Philip Zimbardo

An intensive psychological test by Professor Philip Zimbardo in 1971 saw US students volunteer to play prisoners and guards in an bid to examine the nature of good and evil. Within five days, four prisoners had broken down and another was on hunger strike. This film, containing strong language, reveals why the test was abandoned after less than a week.

On a talkshow, actor and German TV ikon Joachim Fuchsberger recalls how the games for his show "Nur nicht nervös werden" (Don't Get Nervous), first broadcast on West German TV in 1960, were developed along the lines of American psychiatry. Asked "So how many crazy people watched you?", he responded: "A whole crazy, psychologically disturbed nation". Why were the Germans or to be more precise, the West Germans, a psychologically disturbed nation at that time? This is a film about cheerful and serious games, therapies for re-education and self-imposed re-education, as well as the history of the idea of permanent revolution. Those appearing include directors and producers of gameshows, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and the diversely paranoid.

This is a story of how the lips of America became sealed. How we stood by and let our minds be censored. How countless lives were lost in the name of comfort and correctness. This is how we killed fourteen people in San Bernardino, CA on December 2nd, 2015 without saying a single word.

Compared to girls, research shows that boys in the United States are more likely to be diagnosed with a behaviour disorder, prescribed stimulant medications, fail out of school, binge drink, commit a violent crime, and/or take their own lives. The Mask You Live In asks: as a society, how are we failing our boys?

The Stanford prison experiment was a landmark psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular, to the real world circumstances of prison life, and the effects of imposed social roles on behaviour. It was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University.

In the summer of 1971, Philip Zimbardo, Craig Haney, and Curtis Banks carried out a psychological experiment to test a simple question. What happens when you put good people in an evil place-does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? To explore this question, college student volunteers were pretested and randomly assigned to play the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison at Stanford University. Although the students were mentally healthy and knew they were taking part in an experiment, some guards soon because sadistic and the prisoners showed signs of acute stress and depression. After only six days, the planned two-week study spun out of control and had to be ended to prevent further abuse of the prisoners. This dramatic demonstration of the power of social situations is relevant to many institutional settings, such as the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.