AMANDA
This week's forum is about the Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment I found was both interesting and slightly disturbing. The first question I will address is "Was it ethical to do the prison study in the way that Zimbardo conducted it? Why or why not?"
So to start I believe this experiment was doomed from the beginning. They picked random people to PRETEND they were guard and prisoners. The men they picked to be guards have absolutely no training on how to be a guard and what they can and cannot do.
They were given absolute power over people that have done nothing wrong. Now the volunteer prisoners are men that were picked that have done nothing wrong. So the whole time they know in the back of their minds they didn't do anything wrong and they know they will be out and back to their normal lives soon. I believe that this messed up the experiment from the start. So to answer the question no I do not think the experiment was ethical. One example would be when the guards would demand pushups from the prisoners and would step on their backs.
The study even said that this punishment was used by Nazi's in concentration camps and that at first they had reservations about it. Stepping on someone's back regardless of the situation is never an acceptable behavior. Another was when the guards used the fire extinguishers at the prisoners. To do something like that is simply dangerous. They put the health of the prisoners at risk. All the while Zimbardo just sat back and watched. He should have known things had gone too far.
The next question is "How do the social psychology concepts of conformity and the power of the social situation that we are studying this week relate to what happened during the brief period of time that the prison study ran. Where in the description of how the study unfolded did we see evidence of these concepts?" First off I believe that the people in this study got way too involved and began to believe it as reality. One example was the prisoner that had begun to act "crazy". The believed that he was playing them and faking. In the study it even says ".
It took quite a while before we became convinced that he was really suffering and that we had to release him." The power of the social situation was just too much. It was altering the minds of not only the volunteers but of the psychologist that studied them. When it comes to conformity I would like to use the rebellion as an example. These volunteers had come together to rebel against the guards. Something that cause them a lot of trouble in the future but they stood by it. There is plenty more I could right on this study but I will end it here. IM interested to see what everyone has to say!
JAMES
Of course the study that Zimbardo did was not ethically done but I kind of thought that was the point of the study. I thought the point was to see how good middle class men react in these situations. Also each young man volunteered to do this study. The study was done to see how someone would react to similar situations that prisoners deal with on a daily basis and how guards deal with the power they are given. Even though the prisoners had not done any sort of crime to be in this situation and they initially knew that this was a study they signed up for they quickly regressed into feeling that is was real and that they were trapped, humiliated, and out of control. The guards may have not had any experience or training but I thought it was interesting to see how their own personalities came out when they were given this sense of power.
It was a bit disconcerting when you see someone given power and they abuse it right away. If we are talking ethics then they were not followed here in my opinion because you take someones humanity a little at a time by treating them this way and I would expect more from a professional organization. As I stated however I do think that the point of this study was to make a point about how prisoners are treated in real facilities. Another thing that I would like to ask to my professor and my classmates, do you think a prison should have the same ethical standards as other organizations when it comes to treating people a certain way? If we are talking about rapists, murderers, terrorists, and so on why would we want to treat these types of people the same as good people? I think that is a good discussion starter.
I think social psychology is very interesting because we see people conform to a social norm all the time in our society. In the prison study we witnessed both the prisoners and the guards take on their roles that they had been assigned. When the prisoners in the study felt trapped they began to justify reason to up-rise. This is something we see people do all the time when they commit crimes. They know there are laws but they justify their actions based on their situation. I also think the guards did a similar thing by abusing their power or treating the prisoners fairly, they were given choices based on the situation and we got to see how different people would react to the same situation. The prisoners and guards developed a us vs. them mentality in some situations resulting in conflicts between the groups as well. It was a very interesting study in my opinion and even though it may be controversial I think we can learn from it.
ASHLEY
After reading about the experiment and watching the video, I would have to say that, yes, the way that Zimbardo conducted the Stanford prison experiment was completely unethical. While yes it is true that all of the men in the experiment volunteered and were aware of what they were getting themselves into, I don't think any of them, the guards included, knew just how much it would affect them all and so quickly. As stated in the story about the experiment, after the first night the men were already feeling a sense of being controlled and planned a rebellion against the guards that were controlling them.
The first thing that I think Zimbardo did wrong, while putting together this experiment, was allowing these guards to treat the prisoners however they felt necessary, without any training on what it means to be a guard in an actual prison. The way that these prisoners began to break down so quickly was proof that the guards were being unethical in the ways that they were treating the prisoners. It was almost as if these prisoners were being brainwashed into believing they had really done something wrong and were in prison. For instance, why didn't any of these men choose to leave the experiment when they began having nervous breakdowns? Instead, they were forced to stay until the guards felt as though they were actually in a severe mental state and needed to leave the experiment.
As stated in our text this week, even the guards began completely changing their behaviors and going against their morals and ethics to fit into the role of the guard, regardless of how it actually made them feel to treat another human being the way that they did. This is evident by the way some guards were more harsh than others and how some were nicer and actually tried to help the prisoners in some cases. In the end, I feel that the experiment that took place was severely unethical and it seemed to effect the volunteers a lot more that they had anticipated. However, without conducting an experiment at this level there would have have been no other way to collect the results they were looking for.