Question

search the internet for the Stanford Experiment and see the different perspective about this experiment afer viewing the video, if you have been a guard, do you think you would have been more likely to go along with the other guards or would you have resisted or spoken up about treating the prisoners the way you would have wanted to be treated if the roles had been reversed??

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary.

(Answer) Firstly, let it be pointed out that this experiment conducted by Dr. Zimbardo was entirely unethical. Not only were the “prisoners” ill-treated and the “guards” manipulated but, also Dr. Zimbardo was too absorbed into role-playing to focus on the study and the ethics of it all. Such experiments should be banned even if mice were to be the subjects and not just humans.

Secondly, the purpose of the “Stanford prison experiment” was to observe and analyse how quickly a human would conform to a particular social role, especially if it were heavily stereotyped. For instance, the students assigned to the role of the “guards”, quickly became aggressive and abused the prisoners, because of the stereotype around prison-guards. Also, prisoners quickly conformed to their individual roles like those of the “informant”, the “disturbed”, the “isolated” etc.

Such a hypothesis would not easily be determined through a survey and would require a certain level of vicariousness. That is why an experiment was conducted and not a survey. This part is understandable. However, there are certain ethical codes like full-disclosure agreements, treatment of the subjects, permits, damaging one’s psychological state etc. that should have been considered. It would be unclear how a person would react to this situation today. Whether or not one would have conformed is something that we will never know. However, one can truly hope that one’s moral compass would help in doing the right thing and walking out of such a disturbing experiment.