RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

450 ROLE-PLAYING
Box 21.2
The Stanford Prison experiment
The study was conducted in the summer of 1971 in a mock prison constructed in the basement of the psychology building
at Stanford University. The subjects were selected from a pool of 75 respondents to a newspaper advertisement asking for
paid volunteers to participate in a psychological study of prison life. On a random basis half of the subjects were assigned to
the role of guard and half to the role of prisoner. Prior to the experiment subjects were asked to sign a form, agreeing to
play either the prisoner or the guard role for a maximum of two weeks. Those assigned to the prisoner role should expect
to be under surveillance, to be harassed, but not to be physically abused. In return, subjects would be adequately fed, clothed
and housed and would receive 15 dollars per dayforthedurationoftheexperiment.
The outcome of the study was quite dramatic. In less than two days after the initiation of the experiment, violence and
rebellion broke out. The prisoners ripped off their clothing and their identification numbers and barricaded themselves inside
the cells while shouting and cursing at the guards. The guards, in turn, began to harass, humiliate and intimidate the prisoners.
They used sophisticated psychological techniques to break the solidarity among the inmates and to create a sense of distrust
among them. In less than 36 hours one of the prisoners showed severe symptoms of emotional disturbance, uncontrollable
crying and screaming and was released. On the third day, a rumour developed about a mass escape plot. The guards increased
their harassment, intimidation and brutality towards the prisoners. Onthefourthday,twoprisonersshowedsymptomsof
severe emotional disturbance and were released. On the fifth day, the prisoners showed symptoms of individual and group
disintegration. They had become mostly passive and docile,sufferingfromanacutelossof contact with reality. The guards,
on the other hand, had kept up their harassment, some behaving sadistically. Because of the unexpectedly intense reactions
generated by the mock prison experience, the experimenters terminated the study at the end of the sixth day.
Source:adaptedfromBanuaziziandMovahedi1975
Role-playing procedures are not sensitive
to complex interactions whereas deception
designs are.
In general, Ginsburg (1978) concludes, critics
of role-playing view science as involving the
discovery of natural truths and they contend
that role-playing simply cannot substitute for
deception – a sad but unavoidable state of affairs.
Role-playing versus deception:
the argument
As we shall shortly see, those who support roleplaying
as a legitimate scientific technique for
systematic research into human social behaviour
reject such criticisms by offering role-playing
alternatives to deception studies of phenomena
such as destructive obedience to authority and to
conventional research in, for example, the area of
attitude formation and change.
The objections to the use of deception in
experimental research are articulated as follows:
Lying, cheating and deceiving contradict the
norms that we typically try to apply in
our everyday social interactions. The use
of deception in the study of interpersonal
relations is equally reprehensible. In a word,
deception is unethical.
The use of deception is epistemologically
unsound because it rests upon the acceptance
of a less than adequate model of the subject
as a person. Deception studies generally try to
exclude the human capacities of the subject
for choice and self-presentation. They tend
therefore to focus upon ‘incidental’ social
behaviour, that is, behaviours that are outside
of the subject’s field of choice, intention and
self-presentation that typically constitute the
main focus of social activity among human
actors (see Forward et al.1976).
The use of deception is methodologically
unsound. Deception research depends upon
acontinuingsupplyofsubjectswhoarenaive
to the intentions of the researchers. But word
soon gets round and potential subjects come
to expect that they will be deceived. It is a
fair guess that most subjects are suspicious and
distrustful of psychological research despite the
best intentions of deception researchers.