The Breach Of Ethics In The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, during a time where colleges and universities did not have review boards to make sure ethics were followed, Zimbardo had a hypothesis. The professor in Psychology thought that personality traits of prisoner and guards are the reason of abusive behavior in prison. Like all good scientists, Zimbardo put his question into motion, turning the basement of the university into a prison. In present day, this experiment would have been much harder to get passed by Institutional Review Boards, or even not at all. While Zimbardo might have had good intentions, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a breach of research ethics.
Before Zimbardo got the ball rolling for his experiment, he had a deductive research approach. The approach stats that a theory is formed which leads to a hypothesis, then makes observation to the posed experiment. Zimbardo’s first thought was to see if good moral students, actually could withstand a prison like …show more content…
This is where you use a precise method for measuring a population. The experiment itself is a precise method because Zimbardo turned the basement of the university into an experiment facility to house the boys in the “prison”. This was only to see if negative behavior of the guards affects the person mentally; this is something that shouldn’t be done without a different set of guide lines. One has to first think about the variables that are going to be affected so that this experiment is only used once. The specifics of the Stanford Prison experiment had changed from boys just playing part in a test, to actually being believed that they were trapped in there. This is why only a few of the boys left the experiment since it was getting too out of hand. The boys were allowed to leave but Zimbardo playing the supervisor of the prison promised the boys they wouldn’t get picked on.; Instead of saying that they don’t have to stay and pay them for their service to the