If you are not familiar with the now-classic Stanford Prison Experiment done by Philip Zimbardo, there is a new short video at The New York Times that is well worth watching.
In this interview, Zimbardo summarizes the shocking findings of the original experiment, which showed that “normal” students easily adopted roles of sadistic guards or broken prisoners. Zimbardo discusses the parallels with recent events in the US prisons in Iraq, and introduces his new book titled The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=d3cee846a166e3b7bad1e51843da3375feecde91
Thanks to Cognitive Daily for the pointer.