Stanford Prison/Role Playing

I think that prisoner 416 had the biggest impact on the study. He actually refused to eat and had the other prisoners revolting against him. After only a few days of role play, everyone had embraced their roles too fully. When it got to the point where someone is starving themselves and prisoners are getting punished like they were real convicts, it had to end. Basically, the experiment had turned into real life and the attitudes from day 1 to day 6 changed greatly. On the first day everyone was laughing and taking it as a joke and by the sixth day the guards were punishing and publicly humiliating the prisoners in front of eachother.