One example of previous research that has been done which faces ethical issues is Zimbardo 1971 This study involved 24 male participants who were assigned to either the guard condition or the prisoner condition in a simulated prison at Stanford University Zimbardo wanted to find out whether brutality in American prisons was due to dispositional or situational factors The study found that the participants quickly conformed to the assigned roles the guards were being brutal to the prisoners even though before the study they showed no sadistic qualities suggesting this was due to the prison environment There were many ethical issues clearly involved in this study There was arguably not fully informed consent from participants as is what unknown what could potentially happen in the study and the participants who were prisoners did not actually give their permission to being arrested at their homes There was also a huge breach of protection from harm as some participants were experiencing humiliation and distress For example a prisoner was released after 36 hours because they had a screaming and crying fit and showed high levels of anger and distress Also prisoners were made to strip down Milgram s 1963 study was another ethically questionable study which involved 40 male participants who were assigned to a teacher role and a confederate who was assigned to a learner role The teacher was required to read out some word pairs and if the learner got any wrong when reciting them a shock had to be administered by the teacher
