The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking The Truth | Official Trailer | National Geographic

I've only been in jail once: the Stanford prison experiment. In the summer of 1971, Dr. Zimbardo took a bunch of college kids, randomly assigned them to be prisoners and guards, and locked them in the basement. The only thing we told the guards was, "Do whatever you have to maintain law and order." It escalated very quickly.

The study shows what happens when you put good people in a bad place. You may think you know what you're dealing with, but you don't. Nobody from the media has ever interviewed me. I was a prisoner, a guard, a guard. I shouted in their faces, "I'm going to hit you so hard it's going to kill your whole family."

Professor Zimbardo made it a point to come up to me and say, "You were fantastic." He's caught in his own trap. He really built his career on this. None of their criticisms hold up—zero. This made me feel terrible my whole life. It's fraud, fraud, fraud!

Anybody to try to reduce human behavior to such simple notions is fraud. You leave it up to the audience: which do you think is the reality?