Question: When conducting your performance research, would you take into consideration Zimbardo's Prison experiment and how they went into their 'roles'?

Rose Turner answered on 16 Jun 2017:

Hi Kira, Very interesting question. I think that there are similarities between ‘performing’ those roles in the prison setting and the performing that actors do. However in the Stanford Prison Experiment people were allowed to ‘improvise’ in a given role (prisoner or guard) whereas if you play the role of a prison officer in a theatre play, for example, or a law enforcement officer on The Bill or Silent Witness, you are following a script. In acting, if you are shouting at a prisoner, or even attacking them, there will be lots of safety checks in place and a film crew/audience present plus a director helping you to do it. When the scene or play is finished, you might have a laugh with the other actor – you might even be good friends. Whereas the thing about the Prison Experiment was that the abuse of the ‘prisoners’ wasn’t acted, but was real (hence the ethical problems, and the reason it had to be shut down early). So I think although there are probably similarities in terms of the experience of ‘getting into role’ context is very important. In acting, you usually feel safe and looked after. In the prison experiment, some people didn’t (Zimbardo didn’t intervene when ‘guards’ abused their power).
What you’re touching on though, I think, is a very interesting question about acting, which is about where the actor ends and the character begins. Playing someone who is abusive or abused still relies on you getting emotionally involved and perhaps drawing on your experiences or research, so I think it can certainly have an impact on actors.There is an area of social psychology that looks at how people ‘perform’ their identities in daily which might interest you (for example, think about how people ‘perform’ when they are in a customer services role, or how some people ‘perform’ according to the norms of their gender).