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Philip Zambardo The Stanford Prison Experiment

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Conducted by Philip Zambardo, the Stanford prison experiment was a psychological study about the effects of captivity and the human reaction to these effects. His motivation was to discover how humans behaved in a negative environment. Yet his study was short on ethics. The Stanford prison experiment was a landmark psychology study of human behavior in captivity yet it raised troubling questions about the ethical treatment of its subjects. The study relied on volunteers from Stanford University. Zambardo “… converted the basement of the university’s psychology department, into a subterranean jail” ("Psychology: The Stanford Prison Experiment - BBC Documentary"). Half the subjects were randomly assigned to play the role of guards. The other …show more content…

It was originally planned to be a two week long study however it was cut short due to the prisoners having experienced psychological trauma at the hands of the guards. Although it was an eye opening study, it definitely was not an ethical one. Because there was no control over the guard’s behaviors and actions, the prisoners suffered mental and emotional abuse. Since Zambardo did not allow them to leave the study, participants such as prisoner 8612 “… started showing signs of severe distress” ("Psychology: The Stanford Prison Experiment - BBC Documentary"). The study first crossed the line when Zambardo decided to actively participate in the experiment as the prison superintendent instead of acting like the impartial scientist that he should have been. Even though it was ground breaking research, it was not right to trade the suffering of the prisoners for the knowledge gained by the study. According to our book, the symbolic interactionist perspective is a “… sociological approach that views society as the sum of the interactions of individuals and groups” (Kendall 21). This stage was set when the Zambardo converted the psychology basement into a mock prison which was even

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