Assignment Task:
The Background
An innocently planned study to examine the relationship of actions and attitudes spiraled in to an out of control violation of participant rights that was stopped six days. What went wrong?
The Task:
Review the material in the content regarding Philip Zimbardo's Prison Experiment. Make note of the rapid transformation of participant behavior, paying close attention to the way the situation affected the subjects' behaviors.
In a reflective journal entry, please address the following in detail:
1. How did the police procedures used during arrests lead people to feel confused, fearful, and dehumanized?
2. In the debriefing, many of the guards exemplified cognitive dissonance. In fact, one said he was running his own little experiment and that is why he was so mean. Explain cognitive dissonance and why the guards would be demonstrating this. If you were a guard, what type of guard would you have become? How sure are you?
3. What prevented "good guards" from objecting or countermanding the orders from tough or bad guards? In comparison to Milgram's study, why do we conform easily to perceived authority figures?
4. If you were a prisoner, would you have been able to endure the experience? What would you have done differently than those subjects did? If you were imprisoned in a "real" prison for five years or more, could you take it?
5. Given what we have discussed on ethics, was it ethical to do this study? Was it right to trade the suffering experienced by participants for the knowledge gained by the research? (The experimenters did not take this issue lightly, although the Slide Show may sound somewhat matter-of-fact about the events and experiences that occurred).
6. If you were the experimenter in charge, would you have done this study? Would you have terminated it earlier? Is there any other scenario that could have been set up that won't have turned out the way this study did?