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Pros And Cons Of The Stanford Prison Experiment

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In my opinion, a debate over the ethicalness of this experiment is unnecessary. The Stanford Prison Experiment was undoubtedly unethical, due to the mortification and the psychological distress subjected on the participants. Also, there’s no debate over the major flaws within the experiment, the main flaw being Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo was a participant in this own experiment, taking the role of the warden of the “prison”, therefore couldn’t be an impartial leader. Due to his active participation in the experiment, Zimbardo started to lose his perception of reality and was overtook by a facade, like the other participants, and couldn’t recognize the unethical ways of the experiment. The fake prison started to become a reality for the participants …show more content…

An example would be Nazis; the experiment made it easy to comprehend the mentality of the Nazi regime regarding their capacity for evil. Without a doubt, the experiment was extreme but if it weren’t as extreme as it was, the results would’ve probably been different.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a field experiment. As the experiment didn’t take place in a laboratory but it can classify as a field experiment, due to it taking place in a “natural” environment with the manipulation of certain factors. The independent variable are the participants such as the prisoners and the guards, also the environment such as the “prison”. The dependent variable is the behavior of the independent variable (participants).
With regard to the conflict theory, during the experiment through humiliation and creation of privileges, the guards established their authority over the prisoners, which led the prisoners to oppose the structure of inequality unsuccessfully. Only white males were allowed to participate in the experiment, which eliminated racial or gender conflict. During the first day, the authority of the guards was established, with Zimbardo telling the guards they had authority over the prisoners but no physical abuse towards prisoners was allowed. Conflict over that authority and privileges were a constant between the prisoners and

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