I've been feeling a bit down the last few days. It's not because of things going on in my personal life, really, although I do have some stressful things going on right now. No, the reason for my dark mood has to do with a television show I watched last Thursday night...

The recent revelations about the Haditha murders, and earlier, Abu Ghraib, have left Americans feeling appalled and ashamed; most of us find such acts inhuman and incomprehensible. Surely, we tell ourselves, we, or anyone we know, could never engage in such behavior. Anyone who could perpetrate such unspeakable acts must be not a part of our community; not like us. The media pundits describe the perpetrators as a "few bad apples;" and the ex-military men who are invited to comment on the cable news shows talk about new training programs to instill discipline. But are such acts really outside of the norm? Are they truly inhuman, or do they represent a side of ourselves that most would just simply prefer not to recognize or acknowledge?

A new documentary produced through a collaboration between the Sundance channel and Court TV explores this issue, among other similar social questions, by examining a series of social science experiments performed in the '60s and '70s.

One of them, the Stanford Prison Experiment, has become famous again, in the light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. For those unfamiliar with it, the experiment, funded by the military to try to determine a means to reduce prison conflict, created a mock prison on the Stanford University campus. Research subjects were recruited from the undergraduate student population and selected for their psychological health and normalcy. The subjects were divided into two groups, prisoners and guards, and told that they were to take on these respective roles; beyond the instruction that they not engage in violence, very little other direction was given by the researchers. The circumstances of the experiment were created to resemble as closely as possible the conditions of real prison life: prisoners had to stay in the mock prison, while guards could return to their real homes when off shift; guards were dressed in uniform while prisoners were given special clothing and referred to not by name but number.

It was intended that the experiment was to last two weeks; a riot broke out on the second day. After only six days the entire experiment had to be halted because in just that short time conditions had deteriorated so completely that extreme abuse and sadism was being practiced by the guards, and many of the prisoners were emotionally and psychologically breaking down. (Remember, both the guards and the prisoners were selected as subjects because they were so normal and healthy.)

The primary researcher of the Stanford Prison Experiment, Phillip Zimbardo, has given expert witness at the Abu Ghraib trials, and written several articles about the predictability of such atrocities. We've known for decades, based on his research, the high likelihood that events like Haditha and Abu Ghraib will continue to occur. And yet, at each new occurance we are surprised anew, while nothing is done in the intervening time to prevent them. One has to ask why.

For a good and detailed overview of the Stanford Prison Experiment, you could try the wikipedia entry about it and/or visit the official Stanford Prison Experiment website The Human Behavior Experiments airs tonight at 11PM on Court TV, and on the Sundance Channel on Monday, June 5 at 7:45 PM; Monday, June 12 at 10PM, and on Wednesday, June 14 at 12PM.