Social experiments like this are now mostly frowned upon but I think they are credible tools to understand the depths of human behaviour. It's very sad how easily we "become" something else given such a premise.
It reminds me of the Stanford prison experiment which was in 1971; men stripped of their original identities were turned in to either guards or prisoners. It went quite wrong and had to be stopped as the violence escalated to dangerous proportions.
http://www.prisonexp.org/index.htmlIt was controversially recreated for British TV a few years ago but with less dramatic consequences.
I think we are all pack animals instinctively, who will follow the strongest social rules subjected on us. With isolation comes fear for many so it's easier to conform to the "norm" even if that means a complete personality transplant. It's fascinating to watch, but perhaps in the same way that car crashes are.
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