Stanford Prison Experiment By Zimbardo

This essay is designed in two parts. The first part of the essay will attempt to explain ethics in a general context and evaluate the reasons why we need ethics when people undertake research. The second part of the essay will focus on the Stanford Prison Experiment, by Zimbardo in 1971 and critically analyse its relation to and impact on ethics.

Ethics is involved in many parts of human life. One example is to guide humans to make decisions (Darwall, 1998). Humans make decisions because these decisions are fundamental in achieving the basic needs, goals or values for living. These decisions could influence our feelings and sensations, i.e., we buy food because we are hungry, we work because we need money to maintain our well being, women
shop because they enjoy it. In here, ethics provides a standard to measure which action is ‘good’ to make and which action is ‘bad’ to make. In other words, ethics identifies the principles and codes of values that best pursue the needs and goals of individuals. The Bible is a good example of philosophical ethical suggestions of what are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ actions, such as ‘you shall not steal/kill’ (Darwall, 1998). Ethics also provides a system to maintain fairness within the society. Organizations and institutions such as the Government, Criminal Justice System, Business and Health Care Settings use ethics as norms for conducts when formulating contracts and laws, to safeguard the individual’s rights and choices. In summary, ethics is a set of principles, which guides the course of action for the individual.

Research certainly performs a fundamental role in the human world.
Without research, many questions about certain areas i.e., history, human behaviours, treatment for specific diseases, not only will go unanswered, but research also allows the human world to improve from mistakes. The definition of scientific research is a methodical study that involves a systematic investigation of theories and hypotheses (Humber, 2015). Given that the nature of scientific research is about solving unanswered questions and testing theories for improvement, it is very important that this research is conducted to the highest standards, including morally. That is, if research is not well controlled, errors such as fabricating, falsifying, or misrepresenting data or findings can easily occur, which may jeopardise the participants’ health and safety. Two good examples would be the Nuremberg War Crimes following World War II when captive human subjects were used in gruesome experiments (Smith, 2011) and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study when infected African-American participants were excluded from treatment (Thomas and Quinn,
1991).

The aftermath of these two events have made the public recognise the need to adhere to ethics in research.
Rensik (2011) reported that adhering to ethics in research can minimise harm and improve accountability, fairness, as well as honesty in several aspects of research. First, it could promote the aims of research. Second, it made people recognise the values and importance of collaborative work. Third, it ensured that the researchers and the research were accountable to the public. Fourth, it facilitated public support for the research and finally, it protected other important moral and social values, i.e., animal welfare, human rights, confidentiality. In short, applying ethics to scientific research improves the standards of research by providing a set of disciplinary conducts that monitor every stage of research, i.e., method,
findings.

The Stanford Prison Experiment by Zimbardo (Haney, Banks & Zimbardo, 1973) was famous for its theory, the Lucifer Effect, where good people can turn evil and violent under the influence of authority and an unfair situation. Its strategies of placing normal, healthy participants into prison simulation and permitting guards to practice psychological torture have received mass criticism regarding ethics from other scientists. For example, Zimbardo was heavily censured for allowing the guards to perform unethical acts on the fake prisoners under his supervision, which resulted with many of the prisoners suffering from emotionally trauma (McLeod, 2008).

In my own opinion, the errors of the study can be summarised by three facts. First, the study lacked full consent by participants. The prisoners did not consent to being arrested at anywhere and anytime. Second, the study was unable to protect the prisoners from psychological harm in situations of humiliation and distress. This was evident from incidents reported within the study where prisoners’ clothes were forced to strip off and one prisoner resulted with depression and uncontrolled rage. Additionally, the guards were given freedom to perform unethical acts towards the prisoners. Third, the methodology and results of the study demonstrated low creditability and accountability. The study lacked population validity and showed a selection bias as it only used narrow age range, single sex and culture (male and USA) subjects. Therefore, the findings could not be used to represent the general population.

Despite these criticisms, the study has awakened many institutions, e.g., American Psychological Association (APA), British Psychological Society (BPS) and Universities, to revise ethical guidelines into research endeavors. Although the investigation conducted by APA in 1973 claimed that the experiment did not breach the existing ethical guidelines, these guidelines were later revised by increasing greater restrictions of ethics to ensure no replication of similar kinds of behaviour studies could occur (Zimbardo, 1999-2015; Ratnesar, 2015). From this standpoint, we can ensure that research is now conducted in a manner that minimises participants’ risk and harm.

In conclusion, ethics is central to everything we do. It contributes a model of principles in morals, which is often applied to our decision-making process in daily life as well as to different domains, such as business, law, medicine, and research. The purpose of adhering to ethics in scientific research is to produce a justified and honest atmosphere for everyone by maintaining a set of standards and disciplinary conducts for researchers. These principles not only protect the participants from harm and risks, they also promote better research that can benefit the world with honest and accountable findings.