The Stanford Prison Experiment
In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo, a member of the Stanford psychology department, created a simulated jail experience where he had students play the roles of prisoner or guard. His study was more of a social experiment where he examined how prison can affect human behaviour. Zimbardo wanted to know if prisoners and guards have inherent traits that cause an abusive environment in jail. He tested this by putting good people in a bad place and seeing weather their normal characteristics would change based on their surroundings. His independent variable was the conditions the participants experienced, and the dependent variable was how they reacted to their situation. The study was abandoned after six days due to the students quickly embracing their rolls, and promptly abusing their powers. Some of the volunteers playing the guard role enforced strict rules and conducted psychological harassment on the prisoners who started to accept this treatment. This shows that our surroundings play a major role in a our behaviour.
The study brought in lots of criticism regarding its ethics. The experiment violated doing no harm, the prisoners suffered psychological harm and experienced incidents of humiliation and distress. Also respecting autonomy wasn’t present. Before the experiment took place, Zimbardo didn’t fully explain the possible dangers or outcomes that the volunteers were getting into, by not understanding what could happen the volunteers couldn’t fully consent to the study. There was a lot of things wrong with the Stanford prison experiment, the behaviour the psychologist allowed, was unacceptable and a major ethics problem.
After I learnt about the Stanford prison experiment, I admittedly wanted to try it. Though many aspects of the social experiment were unethical, it left me wondering how I would behave under the same circumstances. Being a pretty normal person with ethics, I want to believe I would act much differently than the students. But considering they went in to the simulation with the same thought in mind, i’m not to sure how I would hold up. One part of the experiment that made me feel uneasy was the way the power so quickly got to the “guards” heads. It made me uncomfortable that ordinary, everyday people were capable of this kind of treatment. I also didn’t like the way the psychologists underwent the experiment. Though they never said that the students couldn’t leave, part of me felt as if they were withholding the truth from the volunteers. I find it disgusting how they could see some of these students helpless and in pain, mentally and sometimes physically, and do nothing about it. Though I believe they conducted this study without the intention of harming anyone, I do believe that all the students were mentally abused in some way. I feel that this experiment could have gone better if it was more thought out and conducted.
Citations:
Aldcroft, B & Colpitts, K. (2019). Ethics Reflection. [Class handout].
Whistler Secondary School
Zimbardo, P (2019). Stanford Prison Experiment. Retrieved from
This is great Bennan. You've gone a great job of assessing the ethics of the experiment Your assignment of the variables is correct however, I would argue that the research question centered more on how people assimilate into perceived roles of authority. The prison setting provided the framework to study this question. Great job with your citations. 19.5/20