Social Roles: The Stanford Prison Experiment

1
Social Roles The Stanford Prison Experiment

• Guard responses
• Justified action through need to maintain order
• Uniform provided power and deindividuation
• Prisoner responses
• Dehumanized
• Isolated
• Learned to be helpless
• Ethical concerns

2
The Situation Can Also Be Manipulated for Good

• Helping -- Personality doesnt matter as much as
  situational factors
• How the help is asked for
• Whether the helper is in a hurry
• The mood and previous situation of the helper
• Characteristics of the victim
• Whether there is room for diffusion of
  responsibility

3
Construal Determining Social Reality
4
Culture Changing our Construal of Self and
Society

• Independent vs. Interdependent Views of the Self
• Defining the self
• Attending to actors vs. situations
• Forming preferences for figures and pens
• Forming social goals
• Cultural Variation within the United States

5
Construal and Attitudes

• Perceiving Social Reality
• Hastorf Cantril They Saw a Game
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Festinger Carlsmith (1959)
• Self-Fulfilling Prophesies
• Rosenthal Jacobson (1968)
• Snyder (1978)

6
Forming and Overcoming Prejudice

• Sherif Robbers Cave Study
• Aronsons Jigsaw Classroom
• More on stereotyping tomorrow . . .