Secondarily discovered the experiment was the psychological impact of being in a verifiable position of power over ones’ peers, and how the ability to apply sanctions to those same peers can have an effect on one’s disposition. In order to unearth these effects, Professor Zimbardo collected 24 local Stanford students and gave a vague brief of the testing, including how they would be separated into ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’. The students were randomly chosen for either role, and after only 6 days, their abusive actions from the guards towards the prisoners forced the experiment to be shutdown. The way the prisoner students were collected was an important factor in the experiment as a whole, having the arrested by a legitimate police force
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The ethical quality of the test is undoubtedly controversial, but the question of if it obeyed to ethical standards is most certainly ‘yes’. Zimbardo met all the requirements, the subjects where volunteers, and able to leave at any time, something that a full quarter of the subjects did. Yes, this study was absolutely within grounds to have been held, the march of science developing through the actions of consenting individuals should not be stopped by the question of legality of a long-passed experiment. I have seen this test held under the same scope of those who question whether or not the data found by the Nazi scientists in concentration camps should be used. I’m under the impression that the conditions at Auschwitz-Birkenau had been incalculably times worse than the prison used in the Stanford experiment. Now that is not to say ‘ethics is relative’, but rather science is going to advance no matter what, and dismissing the findings of some horrible individuals would be counter-productive. In conclusion, yes the experiment met the ethical standards, and yes it should have been allowed. From my understanding of the experiment, it seems that the effect of the institutional setting and the ascribed social statues involved pushes the experiment into the realm of Karl Marx’s Conflict Theory. We have the lower …show more content…
The Bystander Effect has the most innocent reasoning, given the same example as above, perhaps the newcomer will see those around him not acting and come to the conclusion that everyone else are horrible for not helping, and will deviate from the norm of not helping. One may deviate from their role by simply forgoing all expected actions and activities and forge their own path, away from the role given to them by society. With Conflict Theory, all one would have to do deviate is believe they are ‘throwing off the shackles of their oppressors’, or some similar idea and attempt to break the cycle of Proletariat and oppressor. In the Distortion of Action, should one go with their own thoughts rather than those of others, they are deviating even if it is not to the extent of the other
The ethical quality of the test is undoubtedly controversial, but the question of if it obeyed to ethical standards is most certainly ‘yes’. Zimbardo met all the requirements, the subjects where volunteers, and able to leave at any time, something that a full quarter of the subjects did. Yes, this study was absolutely within grounds to have been held, the march of science developing through the actions of consenting individuals should not be stopped by the question of legality of a long-passed experiment. I have seen this test held under the same scope of those who question whether or not the data found by the Nazi scientists in concentration camps should be used. I’m under the impression that the conditions at Auschwitz-Birkenau had been incalculably times worse than the prison used in the Stanford experiment. Now that is not to say ‘ethics is relative’, but rather science is going to advance no matter what, and dismissing the findings of some horrible individuals would be counter-productive. In conclusion, yes the experiment met the ethical standards, and yes it should have been allowed. From my understanding of the experiment, it seems that the effect of the institutional setting and the ascribed social statues involved pushes the experiment into the realm of Karl Marx’s Conflict Theory. We have the lower …show more content…
The Bystander Effect has the most innocent reasoning, given the same example as above, perhaps the newcomer will see those around him not acting and come to the conclusion that everyone else are horrible for not helping, and will deviate from the norm of not helping. One may deviate from their role by simply forgoing all expected actions and activities and forge their own path, away from the role given to them by society. With Conflict Theory, all one would have to do deviate is believe they are ‘throwing off the shackles of their oppressors’, or some similar idea and attempt to break the cycle of Proletariat and oppressor. In the Distortion of Action, should one go with their own thoughts rather than those of others, they are deviating even if it is not to the extent of the other