On the second day the guards put down a rebellion. In response the guards decided to break the prisoners moral by dividing and conquering, developing distrust amongst the inmates and consolidating themselves into a working unit.
The effects of this from an ethical point of view is that the inmates were subject to mental and physical mistreatment on a grand scale, meanwhile the guards it seemed had forgotten that the situation was experimental, as they grew more sadistic an abuse of power was displayed. Every prisoner fell under the guard’s arbitrary control as their living conditions continually fell into the realms of degradation and depravity. When an inmate had been in the prison for approximately thirty six hours he displayed acute emotional disturbance, crying and rage. After interview it was decided that he was trying to con his way to early release. He was given the option of remaining but as an informant in exchange for no further harassment from the guards. This did not seem to work as this lead him to telling the other inmates that they could not leave or quit, this lead to his condition worsening as he screamed cursed and began to act crazy. He was released.
This strongly raises the issue of ethical practice, though the experimenter wanted to maintain a ‘real life’ prison scenario, the protection of the prisoner’s human rights were not taken into consideration enough, especially in view of the guards sadistic and aggressive methods. Possibly a real prison guard should have lead the other guards for better reality between guard and inmate.
The next day the family and friends of the inmates arrived to visit them, the experimenters became concerned that the extreme conditions, if witnessed by the family and friends would possibly effect the continuation of the experiment. So they cleaned and fed the inmates, played music through a speaker system, had a cheerleader greet the awaiting visitors. The visitor’s mood was good, as they saw the whole thing as a bit of fun, in this way the experimenters systematically brought the visitors behaviour under situational control. Though the parents complained about the arbitrary rules they complied like good middle class citizens trusting implicitly the words of educated men of medicine.
When the parents were reunited with their children they were shocked to see how drawn and fatigued they seemed to be, when this was raised, the experimenter simply used reverse psychology on a typical American family, by challenging the strength of their child’s resolve and in turn challenging their parenting skills. These methods paid off, and the parents didn’t want to waste anymore of the experimenter’s times and left. Ethically this was a poor decision as the parents weren’t part of the experiment, but were used without thought to how they may react or feel when they would eventually find out that they had been party to a hoax and that their children were actually being treated badly. It is impossible to tell how much the aftershock would affect a family.
From the evidence, not only the guards lost their way but the experimenter also lost the ability to be impartial as the next problem that arose was an intended escape plot. Apparently, the recently released prisoner was going to rally up some of his friends and free the other inmates. If the experimenters were to remain unbiased and act like experimental social psychologists, they would have let the escape plot unfold, simply witnessing and recording the events, but their ability to be impartial was gone and they worried for the security of their prison and began to strategise on how to foil the impending prison break. Clearly the experimenter was deep into his role and the experiment itself was failing from a lack of neutrality. The second plan was to dismantle the prison, move the prisoners, so when the liberators arrived they would find the experimenter sitting there alone and would explain that the experiment was over, that everyone had gone home. After this they would bring the prisoners back and double the guards.
As the experimenter waited anxiously for the intruders to break in, a colleague and former Yale graduate student roommate approached and asked the experimenter what the situation was and what the independent variable was. This question enraged the experimenter, outlining how involved and blinkered he had become, acting more like a prison warden than a research psychologist.
Ethically the experiment was a psychological minefield. Even after being debriefed it is impossible to say whether any lasting damage his been done psychologically to all those who participated, especially the prisoners. Though the subjects were taking part in a paid experiment, the issue of obedience to uniform as well as the behaviour of those in uniform exceeded the expectations of the experimenter.
The human response to those in authority or uniform is also displayed in Hofling’s experiment, where a doctor’s instruction to nurses would override the nurse’s own common sense, or the impulse to question a superior’s instruction.
In the Hofling’s experiment nurses were telephoned by a doctor and instructed to administer a drug to twenty patients. The drug was a placebo, not that the nurses knew this. The drugs were clearly labelled with a warning not to exceed the dosage of ten milligrams however the doctor had instructed the nurses on the telephone to give each patient twenty milligrams. Twenty one out of twenty two nurses complied without question. Ethically this could lead to the nurses questioning their ability to care for others and that if they had made this mistake what had they done in the past. The positive’s are that the nurses have been confronted with their issues over blind trust and that an important lesson has been learnt.
In the case of Milgram, ethics are down to him as an individual as he was a pioneer in social psychological experimentation and free from restrictions as ethical guidelines had yet to be established. Zimbardos theory was sound unfortunately human nature got in the way and his role was lost, making a mockery of the experiment, not that positives can not be drawn from this. Ethically, though guidelines had started to be implemented into psychological experiments ethics were not taken into consideration enough. In Hoflings experiment the ethical practice is flawed but considerably better on the participants, but in comparison to Zimbardos study conformity to authoritative figure is shown yet again.
All three experiments were necessary to the psychological community as ethics were highlighted and conditions for participants would only get better.
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