Philip Zimbardo describes himself as an ordinary professor. But after a week of tours and toasts and talks, it's clear that Prague's intelligentsia would characterize the Stanford University psychologist as anything but.

Honored for a career that spans five decades, the 72-year-old came to Prague to accept the Dagmar and Václav Havel Foundation's Vize 97 prize, which honors those who work in various fields anticipating future trends. Italian writer Umberto Eco and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich are among the prize's former honorees.

Foundation spokesman Zdeněk Soudny said that Zimbardo was hand-picked this year by former Czech President Václav Havel, after Havel learned of his work.

Particular attention was given to Zimbardo's 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, in which college students volunteered to be put it a prison setting for days and were cast in the roles of guard or prisoner. In a matter of days the student prisoners grew despondent and the student guards grew more sadistic. Images shown from tapes of the experiment were made famous in the film Quiet Rage.

The experiment helped weaken the "few bad apples" argument that was later used to explain torture by American troops in Iraq following the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in the summer of 2004. In both cases, "You see the effects of power on human nature," said Zimbardo at a gathering at the Prague Crossroads inside the St. Agnes Convent in Old Town Oct. 5.

He pulled the plug on the experiment when he realized he was giving more weight to his role as prison warden than as a social scientist. In gratitude for the prize, the recently retired Zimbardo presented the foundation with a uniform worn by one of the prisoners during the experiment.

Another sociological sibling was also born out of Zimbardo's work. Echoes of his most famous experiment can also be heard in a pop culture phenomenon currently casting a spell over many Czechs.

"The Stanford Prison Experiment was really one of the first reality shows," said Zimbardo. Indeed, there's a strong argument to be made that his film Quiet Rage serves as a big brother to Big Brother. The popularity of such shows, which throw a group of people under the same roof and depict the contestants (sometimes literally) naked to the world, has exploded worldwide.

And Central Europe is no different: Nine countries in the region have either run Big Brother or are in its production stages, according to Endemol Holdings, the Dutch company that owns the franchise. Slovakia was the 34th territory internationally to air the format. In the Czech Republic the show replaced the country's other favorite son, soccer, when TV Nova decided to air Big Brother instead of a World Cup qualifier against Armenia in September.

Zimbardo does not cast this trend in as negative a light as several in the intellectual elite have. "The good thing about reality television is that it shows how much ordinary viewers are fascinated by human behavior," he said. "What you see [on the shows] is the day-by-day changes in people."

As for reality television's drawbacks, Zimbardo laments the loss of work for writers and one other thing: Through creative editing, shows can depict contestants in whatever light they choose.