Zimbardo’s Experiment

Ethical boundaries are highly controversial aspects within experiments carried out by Psychologists; they have been debated and queries for decades. Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment is a fascinating topic for Psychologists that are interested in these boundaries of ethics, purley because it pushed the limits of so many of the agreed guidelines.

To begin with, it is important to know that there are five main ethical guidelines that psychologists must abide.

> ‘Informed consent’ involves making participants aware of the aims, the procedures, their rights and also what their data will be used for in the experiment.

Participants who have not received adequate information when they agreed to take part cannot be said to have given consent.

> ‘Deception’ means deliberately misleading or withholding information from participants at any stage of the investigation. It is vital that this term cannot apply to any aspect of the undertakings.

> ‘Protection from harm’ outlines that participants should not be placed at any more risk than they would be in their daily lives, and should be protected from physical and psychological harm. This includes being made to feel embarrassed, inadequate or being placed under undue stress or pressure.

> ‘Privacy and confidentiality’ allows participants to have the right to control information about themselves.

Confidentiality refers to our right, enshrined in law under the Data Protection Act, to have any personal data protected.

> ‘The right to withdraw’ outlines that, if a participant begins to feel uncomfortable or distressed in any way, they should be able to withdraw. This is especially important if a participant has been deceived about the aims or procedures. However, even if a participant has been fully informed, the actual experience of taking part may turn out to be rather different, so they should be able to withdraw.

Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment was carried out in the basement of Stanford University. He investigated how readily people would conform to the role of a guard and a prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life. Out of 75 volunteers that replied to a newspaper advert for the experiment, 22 participants were selected. Participants were interviewed and those perceived to be most mentally and physically stable were accepted. The participants were randomly assigned the roles of a guard or prisoner. The guards wore a uniform and carried a baton. Prisoners wore smocks, they were referred to by a number in place of names and were kept in one of three cells. Zimbardo observed the participants throughout the experiment and later interviewed them. The findings of the study show that the situation had a huge and almost instantaneous effect on the behaviour of all the participants and upon the social interactions between these groups. Prisoners became increasingly passive as the guards’ interactions with them become more verbally hostile and the study was terminated early after just six days, when the morality of what was happening was questioned by Christina Maslach. From the results, Zimbardo concluded that the behaviour of the participants was behavioural not dispositional, meaning they acted this was because of the situation and not as a result of their natural tendencies.

Zimbardo’s study broke several of the critical ethical guidelines. The first was a lack of informed consent. This was because the behaviour of the guards towards the prisoners could not be foreseen, and therefore the consent given was not to what actually ensued. Moreover, the participants who were prisoners had not consented to being arrested at their homes, which also slightly infringed on their capacity to withdraw from the experiment. Zimbardo also did not protect the participants from harm. While the extreme results might not have been predictable, when reading the detailed reports made afterwards, it is clear that prisoners who began to exhibit signs of psychological distress were not released as soon as they displayed these symptoms. Shockingly, after only a day, stress symptoms started to show. Within the first four days, four prisoners had to be released with signs of extreme emotional disturbance. From the participant’s point of view - the right to withdraw from a study is important. If a participant begins to feel uncomfortable or distressed they should be able to withdraw.