What Is The Stanford Prison Experiment Unethical

The Stanford prison experiment – a how to guide on how not to ethically use deception and uphold duty of care.
The Stanford prison experiment, conducted by Zimbardo (1971), is a study that is covered from the first year of VCE Psychology up until the very end of a master’s degree or PhD in psychology. It is renowned for the participants inhumane action and its interesting revelations about the human psyche. But the interest in the experiment goes from its findings to all the unethical conduct Zimbardo and his research assistants exhibited. Before delving into how to avoid the malpractices Zimbardo exhibited, understanding of the details of how ethics were violated in the experiment must be achieved.
From the very beginning of the experiment,

This will determine if any psychological harm occurred. Follow up sessions, at 3-month, 6-month and 12-month should also be required to determine if there was any psychological harm that arose later. This will also help ensure that participants are recovering from the psychological harm and not worsening. 2 or 3 year follow ups may be required depending on the deception and experiment. If psychological harm is determined to be present, the psychologists should offer their services, or provided referrals to other psychologists close to the participants that are within their budgets. It is up to the participants discretion if they want to attend therapy, but they should be provided the means to acquire it.
However, the obvious answer on how to avoid unethically using deception in research is to not lie or omit information. Hilbig et al. (2023) even contend that every published research article should include a statement indicating that no deception was used, to reduce instances of deception in all studies. Psychologists should clearly explain all aspects of the study, including possible events and risks, to the participants in layman terms. Should the researchers believe deception is necessary, they must have their research design approved by an ethics

In the case of research, their conduct refers to their experiment. Taking action to reduce risk of harm, or reduce the impact of harm, upon participants is essential to ensure good ethical practice. However, there is little research on duty of care within research. Most literature revolves around duty of care and confidentiality. An older article uses the Tarasoff case to investigate how to facilitate duty of care in research (Appelbaum & Rosenbaum, 1989). The article states that researchers should attempt to reduce the possibility of violence within their experiments. This may be achieved by removing dangerous individuals from the experiment. Participants who have harmed other participants during a study should be removed immediately. If there is good cause to assume that a participant will harm another participant, they should also be