Conformity is the change of behaviour or beliefs due to the observation of other peoples behaviour. One explanation for this is NSI (Normative Social Influence).

His findings show that 74% of participants conformed at least once, the other 26% not conforming at all. This 26% however, stated afterwards that they doubted their own judgements but still managed to resist the pressure that was being put on them to give an obviously incorrect answer. This shows that people accept the views of others as their own when in situations such as this. The participants experienced both NSI (accepting the majority’s mistake so as not to look stupid) and ISI (doubting own judgement).

In conclusion, this study was not representative of the population as only male college students were used, rather than a more varied sample. The experiment lacks mundane realism because simple stimuli (lines) have been used rather than everyday objects/occurrences which would generate more natural behaviour from participants.

Unlike Asch’s study, Zimbardo’s study has high mundane realism and ecological validity, whereby a real life situation and realistic environment were used, making participants’ behaviour more natural and therefore achieving more accurate results. Zimbardo conducted a lab experiment to find out how readily people would conform to a role. He used the situation of prison life, where his participants were either given the role of prisoner of guard. He got a sample of random male college students in America, offering $15 per day for the two week experiment and he set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University. To make this experiment more realistic, the nine participants who were randomly chosen as prisoners were arrested at their homes. They were then blindfolded and taken to the mock prison, where they were stripped naked and sprayed or “de-liced” with disinfectant. Each prisoner was given a smock with a unique identification number which they were to be referred to as. For the prisoners, this is where the humiliation started, by wearing a dress like uniform. The nine guards were given identical khaki uniforms, dark mirrored glasses and a wooden bat, to make them fit into their roles quicker. Zimbardo made it clear that no physical violence was to be used.

After only a couple of days, the guards had begun to torment and abuse the prisoners, who had rebelled against the guards’ cruel and sadistic ways. Prisoners showed signs of depression, one prisoner even needed to be released after just one day. All of the participants were of sound psychological health; this shows that the prison environment had drastic effects on their behaviour, in particular the guards who had shown no signs of sadistic behaviour before entering the mock prison. People will conform quickly to roles, altering behaviour and attitudes; in this case it only took six days. After six days, the experiment had to be discontinued due to behaviour becoming too extreme amongst the participants.

Although this study shows accurate evidence that people do in fact conform to roles, there are many ethical issues with it. Zimbardo used deceptionI by telling participants before the experiment took place that is was a study into “prison life”. Therefore Zimbardo did not have participants’ informed consent. The participants’ distressed behaviour and reactions display that the protection of participants had not been taken into consideration. This could have had something to do with the fact that Zimbardo was playing the roles of both the mock prison superintendent and the chief researcher within the experiment. This would have prevented him from seeing the cruel behaviour of the guards and the harm that the prisoners were coming to.