Just read about Zimbardo's experiment for an organizational behavior class, and thought you guys might like this.
They took 24 'normal' students, who were emotionally stable, healthy, law-abiding, and who scored normal on personality tests, and put them into the role of either prisoner or guard in a mock prison they created.
The students who were chosen (volunteers, paid $15/day) were arrested and taken into custody at random times, to add realism. Some were handcuffed and taken out of class by police officers, and with no explanation to whomever might have been watching. To anyone on the outside, it looked like they were going to jail. Then they were taken to the police dept. to be processed. Eventually, they were taken to the Stanford University mock prison.
The results are very interesting. I'll let you find them out for yourself, because it's worth a longer read than I'm willing to type
Here's the website for the project:
http://www.prisonexp.org/
http://www.prisonexp.org/slide-1.htm for the informative slideshow.