Stanford Prison Experiment
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In the Stanford Prison Experiment could you tell me how an elaborate psychological experiment was conducted and why and its ethical limits?
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Solution Summary
Discusses how the Stanford Prison Experiment as conducted and why, as well as its ethical limits. References are provided.
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It is important to differentiate between subjective and objective questions. This question is asking for objective information about how the experiment was conducted. So, when you or I or the sources that I drew on explain the method used for the Standford Prison Experiment, the same information needs to be included because it is an objective question asking for the specifics of what they did in the experiment. If the response differed from the sources, for example, it would be inaccurate.
The first question asked you to explain exactly how the experiment was conducted, which this response does under the method, and states the purpose of the study as reported by the researchers. The second question states the main ethical limitations mentioned in the literature (we cannot just make up ethical limitations because we think it is unethical, as they need to be grounded in the psychological literature pertaining to the study).
Ethics has changed over time, and more focus is on protecting the subject than at the time of this experiment. In a nutshell, the ethics of how the researchers treated the subjects has been questioned by many researchers i.e. no restrictions of how the guards treated the prisoners, etc., and the participants were certainly under enough stress that warranted stopping the study sooner that Zimardo and colleagues actually did. In his defense, Zimbardo reported that the experiment was ethical in that he followed the procedures approved by the ethics committee, which appears to be true. However, he rightfully agreed that they should have stopped the study earlier because the subjects were being harmed in the process. Thus, he concluded it was both ethical and unethical, and I agree with him as ethics today has more stringent rules in protecting subjects, and ethics Committee would not have approved this study. In fact, studies like this one helped to focus more on the protecting subjects in research and the rules changed.
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RESPONSE:
1. In the Stanford Prison Experiment could you tell me how an elaborate psychological experiment was conducted and why and its ethical limits?
The experiment
METHOD
? To conduct the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo constructed a mock correctional facility in the basement of ...
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