Week 2 Blog: Ethical/Unethical?

I think that there are aspects to Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment that are both ethical and unethical; it is really hard for me to say that the experiment was completely unethical or completely ethical. First, although the subjects were able to choose whether or not they wanted to participate he offered them money as a reward, which probably made them more likely to participate regardless of what the study was about and consequently was a little bit unethical. One ethical thing he did was randomly assign the roles of prisoners/guards. Also, Zimbardo did not directly tell the prison guards how they should treat their "prisoners", it was left up to the guards discretion. One aspect that may be traumatizing to their prisoners is that the experiment took place in their schools psychology building basement. This would be a reminder each time they passed by the building or had a class in the building, which could have been prevented if Zimbardo held the experiment in a building off campus, in a place that people were not familiar with. After the experiment was shut down, it was noted that many "prisoners" had emotional disturbances, so Zimbardo should have made sure that they were put in therapy to help them cope. Overall, this experiment could have been handled differently, but then again so can numerous studies.