The current ethical principle have been heavily influenced by very unethical experiments in the past, such as Milgram’s Conformity and Obedience Experiment and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. The current ethical guidelines are informed consent, voluntary participation, confidentiality, anonymity, right to withdraw, do no harm and debriefing (APS, n.d.). The ethical standards / regulations can vary for different types of research, for instance, if the researcher is doing clinical research there would be one ethics committee for that type and another ethics committee for a researcher that is only conducting general research. Although there has been knowledge gained from past unethical experiments / research, researchers now think that
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He was investigating whether the brutality in American prisons was due to the personality of the prison guards (disposition) or if it was due to the prison environment (situational). The experiment was set up like a prison in the basement of the Stanford University Psychology building, he paid people $15 per day to participate in the experiment. The whole experiment was set up as if it was real, the participants were arrested, taken to the prison and went through the procedure as if they were criminals. The information that was gained from the experiment was that people that are given power in a certain situation will use it to harm other people. It also showed the two groups of people of different social / power levels will go against each other. There were many ethical principles breached, which are confidentiality, right to withdraw, do no harm, debriefing and informed consent. Each participant was given a number which ensured their anonymity, but their faces were not blurred in the film / video of the experiment which means that confidentiality was breached. There were a few prisoners that wanted to leave during the experiment and were told they were not allowed. A few prisoners that tried or wanted to leave were put in a cupboard which was named the ‘hole’, where it was dark and …show more content…
There may also be a re-evaluation for the age of consent for experiments because more and more first year university students are entering university at the age of 17. As part of the psychology degree in first year the student’s have to participate in a research study but the consenting age currently is 18 (Bralo, D,
He was investigating whether the brutality in American prisons was due to the personality of the prison guards (disposition) or if it was due to the prison environment (situational). The experiment was set up like a prison in the basement of the Stanford University Psychology building, he paid people $15 per day to participate in the experiment. The whole experiment was set up as if it was real, the participants were arrested, taken to the prison and went through the procedure as if they were criminals. The information that was gained from the experiment was that people that are given power in a certain situation will use it to harm other people. It also showed the two groups of people of different social / power levels will go against each other. There were many ethical principles breached, which are confidentiality, right to withdraw, do no harm, debriefing and informed consent. Each participant was given a number which ensured their anonymity, but their faces were not blurred in the film / video of the experiment which means that confidentiality was breached. There were a few prisoners that wanted to leave during the experiment and were told they were not allowed. A few prisoners that tried or wanted to leave were put in a cupboard which was named the ‘hole’, where it was dark and …show more content…
There may also be a re-evaluation for the age of consent for experiments because more and more first year university students are entering university at the age of 17. As part of the psychology degree in first year the student’s have to participate in a research study but the consenting age currently is 18 (Bralo, D,