SHIRLEY R. DENOSO Ms.

ANA RUTH ANDALAJAO

BS PSYCHOLOGY 3-1

STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

1. What is the goal of the experiment ?

The whole experiment aims to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of the guards
and prisoner in the role-playing in the said experiment.

Zimbardo, the proponent of the prison experiment was interested in finding out whether the brutality
among guards in american prison was due to the sadistic personality of the guards or had more to do
with the prison environment.

The experiment wants to investigate if the authority inside the prison are enough to make the prisoners
follow what the guards would tell them.

2. What are the ethics that have been violated in the experiment ?

Beneficience and Nonmalevolence

This ethics aims to avoid harm to any of the subjects in any experiments.

The stanford prison experiment violated this principle because obviously it caused harm to the
participants in the said experiment. The guards abused their power as authority inside the prison and
they did harmed the prisoners. Although they are authorized to act as the authority in the experiment,
they should consider the fact that this is still an experiment and that the prisoners inside are not really
prisoners but students who were asked to act as prisoners.

Respect for people's rights and dignity

The experimenters informed everyone involved in the experiment that they will act as guard or prisons
inside a prison, and they told them that it was just an experiment and it will not cause harm to anyone,
but as the experiment started and ended, the experiment caused harm to everyone inside. Zimbardo
didn't considered what would be the effect of this experiment to the participants. As the experiment
goes on, it's so obvious that the guards are dominating the prisoners so much that they use their
authority to make the prisoners suffer. The whole experiment did not recognized the rights of the
participants especially the prisoners. They just let the guards to manipulate the prisoners and it caused
not only physical harm to the prisoners but also harm in their mental state.
 Justice

The experiment is not fair. Only the prisoners suffered in the whole experiment. Zimbardo let the
guards to dominate the prisoners that caused the guards to feel that they are capable of doing anything
to make the prisoners suffer.

Fidelity and Responsibility

The responsibility of the experimenters to avoid harm and to protect the participants in the
experiment is not well done. The experimenters just let the prisoners take all the disciplinary actions of
the correctional officers even it is unethical. The experimenters just did the exleriment to find answer to
their questions but they didn't consider the fact that their subjects are still human.