Many of the men couldn’t take it, they had to be released even though it was just an experiment it was starting to feel real to some of the prisoners. The Zimbardo experiment ties into The Thomas Theorem. Even though the experiment was “play-acting” it still has real consequences. The men were experienced to how it feels to be in prison. Although it was acting, the experience still felt real.
Had the subjects been informed of the study’s purpose, the question of ethics would be less ambiguous. Some would argue that the special conditions needed for this study required the lack of informed consent. Males in the study would perhaps behave differently had they known what the goal of the study was, or that they were even partaking in a study. Although this is a valid point, debriefing and the request of consent after the experiment were attainable and would have put together a more ethical and less questionable study. Various approaches could have been used to compensate for the lack of personal privacy and informed consent but were not.
Taylor Denise Belle February 22, 2012 000743067 The Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971. The purpose of the experiment was to see how the subjects, normal people, would respond psychologically to the roles of prisoner and guard. The experiment was supposed to last for two weeks, with the participants getting $15/day. However, the experiment had to be cut short because of how extreme the conditions began to be. While watching the Stanford Prison Experiment video, I came to find that the prisoners didn’t show much loyalty to each other after a while.
The participants chosen were emotionally stable, mature, physically healthy and law abiding citizens. After just a few days of the experimental prison life, it was unbelievable to see how such people could easily slip into roles and be perverse to others around them. The prisoners at one point decided to try and take over the prison. After the guards witnessed this, they became more cruel and punished the prisoners even more. It was amazing to see how well some of the participants that were guards possessed this position so easily.
An example of where participants were misled was in Milgram’s experiment. Milgram lied to the participants by saying that the purpose of the research was to assist them on learning. However in reality it was an experiment to test people’s willingness to obey orders to inflict pain. Therefore it is unethical to cause psychological or physical harm. The lab experiment can also be said to be unrepresentative because it is mostly a study on small scale.
The Stanford Prison Experiment Well it’s over, and I believe we are all a little more enlightened on the subject of psychological evil and the power of role playing. There have been many surprises throughout this experiment but I think the most important surprise concerning the result of the experiment is how it was closed early. The prison was “shut down” only after six days after it began when it was scheduled to go on for 14 days. That’s a whole eight days early, this fact is important because it shows how real the experiment became, the prisoners aren’t real convicts against society, most of them are just college students trying to earn a few extra bucks who would’ve guessed it would turn into this huge mess? As the prison opened and everybody started experimenting with their new roles, some were hesitant about the thing and how it would affect their lives over the next 14 days and even for the rest of their lives.
Second, the participants were deceived. According to ethical code of researches, participants should be completely informed what would take place during the experiment in the inform consent form before the experiment, but the researchers did not properly address all the situations to the participants. The violence was completely not expectable by the participants. From the perspective of ethical issue, it was wrong to conduct this experiment, but from the perspective of research, it is right to conduct this experiment. Therefore, I would say that it is worthy to conduct this experiment because the outcomes of experiment are very useful for the discovery of human behaviors.
Some of those barriers are related to cultural aspects such as language differences and religious dogma. Others are related to the faith that participants have in science such as false expectations. Having awareness of these types of barriers is crucial for both researchers and participants. Misunderstandings concerning the experimental procedures can lead participants to get involved in research projects that they dont approve of. Finding themselves in this situation can have great effects on the psychological and physical wellbeing of participants.
While the first procedure was completed, the security officers at the kitchen, failed to pat the prisoners down again before entering. While it seems unlikely that the weapons were on the bodies of the two prisoners when they exited their cells, and therefore, missed by the security officer when searched the first time, it was a possibility. If the weapons were found by the first security officer that searched the two prisoners, then without questions the two inmates would not have succeeded in taking over the prison. After the investigation in to the invents of that day, it was determined that the officers conducted rushed and insufficient pat-downs on both Steven Coy and Ricky Wassenaar that day, as well as the other members of the kitchen crew. This lack luster effort left all the prisoners in the kitchen working as well as the prison staff members vulnerable to harm, dismemberment, and death.
This could be especially true in the case of researching court proceedings as it is unlikely many researchers have gone through one themselves. Recordings could also be tainted as researchers must rely on memory as notes cannot be made openly. However, this research method is arguably far more useful than just collecting statistical data. Covert observation has long been regarded as unethical. This is due to an absence of informed consent from participants, however Humphreys justified covert observation by suggesting it is the only way to study