”The Stanford Prison Experiment” stars Billy Crudup as Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychology professor who hosts a real life experiment where some students played prison guards and others, the inmates.

MICHELLE: What’s wrong with this film is probably the truth. I mean, it blew me away how quickly people got into their respective roles in this experiment, especially given that the roles they would play were chosen at random.

ALLEN: I have a degree in psychology and I can tell you, if you retain nothing else from studying psychology, you will remember the names Milgram and Zimbardo. Stanley Milgram was in charge of the famous “10th Level” experiment and Zimbardo the Stanford Prison Experiment. While both studies produced tons of useful data, they are better known for establishing a set of ethics which are used in psychology today. Under today’s rules, neither study could be conducted.

MICHELLE: I’ve taken some psychology classes and I can recall seeing some of the interviews. Let’s just say this role playing game got weird, fast. I’d like to think, if it were me, I would have the spine to tell the lead guard he’s turned into a little Napoleon and that this was all make-believe. But who knows?

ALLEN: The reason these studies were so traumatic is they revealed to the participants how easily they could become monsters. The central question the studies explored is, how does a human being go from being a good person to dehumanizing and abusing others. Basically they were trying to understand how an average decent German could end up being a guard at an extermination camp. The film does an excellent job of exploring how, when given the responsibility to control others and carte blanche on how we can do that, some of our darkest instincts can emerge.

MICHELLE: After a while, the most interesting part involves watching how these former strangers bonded along their made-up lines and how the professor gets sucked into identifying with the guards. Creepy.

ALLEN: That is the part of the study I got from the movie that I never did when I studied it, how Zimbardo became caught up in the experiment himself. He keeps it going long after he should have, because he has taken on the role of Warden and lost his objectivity. Only those who showed up after the experiment was running recognized how bad it had become. It’s a real lesson on how we have to be careful of our own perceptions.