Research Ethics Stanford Prison Experiment Summary Essay

The Stanford Prison taste (SPE) was conducted in 1971 at Stanford University in the basement of the psychology building. Philip Zimbardo as proceed researcher headed the research team to study the impact of situational variables on gentleman behaviour. Zimbardo and his team advertised for volunteers to a social experiment offering $15 in payment per day. Wanting to examine the dark side of gay nature, applicants were required to have no criminal record, no psychological issues and no major medical conditions.Each of the 70 applicants were psychologically tested and the 24 most normal were selected to take part in the SPE. The 24 selected participants were because divided into two groups randomly, with one half being prisoners and the different half being guards. The guards were taken to the mock prison forrader the prisoners arrived to help in the final stages of the prisons construction and to help select their military machine style uniforms, this was to give the guards a sense of ownership over the prison environment.Alternatively the prisoners were surprised with real police and authentic processing before being incarcerated into the prison. Despite it being an artificially created environment the guards and prisoners quickly alter their behaviour in response to the situational variables of the experiment. Prisoners were dehumanized and their individuality stripped away, composition the guards became increasingly more sadistic and degrading towards the prisoners. After the guards crushed an primaeval attempted rebellion by the prisoners, one prisoner was released for acting irrationally to a point that seemed pathological.After this some of the prisoners became super-conformist, following rules to the letter. While other prisoners began to act crazy in an effort to passively escape corresponding the first released prisoner. The guards fell into three categories with some acting sadistically and degrading towards the prisoners, others exhalati on completely by the book and some guards acting kindly and doing bitty favours for the prisoners. None of guards ever intervened or questioned the actions of other guards however no yield what kind of guard they were.The experiment was terminated early after respectable six days when an alfrescor, a recent PhD graduate came in from the outside and saw how out of control the experiment had become. Ethical issues that arose during the SPE were the harm make to the participants. Guards were allowed to inflict real pain and humiliation on the prisoners over an extend period of time. The experiment was allowed to continue for longer than it should have because the participants and observers fell as well deeply into their roles. There was also little or no bear on for the participants confidentiality during the SPE.