Stanford Prison Experiment: Ethical or Unethical?

After viewing a few videos about Dr. Zimbardo's experiment with prison which involved his college students, I saw that the experiment was completely unethical. I understand, that they took it as a experiment to learn, but for many of the students that participated in it, were left with scars that they will never forget. I happened to stumble across another video with a student who was a guard, and another who was a prisoner, and the prisoner said he didn't feel like it was a experiment, but as if they were in a real prison.


Before we go into detail about how I believe the experiment to be a unethical, I wanna share some information about the experiment. It was an experiment designed by Dr. Zimabardo, and students of a class he taught participated in begin randomly selected to being chosen as a prison guard, or a prison inmate. The experiment was supposed to run 2 weeks, but was cut back to 6 days because of the negative intensity the lurked on the experiment. Now the guards getting power, misused it, and helped make the atmosphere more jail like. This is where the problem beings.


The students as prisoners had to stay in their cells for 24 hours, while the guards only had to stay for 8. This caused the prisoners to have the feeling that it was real, and not an experiment. Students went through so much torture from their classmates, that they ended up not being able to consciously say that they want to quit the experiment. The guards put pressure on the prisoners, and mistreated them


The experiment is unethical. If we look at it, the experiment wasn't an experiment but a really intense temporary feel of negativity. The shock and what the students had to go through left permanent scars which are still talked about today. Both the guards and the prisoners (students) felt as if they changed when they went in costume. The guards took advantage of their power, which goes to show that power without responsibility is bad for society and an individual. This experiment made the students loose their focus of what was the main reason they are going thru the experiment and what the hypothesis was. The corruption in the experiment was power. 


Even in today's world, the Abu Ghraib incident with the guards and the prisoners has been such a negative outlook on the United States. It isn't a positive to mistreat prisoners. It is inhumane and is shunned upon by society. Leaving prisoners to have permanent scars of what went on with them while they were in custody. Its a terrible thing to let power get the best of you. 


The things we encounter shouldn't just be things we see, but things we learn from. No matter what it is, we always can take a learning experience from everything. We learned that power without responsibility just causes problems and get to people's head which lead to hurtful action. Always learn from things we see and hear. It helps make us better people to learn from mistakes, but not just of ours but of other's mistakes a swell.