Experimental Ethics

The Stanford Prison Experiment is a tough one to hash out the ethics of. On the one hand, who would have expected these normal, average students to take on such intense roles and abuse each other to the point of significant psychological harm? Certainly nobody before the experiment, which is why it caused such a splash, and continues to be important to this day. But on the other hand, why would you allow people to do things like that to each other in the first place, and when they were doing these things, why did Zimbardo, supposedly an expert and authority figure who should have had the health and safety of the participants in mind at all times, need someone else to tell him to stop it? What he did during the experiment is almost as significant and telling as the experiment itself was. Now, obviously the experiment itself is extremely unethical by today's standards, now that we know what happens, but I think that for the time, you can give them a pass for pure naivete. Now personally, I think Zimbardo is kind of a bad person for not stopping, and to a certain extent encouraging, the obvious torture of the participants in the experiment, but I guess he was doing it in the name of science, which only slightly lessens the disdain I have for him. And I do give him some credit for stopping it once someone snapped him out of his experimenter's blindness.

What makes up for Zimbardo's ethical failures back in the day is that nowadays he has decided to spread the word about the dangers of overempowered authority figures. I think it's good that he is pointing out that when you put someone in a position to maltreat someone else as a part of their job, that is exactly what they will do. They will take on the role of the inhumane torturer, and not think twice about it. Personally, I think that this extends to every single law enforcement officer out there. They are given way too much authority, and then people are surprised when they constantly abuse it. At the same time, people are unwilling to take it away, as if limiting the egregious actions of law enforcement will somehow create a tide of criminals out of nowhere who will terrorize the country. But I digress. This experiment was a teaching moment for the world, and we should all learn from it, because an experiment like this will never be allowed to happen again.