Ethical Problem Three Classical Behavior

Ethical Problem

Three Classical Behavior Studies

The Stanford Prison Study (Philip Zimbardo)

The Stanford Prison Study was a 1971 study of how assuming the role of a prison guard or prisoner affected the attitude of presumably ordinary persons in a simulated prison setting. For two weeks, college students were supposed to assume randomly assigned roles of guards and inmates. The study was discontinued after six days, because of concerns about the faux prisoner's safety. The study is so famous that there is an Internet website devoted to the case. (http://www.prisonexp.org/)Zimbardo continues to update the site. Zimbardo notes that his 1971 findings parallel the behavior of real-life prison guards at Abu Ghrab. At the website, Zimbardo shows photographs of how the subjects of the study were conducted. The subjects were arrested, fingerprinted, and photographed, like real criminals.

The subjects had been recruited through a classified advertisement, and according to Zimbardo were screened to eliminate candidates with psychological problems, medical problems or a record of crime or drug abuse. They were randomly assigned by a coin toss to the role of either guards or prisoners. The prisoners, after their arrest, were treated in the degraded fashion of 'real' prisoners, according to Zimbardo. However, he admits in the slide show of the website dedicated to the experiment, that many of the aspects of the simulated experimental prison, such as shackling the prisoners, forcing the prisoners not to wear underwear and don dress-like garments, were not part of a legal, regular prison routine. These socialization methods echo the atmosphere of POW camps, as they do not set clear limits on guard behavior. The guards, unlike soldiers, were free and not given clear restrictions on disciplining inmates.

For fifteen dollars a day, the prisoners found themselves subject to an environment where they were physically brutalized and their heads were shaved. The advertisement they answered simply said that they were to become parts of an experiment on prison life. Zimbardo stresses that they were fed a minimally adequate diet, and agreed to the conditions before they were subject to the abuses, but the level of abuses, which Zimbardo admits even he did not anticipate, could not be predicted, given the lawless atmosphere that prevailed amongst the guards. Zimbardo characterizes the behavior of the guards as juvenile, (and their methods and the outcome does seem like a fraternity hazing gone wrong) but justifies the accuracy of the experiment because it was similar to that of the Nazi guards. The prisoners also formed alliances, rebelled, and the guards used psychological intimidation tactics of control. One wonders at the 'value' of this experiment, given that studying real life historical accounts or sociological situations might be more beneficial than encouraging the re-creation of such tactics.

The Surrogate Mother Study (Harry Harlow)

Harlow's "Surrogate Mother Study" is called on the web site: (http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Harlow/love.htm) that maintains the original text of the article authored by Harlow a "classic" of psychology. In 1958, Harlow attempted to remedy what he saw as a deficit in psychological literature, namely a failure to examine necessary aspects of maternal attachment. In the laboratory setting, some monkeys were given a choice between wire mothers giving sustenance but no love vs. more tactically satisfactory mothers in the form of cloth giving no food. Other young monkeys were given a choice between wire mothers that did not provide food and cloth mothers who did give food. A second control group was given normal mothers. Unsurprisingly, the monkeys all preferred the cloth surrogates, whether they gave food or not, under most circumstances. They study concluded that if simulated adequately, surrogate motherhood was not harmful, provided it fulfilled the child's basic tactile and nutritional needs, and also that feeling and touching was crucial to early development in children.

Again, one wonders at the value of the study, given that institutionalized children could have been observed from the past, or case studies could be examined of abused children to prove this thesis. Also, given Harlow's generalizations about the value of nursery school and the ability of fathers to prove love from the experiment, one might think that examining human subjects in a variety of family settings might make a more apt analogy between different methods of child-rearing in the general human population than between humans and a population of a different species. Why subject animals to trauma rather than study 'real' human beings in the 'real' world?

Obedience Study (Stanley Milgram)