The Human Behavior Experiments

Documentarian Alex Gibney (ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM) revisits three famous behavioral studies to explore some perennial questions about why human beings commit unethical acts under particular social conditions. Reconsidered are Stanley Milgram’s obedience to authority experiments, in which subjects willingly inflicted pain on another person; Philip Zimbardo’s alarming prisoner and guard role-playing study; and Columbia University’s 1969 experiments which illuminated how being in a group can cause a diffusion of moral responsibility.