Social Psychology and Ethics

Below are the Week 7 Forum Topic instructions. General posting requirements can be viewed by
clicking the Week 7 Forum “View Full Description” link on the Forums screen under the heading
“Forum General Posting Requirements”.
Be sure to read the Weekly Lesson before attempting this Forum exercise. After completing the
lesson, return to the forum here, click the “Post New Conversation” link at the top Week 7 Forum
screen, and respond to the following questions.
One of the most famous psychological experiments of all time, was conducted by Dr. Philip
Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University. To read more of the details of this
experiment, visit http://www.prisonexp.org. Take some time to watch the video on the Zimbardo
Prison Experiment by clicking here. After reading about the experiment, exploring the website
and watching the video, answer the following:

1. Was it ethical to do the prison study in the way that Zimbardo conducted it? Why or why not?
Explain your position substantively.
2. What social psychological constructs did the study reveal? Would the same information have
been learned if the study had been conducted differently? If yes, how might you adapt the study
to address ethical concerns and still obtain results relevant to our understanding of behavior in
social settings?
3. How do the social psychology concepts of conformity and the power of the social situation that
we are studying this week relate to what happened during the brief period of time that the prison
study ran. Where in the description of how the study unfolded did we see evidence of these
concepts?