If you were a prisoner, would you have been able to endure the experience? What would you have done differently than those subjects did? If you were imprisoned in a "real" prison for five years or more, could you take it?
If I was a prisoner, I would not have been able to endure the Stanford Prison Experiment because of the psychological toll that it had on the participants. The mental and emotional toll it took on the participants is something that I do not think that I could endure. It is insane to observe this experience, and it is more insane that people signed up to participate. The cruelty of the punishments would have been too much for me to endure, especially when the guards would place the prisoners in solitary confinement, scream curses at you, and become physically violent.
As a subject of this experiment I would like to think that I would behave very differently. Each minute of the day I believe that I would constantly have to remind myself that this was an experiment. As a prisoner, I would obey the orders of the guards, eat my food unlike some of the prisoners, and not do anything remotely rebellious like many of the participants from this experiment did. As a guard, I would come up with some rules and regulations but nothing remotely harmful to the prisoner participants, unlike the sickening punishments the guards made the prisoners participate in. I most definitely would not force or encourage the prisoners to insult one another like several of the guards did in this experiment.
If I was imprisoned in a real prison for five years or more I do not believe that I could take it if it was anything like this revolting experiment. I would definitely have to hold fast and remain steady in my relationship with Jesus in order to get through five years of being in prison. This makes me wonder if real prison is similar to the Stanford Prison Experiment or even if it should be compared to this experiment since those in prison are there to receive a consequence for their unlawful actions.
Was it ethical to do this study? Was it right to trade the suffering experienced by participants for the knowledge gained by the research?
The Stanford Prison Experiment should be considered an example of unethical research. It was unethical to do this study since it was not stopped even though psychological and physical harm occurred to the participants. This experiment was sick and awful. The madness of this experiment affected many of the prisoners. The fact that this experiment went on as long as it did was very concerning. Dr. Zimbardo mentioned that he fell too deep into his role as the prison manager, and he should have hired someone else to be either the manager or run the experiment, rather than him doing both. Ethical guidelines were completely overlooked as it is extremely unethical for the encouragement of abusive behaviors, which is what occurred between the guards and the prisoners.
While it did demonstrate the power of social roles and the findings of Dr. Zimbardo’s research gave advancement to the psychological community about the capabilities of humanity, it was not right to trade the sufferings of the participants for the knowledge gained by the research even if it gave many people insight into how much a situation can affect behavior. The boys that played the guards grew more and more evil each day, while the boys that acted as prisoners fell victim to their role of submission. This was an incredibly unethical experiment where no amount of knowledge could outweigh the sufferings of the participants.
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