Reference no: EM133190793

Respond back to these 3 responses

250 words each and you can use these links to help you respond back.

One of the most famous psychological experiments of all time, was conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University. To read more of the details of this experiment visit prisonexp website STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT. Take some time to watch the video on the Zimbardo Prison Experiment.

-Hello Class,

I do not think that the experiment was ethical at all. The reason for this was that everyone got into their roles and there was no self-reflection of how far everything had been taken. Although, I think that the experiment was cruel for the "inmates" it is due to these kinds of "experiments" that we have made major discoveries about people behaviors and how social norms, roles, scripts, etc. have a huge influence over our behavior despite the type of person you maybe. This type situation has nothing to do with the actions that influence ordinary people/good people to do bad things. And with that being said, I do not think that if we conducted the experiment in a different setting, we would have learned the valuable information we did. In another scenario the subjects playing the guards would have not showed the authentic behavior they did. The social experiment showed the situational attributes where the "inmates" showed conformity with the treatment and overall the external situation which was influencing them (using deindividuation) from their identity. And later on moving to actually internalizing the entire situation instead of walking away. It is not clear but to me the moment that the first prisoner broke down it was very clear that everyone had already been in a state of dispositional attribution. Zimbardo did not stopped the cruel events and the guards were not stopping either to do any self-realization and as far as the prisoners they chose to stay in a strange way and continued to play their roles allowing the cruel punishments which also might also have something to do with the reason behind the "guards" taking their roles so seriously. The "guards" got the reactions that they wanted from the "inmates" which probably boosted their mind on believing that they do hold authority around them.

-This week's topic was fascinating. The famous psychological experiment conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo and coworkers from Stanford University was known as the Zimbardo Prison Experiment.

1. After watching the video and reading about this experiment I do not feel like it was ethical to do the prison study in the way that Zimbardo conducted it. The main reason for this was that going through this experience could cause negative psychological long term on the prisoner and the guards. The prisoners were treated like animals, in my opinion. They pretty wore dresses, stocking caps to simulate shaved heads, strip-searched and doused with spray for lice and contamination, blindfolded, wore chains on their feet, and put in solitary confinement (closet). All these examples that I described are humiliating and deemed unethical.

2. The social-psychological constructs that were revealed in this project were adapting to your environment. When you are put in extremely stressful and uncomfortable situations for an extended period, your best choice would be to adapt to your new environment. I believe the same information would have been learned if the study had been conducted differently. By adapting the study to address ethical concerns and still obtain results relevant to our understanding of behavior in social settings, you would have to document the positive and negative aspects of the study. By providing this information, you can potentially help other prisons and jails improve their processes to make it a more ethical experience.

3. As you can see from watching the video and reading about the Zimbardo Prison Experiment, the guards showed signs of conformity as many of them began to feel pressured by the group and just went along with actions while knocking it was wrong. While reading, I found that the higher the number of people in the majority, the more likely people will conform.

-I'm going to just start by saying that this experiment reminds me of the movie 'The Experiment', with Forrest Whitaker. In the movie, people weren't actually give the choice to be one or the other, but was interviewed and from there, the people administering it determined who was going to be a guard and who was going to be a prisoner. With that said, I would say that the experiment started out ethical and then from there, it sort of became questionable, especially once the guards realized they weren't going to be stopped from harming the prisoners. With that said, I feel that allowing the guards to sort of take over the experiment, sort of gave an idea as to how a true prison environment could be, knowing that the guards tend to have quite of bit of power, sometimes without having to answer to someone else as much.

I personally don't feel the results could of been obtained through a different method knowing that things needed to happen organically. The idea seemingly was to see what would happen, if a person was given enough time in a certain role, within the experiment. Taking away their ability to do certain things, wouldn't really yield the same results, knowing that it needed to be as realistic as possible, which unfortunately means that they needed to be given the ability to treat the environment like a true environment, again, knowing that some jails/prisons are like this.

I feel that the guards confirmed pretty quickly to what they were supposed to do. From there, when they inadvertently found out they were able to do more than they originally thought they did and therefore began to use force on the prisoners, which created the idea that the prisoners could either do what they were told, or be physically harmed. All and all the people administrating the experiment created the situation, where people were no longer really able to see that this was an experiment due to there not really being any clear indicators between the environment being real or fictitious.