Prison Brutality

The basic purpose of this experiment was to see if the brutality reported among guards in prison was because of the situation and roles they were given or if it had to do more with their type of personality, and to see if prisoners lacked respect for law and order because of the situation they were in with the guards or if it had to do with personality as well.
Mr. Zimbardo and his team chose a few men who answered to the newspaper AD and had them answer a questionnaire about their family background, physical and mental health history and all the study subjects were considered to be normal healthy men. By the toss of a coin flip they were then given roles to be prisoners and guards. If they did not act aggressive that would confirm that it …show more content…
Mr. Zimbardo failed to see that the experiment had gone too far. They had already seen how quickly the guards fell into their roles and how it was affecting the prisoners but yet he wanted to keep going. Second They allowed the guards to harass these prisoners so badly by taking away certain privileges like the bucket they were given to use the restroom in and making the prisoners do physical work or be put in ‘the hole’ if they did not want to cooperate. Third would be that in a way they did deceit the prisoners parents when they went to visit. Mr. Zimbardo was afraid that the parents would see the harsh environment they had the prisoners living in and would want to take their sons back home so he had the guards clean up the prisoners and the cells and give them big meals before the parents went to visit. All three of these violations can relate to the Belmont Reports Ethical Standards, the principle of beneficence and the principle of justice on the Belmont Report are being violated by all three of the ethical violations I mentioned. Principle of beneficence mentions to ‘have the best interest of subjects in mind’ and to ‘maximize benefits and minimize harm’ the first two violations I mentioned are negligence and harassment which violates these two principles in the way that neglecting does not have the best interest for the subjects and harassing can cause harm to the subjects in the experiment. Lastly the principle of respect for persons was violated as well by not protecting the autonomy of the prisoners and not being truthful with the prisoners