The Ethical Codes Of Philip Zimbardo's Prison Experiment

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo conducted a social experiment called Stanford Experiment at the Stanford psychology departments basement. Which the basement for Stanford was converted to a real prison. Over 70 college students reached out to the add that was put up in the newspaper about this experiment. Only 24 random college men to be the “prisoners”, and a few men to be the “guards” in this experiment. Zimbardo would pay them 15 dollars a day till the experiment was over, which had to last 2 weeks. The Palo Alto police surprised the men by arrested at the location they were in and was taken to the Stanford psychology department basement. They were assigned an imaginary case and number when they were entering the prison.
The men that took the …show more content…
There could be things to be improved but it was really creative to build a prison in a basement. Researchers would not be able to conduct this experiment, even though it would be really interesting if they did. They would not because this experiment does not match up the numerous ethical codes, for example the American Psychological Associates. The American Psychological Associates is a large professional and scientific organization of psychology in the United States. Zimbardo did recognize he did fail this ethical codes for his prison experiment, which is big on his part.
If I could be a psychologist for a while and I can redo this experiment, which would be pretty awesome. I would change a few things, first would be to actually do it in a real prison because just remaking a prison in a basement is not that convenient for the participants. Second, I would not let the guards harass and dehumanize the prisoner as much as they did in Zimbardo 's experiment. I think that really affected the study and let it not last as he expected. Lastly, I would like to pick different ethnicities as guards and prisoners, to evaluate how each ethnicity would behave. By me changing these few things I feel like the experiment would last longer than what Zimbardo lasted. Since the guards would be so brutal to the prisoners they did not last like he planned. By having my guards act more modern to our guards from prison, they would actually last and we could actually see if the prisoners would be different. Having different ethnicities would really change the experiment because we would actually see how all different ethnicities act and be in the