Psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University created a fake prison on the campus that he intended on having students run and occupy.

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The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his capacity as Prison Superintendent, lost sight of his role as psychologist and permitted the abuse to continue as though it were a real prison.

FORBES: What Are Some Of The Most Shocking Revelations Of Human Study?

Franco and Zimbardo have argued that deifying heroes like this -- what they call "the myth of the 'heroic elect'" -- has the perverse effect of making us blind to our own heroic potential.

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Franco and Zimbardo cite the story of Jabar Gibson, who was hailed as a hero after he drove 70 people to safety from the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina, commandeering an abandoned school bus.

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In their own extensive analysis of what makes a hero, psychologists Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo suggest that people who don't succumb to the bystander effect are sometimes people who generally don't adhere to social norms and conventions.

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Psychologist Phil Zimbardo showed that we all have a dark side, one that can emerge quite suddenly, in his famous Stanford Prison Experiment, which was cut off early when students who played prison guards became sadistic and those who played prisoners became depressed.

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Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan.

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