Alena sez: "Details of the infamous 1971 Prison Experiment at Stanford University (these types of experiments are today banned due to the psychological harm inflicted on the subjects). In the study, ordinary college students, who responded to an ad for paid subjects of an experiment, were randomly assigned to one of two groups, prisoners or guards, in a simulated prison environment. The ensuing startlingly rapid transformation of ordinary young people (and of Psychology professors!) into sadistic prison guards and fearful, hopeless, and identity-stripped prisoners is astounding."
Prisoner #8612 began suffering from acute emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, uncontrollable crying, and rage. In spite of all of this, we had already come to think so much like prison authorities that we thought he was trying to "con" us — to fool us into releasing him…
[A] colleague had heard we were doing an experiment, and he came to see what was going on. I briefly described what we were up to, and Gordon asked: "Say, what's the independent variable in this study?" I got really angry at him. Here I had a prison break on my hands. The security of my men and the stability of my prison was at stake, and now, I had to deal with this bleeding-heart, liberal, academic, effete dingdong who was concerned about the independent variable!
(Thanks, Alena!)
