Stanford Prison Experiment vs. Little Albert Experiment

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Stanford Prison Experiment
Little Albert Experiment
Comparison and the APA Code of Ethics
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Psychologists and scientists conduct experiments to explain the existence of different phenomena in the human environment. However, experiments carried out on humans without informed consent or knowledge are unlawful and thus considered unethical. This essay will summarize and compare Stanford Prison Experiment and Little Albert Experiment by John Watson. In addition, the essay will detail which particular statements from the APA Code of Ethics were violated during each study.

Stanford Prison Experiment

For a social psychology experiment known as the Stanford Prison Experiment, 24 participants played the roles of either inmates or guards in a mock correctional facility. The experiment was conducted in August 1971 at Stanford University and was supported by the United States Office of Naval Research (Brady & Logsdon, 1988). Over two weeks, participants played various roles and were labeled to assess how those factors influenced their actions and interactions with others. When the abuse of prisoners reached an intolerable level, lead researcher Philip G. Zimbardo stopped the project.

Experiment subjects were “arrested” by real police and taken to a fake penitentiary in the basement of a university building. The inmates were then treated with humiliations meant to replicate life behind bars (Brady & Logsdon, 1988). The guards were handed mirrored sunglasses to ensure no eye contact between guards and inmates. So that Zimbardo’s desired “climate of tyranny” could be established rapidly, all inmates were required to wear a “dress” as a costume and walk around with a chain barricaded to one ankle (Brady & Logsdon, 1988). The experimenters watched and recorded all of the volunteers, both guards, and prisoners.

There was a prison mutiny on day two, which was a remarkable feat. The guards eventually devised a system of punishments and rewards to keep the inmates in line (Brady & Logsdon, 1988). Three inmates were released after only four days because they had grown so frightened by their experience. A number of the detainees got unhappy and disoriented, while a select few guards turned nasty and authoritarian during the experiment (Reicher et al., 2020). Zimbardo ended the experiment a little over a week from when it began, but only after an external observer arrived and expressed horror.

Little Albert Experiment

The Little Albert Experiment conducted by study behaviorist John B. Watson is well-known in psychology. The results of Ivan Pavlov’s studies with conditioned dogs inspired the current experiment, which aimed to expand existing knowledge of conditioning’s effects (Rilling, 2000). Watson sought to investigate whether or not comparable feelings may be observed in humans. Nevertheless, the experiment did not adhere to the code of conduct expected in such studies.

Albert, a 9-month-old infant, had never shown any signs of being afraid of rodents. Albert, who was 11 months old at the start of the experiment, showed no signs of fear or aversion when John Watson introduced a rat to him, along with other furry animals and items (Cornwell et al., 1980). When he was done showing Albert the rat, he turned around and began creating much noise by hammering on a steel bar several times behind the baby. After being conditioned to associate the rat with a loud noise, Albert sobbed whenever the rat was nearby (Cornwell et al., 1980). Even though he never heard the loud noise, he nonetheless exhibited fearful reactions when shown the other animals (Rilling, 2000). This classic conditioning experiment illustrates the concept perfectly. Watson’s investigation led him to postulate that primal emotions like fear may play a significant role in shaping one’s identity.

Comparison and the APA Code of Ethics

When the two experiments are compared, the Stanford Prison Experiment carried experiments on adults while the Little Albert Experiment participant was an infant who had not fully developed. The participants in Zimbardo’s experiment were confronted with taking part in an experiment and agreed that they were paid for their voluntary. In the Watson experiment, the participant Albert was not informed of the experiment nor his parent but was experimented on without his consent. However, both experiments were conducted based on the psychology and behavior of human beings when exposed to different conditions and environments.

APA (2017) Code of Ethics states, “Psychologists take reasonable steps to avoid harming their clients/patients, students, supervisees, research participants, organizational clients, and others with whom they work, and to minimize harm where it is foreseeable and unavoidable.” The fact that Little Albert was damaged during the experiment raised ethical concerns. This is because, unlike when he was a baby, Albert was not predisposed to dislike white rats; instead, he developed this aversion through classical conditioning. Prisoners in Stanford Prison Experiment also suffered harm since they experienced trauma from the treatment they received during the experiments.

According to the APA Code of Ethics, when conducting experiments, psychologists should seek the informed consent of the individual participants in an understandable language. In the absence of subject consent, informed consent from the authorized representative is required (APA, 2017). No such agreement was obtained from Albert’s mother, another ethical problem with Little Albert Experiment. Zimbardo was not certain of the experiment’s results, raising many ethical concerns about the study’s subjects’ lack of ability to give informed consent. The inmates also did not give their permission to be “arrested” at their homes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Little Albert Experiment both fall under the category of unethical research because they exploited human subjects as the focus of their psychological studies. Both tests had breached the APA Code of Ethics, specifically the code that required obtaining informed consent from the subjects and the code that required avoiding causing any harm to the test subjects. Both experiments also used human beings as the study subjects, which is considered unethical.

References

American Psychological Association (APA). (2017). Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Web.

Brady, F. N., & Logsdon, J. M. (1988). Zimbardo’s “Stanford Prison Experiment” and the Relevance of Social Psychology for Teaching Business Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 7(9), 703–710.

Cornwell, D., Hobbs, S., & Prytula, R. (1980). Little Albert rides again. American Psychologist, 35(2), 216–217. Web.

Reicher, S. D., Van Bavel, J. J., & Haslam, S. A. (2020). Debate around leadership in the Stanford Prison Experiment: Reply to Zimbardo and Haney (2020) and Chan et al (2020). American Psychologist, 75(3), 406–407. Web.

Rilling, M. (2000). John Watson’s paradoxical struggle to explain Freud. American Psychologist, 55(3), 301–312. Web.

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