If a psychology study claimed it would “change the way you think” for the rest of your life, would you do it? Fifteen volunteers for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s latest reality show took a risk to know themselves better, and ended up imprisoned.

The BBC’s new show is called “The Experiment” and is modeled after the famous Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Stanford Psychology Prof. Philip Zimbardo.

Zimbardo’s 1971 study was aborted early when several volunteers displayed signs of mental disturbance and one prisoner developed a psychosomatic rash. After his study was terminated preemptively, Zimbardo vowed that the prison experiment would never be repeated.

“There is no reason to replicate the study without new reasons for uncovering valuable information about human nature,” Zimbardo said.

The TV study will be conducted by Exeter University Psychology Prof. Alex Haslam and St. Andrews University Prof. Stephen Reicher. They admit their experiment is based on the Stanford Prison Study but say that it also draws on important psychological issues Zimbardo’s study did not address.

“‘The Experiment’ is concerned with how domination works and also with resistance to inequality,” said Reicher.

Reicher and Haslam ran the experiment for the BBC in a west London sound studio they converted into a temporary prison.

Zimbardo, who is currently president-elect of the American Psychology Association, was contacted by Haslam and Reicher in the hopes he would advise them on running the experiment. He refused as a result of what he has learned since 1971.

“The power of such situations makes good people engage in evil behavior,” said Zimbardo. “Role playing can become a new reality in which people suffer mentally and physically.”

According to Zimbardo, the BBC was convinced the show would be a hit and ignored his warnings.

The 15 participants were split up into groups of prisoners and guards for ten days in January, and warned they would be faced with exercise, hardships, hunger, solitude and anger.

The BBC production team did agree with Zimbardo’s request to have an around-the-clock external committee given the power to terminate the experiment. The newspaper The Guardian reported the committee discontinued the study a day early, as the prisoners were showing signs of harm to their physical and emotional well-being.

Even if the study was cut short by one day, Haslam said their data was not affected.

“We were able to collect an enormous amount of qualitative and quantitative data and the story it tells is fascinating, complex and important,” Haslam said.

Yet many psychologists, including Zimbardo, believe made-for-television experiments are not capable of producing accurate data or displaying social realities.

“The Heisenberg Indeterminacy Principle is working here,” Zimbardo said. “Knowing they were being filmed changed the nature of what was being filmed, so there can be no valid conclusions drawn.”

In “Survivor”-type reality shows, participants often volunteer in the hopes of becoming actors and thus “perform” for the camera rather than displaying their normal social behaviorsm, according to Zimbardo.

“Everyone knows the purpose of surviving is to become a celebrity,” Zimbardo said.

Junior Michael Osofsky, a psychology major, believes a show like “The Experiment” is destined to be unethical.

“It’s voyeurism to the extreme,” said Osofsky. “When scientists doing it for educational purposes would shut the experiment down, TV would keep going for the ratings. I don’t know if that can be fully ethical.”

The BBC will run five 50-minute installments of “The Experiment” in the spring. The producers and all parties involved are ordered not to talk about the contents of the show.

Therefore, it’s unknown whether Stanford or Zimbardo’s past experiment will be mentioned on air.