RTFA: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/vo…

But it was Val’s voice that haunted his dreams after he left the show. Even eight months later, Pham still has conflicting emotions. While he didn’t find his isolation therapeutic, he says it was worthwhile simply for the experience. Even at the depths of his pain and humiliation, he could appreciate the show’s entertainment value. “It’s very hard to explain,” he says of the ball gag, which he cites as both a high and low point. “You’re trying to ham it up and let yourself have fun, entertain them, making the best of a pretty horrible situation. It’s like when you’re on death row. How sad can you be on death row? You’ve got to at least have as much fun as you can when you know you’re coming to an end.”
Stanford University psychologist Phil Zimbardo might classify Pham’s attitude as a rationalization. The professor emeritus is best known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, wherein students were divided into two groups-guards and prisoners-and placed in a mock prison setup. Within days, the students were subsumed by their roles. The guards turned cruel and the prisoners suffered emotional breakdowns rather than walk away, as they were free to do. “They became prisoners,” Zimbardo recalls.
He hasn’t watched Solitary-the reality genre is distasteful in his view-but he was repelled by what I told him about it. “My sense is it’s a debasement of human nature, and it doesn’t matter if the process is a competition, a game show, or a war,” he says. Nor does Zimbardo buy Hiatt’s claim that Solitary has therapeutic value. “Is it therapeutic for me to shit on you?” counters the psychologist. “Well, yeah, because then you realize you’re not as prideful as you thought you were.”

Wow - Fox made a torture show, inspired by Abu Ghraib and the famously unethical Stanford Prison Study.

Just, wow. Oh, did I mention they’re making a third season of the show?

WOW.