Please read through the Standford Prison Experiment by clicking this link: http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/1
Then answer the following questions:
- Was it ethical to do this study? Was it right to trade the suffering experienced by participants for the knowledge gained by the research?
- How do the ethical dilemmas in this research compare with the ethical issues raised by Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments? Would it be better if these studies had never been done?
- If you were the experimenter in charge, would you have done this study? Done anything differently? Would you have terminated it earlier? Would you have conducted a follow-up study?
- How can we change our real institutions, such as Attica Prison, when they are designed to resist critical evaluation and operate in relative secrecy from taxpayers and legislators?
- Knowing what this research says about the power of prison situations to have a corrosive effect on human nature, what recommendations would you make about changing the correctional system in our country?