Topic 5: Social influence Study Guide

The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), conducted by Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo in 1973, investigated the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the social roles of prisoners and guards. The researchers aimed to understand if the brutal behaviour often observed in prisons was due to the dispositional characteristics of individuals or the situational pressures of the prison environment. They created a simulated prison in the basement of Stanford University's psychology department, allocating male student volunteers to roles of either prisoner or guard through random assignment. The study was intended to last two weeks but was halted after just six days due to the alarming behavioural changes exhibited by both groups. Guards became increasingly aggressive and dehumanising, while prisoners displayed signs of extreme stress, passivity, and emotional breakdown. The experiment supported the situational hypothesis, suggesting that social roles can powerfully influence individuals' behaviour, even overriding personal dispositions. The study's ethical implications have been widely debated, becoming a foundational case study in research ethics within psychology.

Collective behaviour refers to actions or conduct of individuals within a group that differs from their typical individual actions. This often manifests in crowds, where people can be influenced by others, leading to either pro-social (helpful, positive) or anti-social (harmful, negative) behaviours. Understanding why individuals behave differently in groups involves examining factors like anonymity, deindividuation, and social norms. Psychological evidence suggests that the presence of others can alter an individual's sense of personal responsibility and inhibit or encourage certain behaviours. Research methods, such as observational studies and experiments, are used to investigate these phenomena, while ethical considerations are crucial when studying crowd behaviour due to potential for distress or harm to participants.