SOCIAL INFLUENCE Conforming to Social Roles. What makes people evil? Discuss and mindmap as a group.

SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Conforming to Social Roles

What makes people evil?Discuss and mindmap as a group

Dispositional vs Situational

Bad Apples? - Dispositional

Bad Barrels? - Situational

“All the worlds a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits, and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts.”

William Shakespeare

Discuss the image and text above. What do these both suggest about

human behaviour?

Social RolesEach social role is a set of rights, duties,

expectations, norms and behaviours that a person has to face and fulfill.

The model is based on the observation that people behave in a predictable way, and that an individual's behaviour is context specific, based on social position and other factors.

Social Roles

On whiteboards

List roles that you play/have played

Swap with your partner- have them list norms relating to these roles

Ethics Board

You are members of the British Psychological Society ethics board for social psychology

Read the proposal for Zimbardo’s study

What ethical concerns does it raise?Will you grant the study approval?

Grid to support

Zimbardo Ethical Proposal

21 Stanford undergraduate students will be recruited and paid for a 2-week

study. They will be given a series of personality assessments to ensure they

are psychological stable enough to take part. They will give their consent to

participate in the prison study however the participants will be unaware that a

mock “arrest” will happen at their accomodation.

They will be divided randomly into 10 “prisoners,” and 11 ”guards.” They will be

placed into a prison setting, where the "prisoner’s" occupy cells, and the

"guards" will watch over them in shifts. They can withdraw at any time.

Prisoners will be in the cells 24 hours a day while the guards will do 8 hour

“shifts”. The researcher will be present and will act as a Warden to monitor

activity. Researchers will observe the participant’s behaviour and record results

Zimbardo et al. (1973)

The US Navy funded the study,

as it and the US Marine Corps were

interested in the forces that create

conflict between guards and prisoners in the naval prisons.

Social Psychologists investigate three core explanations Dispositional – Inside the individual

Situational- The situation

More recently

Systematic- powers in the system, political, cultural, environmental

Watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwfNs1pqG0

Make further notes on

Ethical issuesAimSample Method Thoughts on Evaluation and

application

Knowledge check- Zimbardo Bingo

Why did they conform to the roles?1. Discuss

2. Evaluating the research G R A V EStrengths Weaknesses

Conclusion: Do you agree?

Both guards and prisoners conformed to their social roles

Situational factors seem to be more important than dispositional factors, because ‘ordinary’ students became brutal prison guards when placed in the right setting

“Guard aggression … was emitted simply as a ‘natural’ consequence of being in the

uniform of a ‘guard’ and asserting the power inherent in that role.”

(Haney, Banks & Zimbardo, 1973, discussing findings of the SPE)

De-individuation

De-individuation

Deindividuation is a social process

Where people are placed in a group Situation they no longer act as individuals.

They no longer behave in the same way that they would when alone, and instead pass all responsibility for their behaviour to the group.

Their identity becomes that of the group.

In what ways did Zimbardo’s study de-individuate the participants?

Criticisms

It is not, as Zimbardo suggests, the guards who wrote their own scripts on the blank canvas of

the SPE, but Zimbardo who created the script of terror.

(Banyard, 2007)

Strengths

Some argue the study had high levels of control

Ecological validity- arguably high in comparison to a lot of laboratory experiments into conformity

Study was as true to life as possible

Data- Intensive data was collected both qualitative and quantitative

Weaknesses

Representative sample

Arguably low Ecological validity

Demand Characteristics- Were they performing as they thought Zimbardo wanted them to?

Criticisms- Ethics

As you may have noticed, there are a few ethical issues with Zimbardo’s research!

Ethics Grid

Harm to participants:

The Problem: Both prisoners and guards may have suffered psychological

harm Prisoners were humiliated and harassed. Became withdrawn

– some showing depressive and anxious symptoms Guards had to accept the fact that they had been willing to

mistreat the prisoners The experiment was stopped after 6 days due to extreme

emotional and behavioural effects

Zimbardo’s Come Back: Several sessions were held with participants to help them

deal with their emotional reactions to the experience (debriefing)

During the year following the study contact was maintained with all participants to prevent any negative effects persisting

Follow ups over many years have revealed no lasting negative effects. Seems the participants were healthy and able to bounce back from their experience

Lack of fully informed consent:The Problem: Participants gave only prior general consent E.g. Participants did not know that they would be

arrested at home – this is deception – the truth was with held

Zimbardo’s Come Back: Participants were aware that they would be given

either the role of prisoner or guard in a prison simulation study that would last for 14 days

Made clear that they would be under surveillance (have little privacy) and that some of their basic human rights may be suspended (excluding physical abuse)

Reicher and Haslam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaXXqrUzKHw

Watch and complete the handout

Learning outcomes

Learners will be able to

Recap learning so far on social influence

Explain the procedure and findings of Zimbardo et al. (1973)

Identify the difference between dispositional and situational influence

Consider some ethical issues surrounding the work of Zimbardo et al. (1973)

Some learners wil be able to

Evaluate Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment including criticisms regarding research methods and ethics

Watch

The Experiment

References Haney, C., Banks, C. & Zimbardo, P. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated

prison. Naval Research Review 9, 1–17 [Reprinted in E. Aronson (Ed.), Readings about the social animal (3rd ed., pp. 52–67). San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman]. (p.12)

Zimbardo, P. (2004). A situationist perspective on the psychology of evil: Understanding how good people are transformed into perpetrators. In A.Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp.21–50). New York: Guilford. (p.39)

Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2005). The psychology of tyranny. Scientific American Mind, 16 (3), 44–51. (p.47)

Banyard, P. (2007). Tyranny and the tyrant. The Psychologist, 20, 494-495. (p.494)

Haslam, S. A. & Reicher, S. D. (2006). Debating the psychology of tyranny: Fundamental issues of theory, perspective and science. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 55–63. (p.62)

Turner, J. C. (2006). Tyranny, freedom and social structure: Escaping our theoretical prisons. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 41–46. (pp.41,45)