Zimbardo's Experiment Ethics

I believe that although valuable information came from it, the ethical quality of this experiment is very questionable. I suspected that the guards would turn more authoritative than any of them would have in real life, but I never thought that they would go as far as ridiculing some prisoners to tears. Although there were none of the prisoners had any long term effects from participating, while in the experiment they would be harassed and punished for no reason, which is where I think the experiment should have been discontinued. Control of the experiment was lost as everybody involved, including Zimbardo became completely engulfed in their roles of the prison. This really makes me question Zimbardo and the other researchers to how they could be too involved in their own experiment to stop the experiment when it began to grow out of control. I think that in the experiment the guards showed who they really were. None of them would have acted that way in their own lives. Zimbardo watched all of this on a hidden camera, and didn’t do anything until long after I along with many others think it should have been. It’s not only that the participants didn’t see the unethical characteristics of this experiment, a priest that was called in and the prisoners parents that came for a visitation day didn’t protest the treatment of their sons after hearing stories of the mock prison. There is something about these symbols of

In psychology, there are lots of controversial experiments that have been done and are still talked about today. The experiment that sticks out for me is Zimbardo’s Prison study, it catches my eye for more than one reason. In this study, Philip Zimbardo gathered up a bunch of students to play the roles of prisoners and guards. Zimbardo wanted to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role played situation that would be equivalent to prison life. (McLeod 1) During this experiment that lasted six days, Zimbardo found out that the guards treated the prisoners horribly (McLeod 1) This turned the tables and Zimbardo became interested in finding out if the brutality of the guards were due to their malicious personalities or if it had more to do with the environment of being in a prison. One form of behavior that Zimbardo noticed was that the prisoners did not respect the authority of the guards which resulted in the guards being aggressive towards the prisoners (McLeod 1).

The hypothesis was something that Zimbardo seemed to not entirely believe himself but thought it some extent it had to be right, given other research in the field pointed toward I being true but more on the prisoner 's side, than the guards.

With all of the plans formulated and students selected, the experiment began to be conducted. Zimbardo “arrested” the participants and charged them with armed robbery. Then

However, if I was in charge of this experiment, I would of had male and female participants in separate areas. Instead of Zimbardo's objective, my research would be to see the comparison between males/females and how they conform to prison life. Or test to see if the male prisoners would react any differently to having female guards instead of males. Furthermore, I would have terminated the research early if I saw that my participants were falling victim to psychological harm.

The Zimbardo prison experiment was a study of human responses to captivity, dehumanization and its effects on the behavior on authority figures and inmates in prison situations. Conducted in 1971 the experiment was led by Phlilip Zimbardo. Volunteer College students played the roles of both guards and prisoners living in a simulated prison setting in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.

One of the most revealing psychology experiments done by universities is the Stanford Prison Experiment, done by psychologist Philip Zimbardo in 1971 in a mock-prison constructed in the basement of Stanford University. The primary purpose of Zimbardo’s experiment attempted to show was how the guards and prisoners would slip and behave in roles to what they thought was expected of them, however it displayed the destruction of rules and morals that society established and it raised a lot of questions about the darkness and cruelty in humans. The experiment first started with the construction of a mock-jail institution in the basement of Stanford University. Psychologists who were part of this experiment put up an ad on a newspaper to be part of this experiment for $15 a day and the people who respond to the

They experiment was suppose to run for fourteen days but only lasted a mere six days. Five prisoners had to leave early due to the participants breaking down emotionally. Everyone, even Philip Zimbardo himself, fell deeply into their assign positions (The Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo). Problem/Purpose

However, after 6 days Zimbardo had to cut the experiment short because of severe psychological distress among the inmates, and some radical actions taken by prisoners and guards. Prisoner 819, for example, suffered severe mental stress and asked to leave the study very shortly after the experiment had begun. The rest of the prisoners reacted to this by condemning prisoner 819. The other prisoners had reacted with other mental stress. “You had to be there to believe that human character could be so swiftly transformed in a matter of days--not only the traits of the students, but of me,” (Zimbardo, 1971).

For the prison experiment, Zimbardo picked random people that applied. People that applied were either going to be chosen to act as a prisoner or a guard for a set up fake prison. The people that got the position to act as the roles got paid. The point for this experiment was to see how long it would take for people to adjust to their role. Zimbardo wanted to find out if how they acted was affected by their surrounding environment or the roles that they had to fill.

In Zimbardo’s defence, the emotional distress experienced by the prisoners could not have been predicted. Extensive group and individual debriefing sessions were held and all participants returned post-experimental questions several weeks and months later, then at yearly intervals. It was concluded there were no lasting negative effects. However, Zimbardo’s experiment did have an effect on psychology as a science as it made psychologists look deeper into the ethical implications of experiments.

Although there many articles and chapters the experiment, Zimbardo had a really good reason to write this book and it was the prisoners at Abu Ghraibs. He worked closely with the trial as he was an expert witness to Ivan Frederick, a policeman at the prison. His transformation from good to evil was similar to the the guards of the the Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo thought he was charged unfairly and wanted to prove that it was the system that made them act the way they did and not that they were a few “bad apples.”

Zimbardo, the conductor of the experiment that took place in the prison, believed that the experiment showed how people’s personalities change when given positions of authority. Although, he acknowledged that some guards did try to change the

Great thoughts Jillian. I couldn’t agree with you more about everything you just discussed. I too wrote about the entrance to the makeshift jail for the so called “inmates”. The abduction from their houses and the strip searches and mental torture that ensued are the farthest thing from ethical. It’s crazy to think that a man, Philip Zimbardo, who dedicates his life to research would diliberatly act in such a way. I have no doubt that going into day 2 of this experiment that Zimbardo knew what was occuring was unethical and wrong. It saddens me that he allowed it to go on as long as it did. The experiment itself was unethical but the lying and deciveing on the part of Zimbardo makes him just as guilty.

The Zimbardo prison experiment was set up to investigate the problem of what the psychological effects for normal people result from being a guard or inmate, and in a broader sense are normal people capable of being ‘evil.’ The research question being asked was, “How would normal people react to being in a simulated prison environment? In Zimbardo’s own words, "Suppose you had only kids who were normally healthy, psychologically and physically, and they knew they would be going into a prison-like environment and that some of their civil rights would be sacrificed. Would those good people, (when) put in that bad, evil place (have) their goodness triumph?"