Back in 1971, Dr. Philip Zimbardo conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, in which he put young students in a basement-turned-prison and assigned them roles as either prisoners or guards. The plan was to study the way the dynamic of authority would affect their behavior over a period of two weeks. The experiment produced such psychological abuse and degredation of the "prisoners" that Zimbardo called it off after six days.
The experiment hits the big screen on July 17 with a new film, "The Stanford Prison Experiment," which dramatizes the procedure's quick devolution into chaos and has reopened the conversation regarding what Zimbardo's research tells us about human nature and the power of control.
HuffPost Live's Alyona Minkovski spoke with Zimbardo on Tuesday to look back on his unforgettable work. In the video above, watch Zimbardo discuss his decision-making during the experiment and what's happened to his subjects since they left his mock prison 44 years ago.
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