Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment

An important part of psychological research is the ethical factor. There is always a moral responsibility to protect research participants from harm when conducting experiments, but there weren’t always rules to protect them. Many famous experiments are known for changing the ethical rules and considerations of psychological research, at the sociocultural level of analysis. Some of the most famous and controversial studies are the Zimbardo Stanford Prisoner experiment and the Milgram shock experiment. In Zimbardo’s Stanford Prisoner Experiment, the overall aim was to test the level of conformity when given a situational role. But the reason that this experiment is so famous is because of it’s extremely bad ethical considerations. Many people

A couple days later, real police officers came without warning to the homes of the subjects that were to be prisoners and arrested them in front of their entire neighborhood. Then they were taken to where Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. The guards took their roles very seriously as well as the prisoners who were given numbers that were to be used to identify them. Over the course of six days, it was obvious that the experiment was harming them by taking an emotional toll. Since the guards were given complete freedom to punish the prisoners as they wished (except for physical abuse), the prisoners were subjected to a lot of harm. After the guards randomly abused and humiliated the prisoners, the prisoners began to retaliate against each other, rebel, and even have emotional breakdowns. The ethical criticisms of this experiment completely revolutionized ethical standards for all of those to follow. To begin with, there was a lack of fully informed consent by participants as Zimbardo himself did not know what would happen in the experiment. Also, the prisoners had no idea when or that

The overall aim was to research how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. But what most people overlook in this study is that there were some significant ethical errors. The roles of learner or teacher were given to the participants. The learner was put into an adjacent room where they were to be shocked each time they answered a question incorrectly. But what the teacher didn’t know was that they actually weren’t being shocked. As they went on with the questions, the shocks got worse and worse where you could here the learner screaming, “Ow!” and “Get me out of here!” Then again that was just a recording. But the authority figure just kept saying, “You must go on with the experiment,” even when the teacher showed resistance. The end resulted in them following the orders given by the authority figure, even though they could hear the person getting hurt and eventually silent as if they were dead. Along with Zimbardo’s experiment, Milgrim was also very unethical. First, the teachers were subjected to deception. They actually believed that they were harming someone. That could possibly lead to a negative self image. Participants were also exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed, showing signs like laughing nervously, sweating,