Stanford Prison Experiment Ethical Issues Are Always

Stanford Prison Experiment

Ethical issues are always first and foremost a subject of ambiguous grounds when it comes to experiments that are hinged on human behavior. Whether this is because of the short- and long-term consequences of psychological and physical harm, ethical questions are raised with regards to how much scientific benefit can be accrued from conducting such an experiment. This question remains heavily controversial especially in the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971 at Stanford University. The idea in question was whether the social and physical behaviors in prison life was conducted because of the people in the environment or whether the situation in itself applies a general stress of how to react to such an environment.

"What happens when you put good people in an evil place?" (Zimbardo, 1999) and "Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?" (Zimbardo, 1999) are only the starting points of this rather famous experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment was originally set up to last two weeks, during a summer research experiment conducted at the university. In this experiment, the data to be examined would be the general behaviors exhibited by "guards" and "prisoners" when placed in a prison simulation. Prior to the experiment, volunteers were chosen from a pool of applicants, the volunteers being 24 students with no priors of medical conditions and history of crime. All in all, the experiment to be conducted would be involving college students who were all "psychologically sound" (Zimbardo, 1999).

The explanatory study that is the Stanford Prison Experiment would then go about in determining why people acted in a particular role when put in a specific situation. The experiment itself had many conditions for which there was no determining how the students would react. For instance, it was recorded that guards furthered their roles by becoming more sadistic than what the "warden" or Zimbardo instructed them with. Additionally, prisoners succumbed to a feeling of personal identity loss and humiliation, playing their parts as prisoners to an overwhelming realism that would shock the very ethical issues that should have been regarded since the beginning of the experiment.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was discontinued after a total of six days due to an alarming increase of issues regarding ethical standards. At the beginning of the experiment, the students were reassured that no physical harm would result in the outcomes of the simulation being conducted (Zimbardo, 1999). However, as the days and hours grew on, it became evident that the guards -- who had almost limitless decisions when it came to handling prisoners, save physically harming them -- were determined to further humiliate and debase the prisoners through borderline violent means. "Guards were granted power to make up and modify rules as they progressed" (Maxfield, 2010), and once the experiment reached stages of days, physical harm became inevitable. Already, the promise made at the beginning of the experiment has been breached.

There are also the ideas of voluntary participation and staff misbehavior discussed in Chapter 2 that further necessitates a look at ethical procedures regarding the experiment (Maxfield, 2010). The Stanford Prison Experiment sought out applicants who would volunteer as the role of guard or prisoner in the exchange of being part of research as well as a daily payment of $15. While the simulation sought to produce the same type of environment in prisons, incarceration should not have been prolonged if there was the mere possibility that the volunteer was beginning to lose sense of willingness to further undergo the humiliation and degradation experienced. Some of the prisoners had suffered mental breakdowns, where three of them were dismissed, only after extreme reactions occurred, and not before. Additionally, while guards were given minimal instructions in how to conduct themselves around the prisoners, they found it acceptable to further their sadistic acts when they thought the experiment was "off" (Maxfield, 2010).

Was the Stanford Prison Experiment beneficial to the psychological community at the time? Perhaps it gave an insight to human nature when placed in precarious positions of power and subjugation. It certainly has its uncanny parallels regarding prisoners of war, especially the situation at the Abu Ghraib prison, where prison guards carried out similar though more degrading acts on prisoners. But taking the experiment as far as the level of roleplaying and simulation undergone in the experiment is suspect. While one hardly believes only a single entity of 50 people reacted negatively to the experiments done to the students, one can imagine the reluctance that the parents and other staff members had with producing an argument.