Haslam + Reicher point out this shows guards were choosing to behave this way rather than conforming.

Offers insight as to why some abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib - may have been subject to situational factors making abuse more likely. Role of free will not been factored as not everyone conforms so freely - BBC study

Although provided some real worl appliaction, eg improving conditions primarily in young offending institutions, overall Z believed his study was a failure as conditions of prisons in USA considered worse than ever

Randomly assigned men to role of guard/prisoner, examined behaviour in specially made 'prison'. 15 male participants in 5 groups of 3, closely matched as poss - key personality variables, from each 3, 1 chosen to be guard + other 2 prisoners. Study run for 8 days.

Key finding - participants didn't conform automatically to role (did in SPE). Prisoners increasingly identified as group + worked collectively challenge authority of guards + establish more equal set of social realtions w/in prison. Guards failed to identify w/ role, made them reluctant to impose authority on prisoners -> shift of power + collapse of prisoner-guard system.

SPE - relevance to Abu Ghraib. Z argues same conformity to social role evident also present in Abu Ghraib - military prison, torture + abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers, 2003-2004. Z Believed guards were victims of situational factors made abuse more likely. Suggests situational factors eg lack of training, boredom etc present in both SPE + Abu Ghraib. Combined w/ opp to misuse power associated w/ assigned role of 'guard' -> prisoner abuses in both situations.

Ethical measures were taken - no deception, told in advance that many of their usual rights will be suspended. Z carried out debriefing sessions for several years after, concluded no negative effects.

Demand characteristics - Banuazizi + Movahedi (1975) - behaviour due to demand characteristics. Presented some details of SPE to large sample of students who hadn't heard of study. Majority correctly guessed purpose of experiment.

Ethics - should have been stopped sooner due to emotional distress.

Conformity not automatic as Z believed. However, behaviour varied from fully sadistic to, for few, being 'good guards'. Haslam + Reicher (2012) argue this shows guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conforming to social roles.