Describe And Evaluate One Study Into Conformity

3 Pages 865 Words

Kim. Moreland

Describe and evaluate one study into conformity. [18]

6 marks AO1- Describing the aims procedures, findings and conclusions
12 marks A02- Evaluation and commentary

Zimbardo decided to conduct an experiment containing 21 male students, in which he enrolled them into two categories, he did this randomly in order to ensure that there was no bias involved, some would be given the roll of a prisoner and the others would be the guards guarding the prisoners. Zimbardo hoped to discover that the subjects would conform into the roles of the stereotype prisoner and guard, so that he could discover if the hostility found in real prisons was due to a personality trait more often found in the prison guards.

Before Zimbardo could conduct the experiment he chose his subjects carefully and put them through tests to ensure that their mental condition was stable and that they were all ‘normal’. This was done to ensure that the experiment was fair and that the subjects had a less likely chance of suffering from any psychological factors after ending the experiment.

He would place them in the bottom floor of an university which had been transformed into a prison environment to ensure that the conditions were as real as possible for the volunteers. to continue this idea of reality Zimbardo sent police cars to the homes of those assigned as prisoners and ‘arrested’ them there, this took place without any formal consent by the volunteers, but Zimbardo saw no harm in doing this. This could be seen as an unethical action on Zimbardo’s behalf. They were then transported to the ‘prison’ and stripped, searched, deloused and given their prison uniform. The guards were also given an uniform and a set of 16 rules they should follow. This sense of reality added more credibility to the experiment and therefore could also motivate them into their roles.

The experiment gave light to many unethical happenings and the exten...