Assignment task: Please watch the video about Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. Then answer the question below.
As discussed in your textbook and this week's lecture notes, there are Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) at every university where research is being conducted. IRBs are designed to ensure that researchers are meeting ethical guidelines set forth by their university and that they are not mistreating their research participants This experiment is famous not only for what Zimbardo discovered, but also because Zimbardo has been criticized for pushing the envelope in terms of ethics.
What are the ethical concerns associated with this experiment in your opinion? Do the benefits of this research outweigh the costs? What could Zimbardo have done differently (if anything) to make this experiment more ethical. Should the IRB allow a study like this to be conducted today? If not, why? If so, under what conditions should a study like this be allowed? Finally, if you were a participant in this study, how do you think you would have behaved as a prisoner? As a guard?