Gandhi once said, “Our thoughts become our words, our words become our actions, our actions become our character, our character becomes our destiny.” » This same quote was proven in the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1973 by Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo placed an ad in the newspaper asking young men to participate in his experiment and to be paid $15 a day in exchange. Out of 75 volunteers, 24 were chosen as participants. Zimbardo randomly selected the men to be either the prisoners or the guards. With the prison stimulation kept as close to real life as possible, Zimbardo transformed a basement of Stanford University's psychology building into a fake prison. The Stanford Prison Experiment was designed to test whether people would take on the roles they were assigned. The results that followed were astonishing, neither Zimbardo nor his colleagues expected the result. To begin the experiment, Zimbardo arrested the "so-called" prisoners, he did so without warning and had them taken to their local police station. Once there, they were treated like any other prisoner, fingerprinted, photographed and incarcerated. The prisoners were then blindfolded and taken to Stanford University, aka prison. The university has been transformed into a very realistic prison, complete with barred doors and windows, bare walls and small cells. Once the prisoners passed through the gates, they not only lost their freedom but also their own reality. They were stripped naked, deloused, all their personal effects were confiscated and locked up. Prisoners were issued a uniform with a number, now referred to only by their number. There were 3 guards for the 9 prisoners, switching off every 8 hours. Middle of paper......for us. The moment we start seeing ourselves as something else, we start acting like one. Works Cited by Marla Popva. (n / A). The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Most Controversial Psychological Study in History Turns 40 Retrieved from http://brainpickings.org/index.php/Romesh Ratnesar. (July-August 2011). The internal threat. Retrieved from http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page Saul McLeod. (2008). Experience in Zimbardo-Stanford Prison. Retrieved from http://simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html Marla Popva. (n / A). The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Most Controversial Psychological Study in History Turns 40 Retrieved from http://brainpickings.org/index.php/Romesh Ratnesar. (July-August 2011). The internal threat. Retrieved from http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page Saul McLeod. (2008). Experience in Zimbardo-Stanford Prison. Retrieved from http://simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html