In 1971 Philip Zimbardo turned a Stanford basement into a mock prison and randomly assigned 24 male students to be guards or prisoners for a planned two weeks. He stopped it after six days because some guards had become cruel and some prisoners had broken down. Critics now argue that guards were given instructions on how to behave, so their cruelty was not spontaneous, and that some prisoners later said they had exaggerated their distress. Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments at Yale in the early 1960s had a similar fate: 65% of participants in the first version went to the top of a shock scale when an authority figure told them to continue, though the shocks were fake. Defenders such as Alex Haslam and Stephen Reicher argue participants stayed on because they believed in the scientific cause, while critics say that explanation ignores what was said during the sessions.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.