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1 Current Res. J. Soc. Sci. & Human. 45 (2018)
How to Get out of the Stanford Prison Experiment: Revisiting Social Science Research Ethics

handle is hein.journals/crjssh1 and id is 45 raw text is: Vol. 01, No. (2) 2018, Pg. 45-59 Current Research Journal of Social Sciences Journal Website: journalofsocialsciences.org How to get out of the Stanford Prison Experiment: Revisiting Social Science Research Ethics HARRY PERLSTADT Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing MI. USA. Abstract The Stanford Prison Experiment has continued to raise questions about social science research ethics. Male student volunteers were randomly assigned to be prisoners or guards in a simulation in which the guards became sadistic and the prisoners showed extreme stress. Two ethical issues are the ability of the participants to leave the experiment and the failure to provide adequate oversight and intervening to limit the abuse of the prisoners. In 2018, these issues were revisited and some declared the experiment unscientific and untrustworthy. However, the experiment was carried out before many social science research ethics were established. A detailed description of the experimentreveals insights on how group dynamics and social structure can encourage normal individuals to harm one another in a prison environment. The study is a cautionary tale that should be included in textbooks to improve social science research, demonstrate the need for research ethics, and prevent outrageous treatment of prisoners in the real world. Introduction Philip Zimbardo's 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment randomly assigned young male volunteers to the roles of guards or prisoners for a two-week period. Zimbardo was interested in how an individual adapts to a new environment and role. In 1971 he set up a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford University psychology building. The guards soon dehumanized and abused the prisoners to the extent that many of the prisoners wished to withdraw from Article History Received: 03 December 2018 Accepted: 19 February 2019 Keywords Prisons; Research Ethics; Simulations Total Institutions; Zimbardo. the experiment and he had tocall off and shut down the experiment after only six days. The simulation raised philosophical and social science questions about the nature and source of evil, whether humans can liberate themselves from the constraints and alienation of society, and the capability of the social sciences to answer the question of what makes people do what they do. It also started a debate over human nature, the social sciences, and research ethics that has lasted almost 50 years. CONTACT Harry Perlstadtgg perlstad@msu.edu 9 Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing MI. USA. @ 2018 The Author(s). Published by Enviro Research Publishers. This is an @ Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY). Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.12944/CRJSSH.1.2.01

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