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The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Ethics Violations

Dallas J. Helsel

Department of Social Science, Chesapeake College

PSC 150: General Psychology

Professor Jennifer L. Hawley

April 10th, 2023

The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Ethics Violations

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by psychologist Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo and his

collaborators on August 15-21, 1971. Zimbardo’s goal of the experiment was to examine the

psychological effects of authority and helplessness in a prison environment over the course of 2

weeks. The 21 participants were divided into two groups at random and given $15 per day; one

group was made up of prisoners and the other group was made up of guards. After being

detained by real police officers at their homes, the prisoner group underwent the same process

that all other real prisoners do. They were transferred to a “Prison” facility which was actually

Stanford University's Psychology Department’s basement designed to resemble a prison in order

to mimic the conditions of a genuine prison. The researchers monitored and recorded each

participant. During the 2nd day of the experiment, the prisoners had mounted a rebellion and

because of that, the guards devised a system of rewards and penalties to control the inmates.

Over the course of this experiment, several of the guards had grown cruel and authoritarian,

while a number of the inmates became depressed and scared for their lives. Three inmates were

released after the first four days because they were so traumatized from their experiences and so

less than a week into the experiment, Zimbardo had to terminate the experiment. Zimbardo came

to the conclusion that individual behaviors are largely under the control of social forces and

environmental contingencies rather than personality traits, character or will power. (Zimbardo, P.

G. 1971) Despite these results, Zimbardo and his experiment has been criticized for numerous

ethical violations, including issues with informed consent of participants, fraud, and avoiding

harm.

SPE’s Violations: What Went Wrong?

One common violation within the ethics of psychological research is informed consent. It is

essential for your subjects to be fully informed about the experiment. How this violation

occurred within the Stanford Prison experiment was the arrest of the prisoner participants at their

residences. (Zimbardo n.d, pg 1). Before this had happened, Zimbardo had explained to the

prisoner participants what would transpire in the experiment on Orientation Day. However,

Zimbardo knowingly didn’t inform them that they were going to be arrested at their homes by

real police officers as he wanted it to be an element of surprise. Even in the consent form that

was provided by Zimbardo, which all the participants had to sign to participate in the

experiment, does not state that the prisoner participants were to be arrested at their homes by real

police officers (Zimbardo P. G. 1971). This violates the APA’s Code of Conduct Section 8.02a

(APA, 2017) which talks about informed consent within research. It states that “psychologists

informed participants about the purpose of the research, expected duration, and procedures”.

This rule was obviously broken when the prisoner participants were arrested because they were

never informed of it by Zimbardo or in the consent form that they had signed so they couldn't

have given their consent if they were never informed of it.

Fraud can be a very serious ethics violation in psychological research. How fraud occurred

within the SPE was that new evidence had shown that the guards were coached to be cruel to the

prisoner subjects. According to Zimbardo, the guards had easily and quickly settled with their

new roles; however the guards had known what results that the experiment was supposed to

produce. According to Thibault Le Texier, who did an article about debunking the Stanford

Prison Experiment, talks about how Zimbardo trained the “guards in the sense that they were

given general lines of action like producing a psychological environment since the prison that

they built in the stanford lab did not arouse it on its own”(Le Texier.T. 2019). Here, Zimbardo is
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favoring guards over the prisoners since he is telling them what to do since he never told the

prisoners what to do. This is known as experimenter bias which is brought on by an experimenter

whose expectations regarding the results of the experiment can be conveyed to the participants.

These modifications that Zimbardo does through experimenter bias are known as scientific fraud

which is unquestionably a violation of APA’s Code of Ethics Principle C (APA, 2017) which

talks about how psychologists are not supposed to be engaging in fraud. The guards had known

the results that Zimbardo had wanted to produce and were trained to meet his goals through his

experimenter bias which is fraud rather than letting the guards act naturally in the environment of

the experiment.

Preventing Harm within a psychological research study is fundamental within the ethics of

psychological research. It's important that your subjects in your study are safe from any dangers

both physically and mentally. The Stanford Prison Experiment had violated section 3.04 (a) of

APA’s Code of Conduct, which deals with preventing harm(APA, 2017). Zimbardo's position as

the prison warden within the experiment quickly dismissed any concerns about how the inmates

were being emotionally degraded and mistreated by the guards which occurred as he became

fascinated by how quickly the participants assumed the roles they were given in the experiment.

In addition, Section 3.04(b), which specifies that psychologists themselves shouldn't take part in

or help with anything that can lead to physical or mental harm, was violated(APA, 2017). In an

interview, Zimbardo admits to becoming overly immersed in the experiment to the extent that he

felt like a prison superintendent. (Dean, J. 2023, January 5). While he might not have directly

taken part in the cruel acts as a prison superintendent, he was undoubtedly complicit that led to

the overall abuse.

The Big Debate: Results or Ethics?

Scholars have debated on whether the legacy of the stanford prison experiment in introductory

texts should be known for the results or the ethical violations that had been committed. This

experiment’s legacy should be known for its ethical violations. The validity and credibility of the

Stanford Prison Experiment has basically diminished since Zimbardo had violated research

ethics like informed consent, fraud and preventing harm. It will be difficult for others in the

scientific community and the public to believe the conclusions he drew from his data when the

procedures he used to gather that data has violated research ethics so Zimbardo's results are

unreliable which is why we should not focus on the results but rather the ethics violations that

had affected those said results.

References:

G American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of

dddddddddconduct. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index

Dean, J. (2023, January 5). Stanford Prison Experiment: Zimbardo’s Famous Social

Psychology Study. PsyBlog.

https://www.spring.org.uk/2023/01/stanford-prison-experiment.php

Le Texier, T. (2019). Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist,

74(7), 823–839. https://doi-org.ccproxy.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/amp0000401.supp

Zimbardo, P. G. (1971). The Pathology of Imprisonment. VonSteuben.org.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1971). Consent form, 1971. Stanford Digital Repository.

Zimbardo, P (n.d) Long Version SlideShow. (n.d.). Stanford Prison Experiment - Spotlight at
Stanford. https://exhibits.stanford.edu/spe/catalog/xs470gd9944