The Stanford Jail Experiment with SHOCKING RESULTS. It had to be stopped early.

http://www.alternet.org/culture/inside-stanford-prison-experiment-six-days-fake-prison-and-how-they-changed-world?akid=13313.294211.TSGef6&rd=1&src=newsletter1039559&t=15

To say that this little exercise in role-playing went off the rails is like saying the Hindenburg encountered a technical glitch. Zimbardo has said he had no idea whether these young men would take their assigned roles seriously, or whether any actual conflict or drama would emerge. After the first day, he was worried that his two-week prison simulation might be a tedious bust. After six days, he finally realized that the entire scenario had spun out of control into a nightmarish spectacle of brutality and abasement, and shut the whole thing down. The “guards” had increasingly become petty and sadistic tyrants, seeking to crush all signs of individuality and resistance. Some prisoners had become so demoralized and isolated they had lost touch with external reality, and began to believe they were actual convicts serving hard time.

And it wasn’t just the college kids who got sucked too deeply into this invented narrative. Zimbardo has repeatedly acknowledged, and told the New York audience again on Wednesday night, that he should have pulled the plug several days earlier than he did. It’s like a theological parable about a man who plays God and then cannot escape his created universe. Rather than standing outside as an observer, Zimbardo played the role of the “prison warden,” who could grant paroles and hand out privileges or punishments. Even that imaginary power distorted his perspective, and made him part of the experiment.