If we talk about criticism we must keep in mind that it exercises judgment on something or someone. When a major new discovery is released or a major event occurs, it is expected to be criticized in many ways. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay We can see this in Phillip Zimbardo's social psychology experiment Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) of 1971 when the results and conclusions of the experimenters were released to the public, it was only a matter of time for criticism to flood in causing controversy over penalties both scientific and ethical. One of the main criticisms of this experiment was that the experimental evaluation applied to the study by the experimenters led to subjective and anecdotal conclusions. The experiment did not follow a scientific method. The fact that the participants were meticulously selected, subjected to psychological tests and chosen from a group of male students of similar age also makes the experiment impossible to replicate to the rest of society, causing the lack of generalizability. Based on these arguments several critics claimed that it was more of a demonstration than a scientific experiment from which Zimbardo defended himself by stating the following statement at the 1996 Toronto Symposium: I hereby affirm that none of these criticisms presents any evidence substantial that alters the validity of the SPE main conclusion regarding the importance of understanding how systemic and situational forces can operate to influence individual behavior in negative or positive directions, often without our personal awareness. The central message of the SPE is not that a psychological simulation of prison life is identical to reality, or that prisoners and guards always or even usually behave as they did in the SPE. Rather, the SPE serves as a cautionary tale about what could happen to each of us if we underestimate the extent to which the power of social roles and external pressures can influence our actions. SPE. They argued that participants in psychological experiments are more likely to do what they believe researchers want them to do; in other words, critics argued that the participants were acting out. In fact, there is a statement made by one of the subjects who served as a guard during the experiment that supports this criticism. After making this statement, Zimbardo wrote that that specific student's actions had gone "well beyond the simple role of a tough guard" and that his actions and those of the other guards "tell us something important about human nature." On the other hand, the moral and ethical aspects were also highly criticized, indeed they were those that aroused the most controversy. The students who played as prisoners were stripped of their identity and who they are by the outside world, and were also traumatized emotionally and psychologically. Meanwhile, the students playing the guards were judged to display "genuine sadistic tendencies" acquired from the role they had to play. Even Zimbardo himself remained deeply absorbed in his role as superintendent. -I began to talk, to walk, to act like a rigid institutional authority figure more concerned with the safety of 'my prison' than the needs of the young people entrusted to my care as a psychological researcher. In a certain sense, I consider the extent to which I have transformed myself to be the deepest measure of the power of the situation – Zimbardo (2004), this conduct makes him incapable of controlling or acting according to his role as an experimenter and.