The Human Behavior Experiments

"The Human Behavior Experiments", a new documentary by Alex Gibney, director of "Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room" is a sobering look at some famous behavioral studies that show how easy it is to get moral, up-standing people to engage in unethical behavior and how it relates to our conduct in Iraq. As Professor Zimbardo (of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment) says in the film, it's not that there are a few bad apples, it's that the whole barrel is rotten.

Showing this month on The Sundance Channel.

On a related note, I think it's time for somebody to make an American version of "Das Experiment", the movie which asks "can anyone who speaks German possibly be evil?"

And while we're on the subject, I'm reminded of a 1970's TV movie starring William Shatner called "The Tenth Level", which was based on the "Milgram" experiment profiled in the Sundance film. Whatever you might think of Shatner, it had a heckuva cast: Lindsay Crouse, Ossie Davis, and John Travolta among them.