Utilitarianism Vs Stanford Prison Experiment

Kantianism and Utilitarianism Versus the Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by psychologist Philip Zimbardo in aims to examine human behavior (Mcleod). The study took 24 college students and randomly assigned them to be prisoners or guards in a simulated prison environment: a basement in the Stanford Psychology building. While the experiment was supposed to last for two weeks, it was cut short after only six days due to the guards exhibiting brutal behavior and the prisoners suffering psychologically. While implicit Utilitarian calculations could attempt to justify the actions in the experiment, strict Kantians would have found the experiment morally unacceptable. Utilitarian principles value scientific

This experiment gave an insight into human behavior when faced with power dynamics. In a Utilitarian view, this outweighs the psychological damage to the participants because it furthers scientific progress and benefits society. In the Utilitarian perspective, “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question” (Mill, 10). This implies that it is better to be knowledgeable than ignorant: although the participants faced psychological damage, what was learned from the experiment, both scientifically and societally, outweighs these downfalls. Strict Kantians, on the other hand, would argue that the prison experiment violates their values of respect for persons and autonomy. “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means” (Kant,