The Stanford Prison Experiment: Ethical?

Before this assignment, I was unfamiliar with the Stanford Prison experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo in the 1970's. He selected a group of college student volunteers to participate for monetary compensation, who were assigned to either "guard" or "prisoner" roles to play, with the intent of the experiment to last two weeks.

Now, based on the "definition" of ethics (which I quote loosely because "ethics" is a difficult term to define), I feel that no, this experiment was not ethical. Firstly, the divide between guards and prisoners was not just one of title, but even for a role-playing type of experiment, the guards were able to distance themselves from the experiment daily. They were only "scheduled" eight-hour shifts per day, and were able to resume normal routines after the shift was over, resuming college classes, home life, jobs, etc.. Contrastingly, the prisoners were kept in confinement, much like an actual prison, 24-hours a day. They were treated like real prisoners, given identification numbers, rigorous schedules for food and activity, and so on. They had no outside contact and most admittedly lost touch with "reality" and were completely engulfed in the experiment. Granted, those variables were necessary to accurately recreate the prison environment. But is it not true that being incarcerated in the real world is a traumatizing experience? The make-believe guards, consciously or not, assumed their role as authoritative figures and liberally brandished forms of torment and humiliation upon the prisoners. The results of the experiment, which was cut short due to the ethical concerns, were conclusive that the "behavior in prisons is more influenced by the nature of the prison situation than by the individual characteristics of those involved." (Giddens et al. 40) Even though the experiment was a "success", it is difficult to say the real psychological trauma that many of the participants experienced was justified for the good of the experiment.

Be that as it may, I cannot think of any other way that this experiment could have been conducted that would have yielded the same conclusion. Perhaps following random newly-convicted criminals from sentencing to incarceration, and conducting fore-interviews to determine personality type, societal roles, etc, and then following them throughout their sentence to observe for change in behavior? Or similarly, investigating new-hires in prison guard positions for changes in authoritative behavior?

I found the interview with Zimbardo related to the situations at Abu Ghraib very enlightening, however. Until researching Abu Ghraib for this assignment, I had only a vague understanding of what kind of abuse took place at that prison. I found it very interesting that his experimental prison guards fundamentally mimicked the behavior of the guards at Abu Ghraib, even in very primitive ways, that prove a causal relationship between authority figures "boredom" and increasing levels of abuse in such institutions. "Creative evil" results from this. Although I do NOT condone such behavior, it almost seems like such an obvious, logical answer to why those guards acted the way they did.

Source cited

Giddens, Anthony et al. Introduction to Sociology. 7th Edition. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 2009. Print.