"The Stanford Prison Experiment", by Philip K. Zimbardo, describes and experiment that studied authority and obedience. It takes a look how individuals conform to rules in specific social settings. .
On a nice summer morning, students from Palo Alto were arrested and put in the "Stanford County Prison". This fictional prison was developed by psychologists to clinically analyze the prison system. Ten prisoners and eleven guards were put in a school basement which had fundamental elements of a real penitentiary. With time, the interaction between the prisoners and the untrained guards increased. After a fight and a revolt that was suppressed, the jail mates were punished cruelly and disobedience ended. In this illusion of a jail, where prisoners talked mostly about prison matters, one of the captives developed a mental breakdown. This affected only one of the kinder guards, who even interfered with orders. The rest of them did not care for the equally educated man who stopped acting, wanting, and feeling. Later, the prisoners were transferred to a different place, where they were informed about their right to a lawyer. From a guard's diary, it is easy to see the transformation from a pacifist to a vicious prison guard. Because some ethical questions arose, the experiment was terminated on the sixth day. From this, as well as other experiments, we can tell that when we label someone a certain thing, that label becomes reality. That includes guards and prisoners.
