![]() Instead, it is a new twist on one of the most famous studies in the history of social psychology: the Milgram experiment. There is nothing new about the quasi-experiment broadcast on French television. But however untrue it feels, psychologists know differently indeed, they have done for years. You’re a normal person, not a lunatic, and you just wouldn’t do it. To the general public, it sounds preposterous: the mere presence of an attractive television host and a baying mob should not be enough to make you electrocute an innocent stranger. But that was not my problem, eh?”Īrchie Bland at The Independent offers little comfort to those who think they would have behaved differently. I did think that guy was roasting in there. “I was told, 'you must do this’ and I thought to myself, these guys know what they’re doing. "If you pilot an aeroplane or a train, you don’t ask yourself questions, you apply procedure, even if you know it isn’t necessarily the best option, because that’s how it should be done,” he said. This overrode all feelings for the man he believed was receiving the shocks and was in genuine pain. More chilling was the response of Patrick, a Metro driver, who said he was happy to simply follow orders – because it was a TV show. "The cameras, the atmosphere, being on stage, the subject and the place… It’s one big package and it affects your personality. "I felt that I was being carried forward not so much by the instructions, but more by the context," says one anonymous participant in the documentary. In a commentary, France 24 believes, Aside from the media attention, the documentary poses many questions, some chilling: are humans generally more willing to follow morally dubious instructions - even from a TV presenter - than they would like to think? Did the "contestants" continue to inflict pain purely because of the glitz and pressure of being in a TV studio? Participants interviewed in the documentary appear to support the hypothesis. They also obeyed the chant of "Punishment!" from the studio audience - which did not know the game show was a fake - until the contestant fell silent and appeared to have died. The majority of them ignored the contestant’s screams and obeyed the orders of the weather-chick hostess to ratchet up the jolt. That’s apparently not the case in France, where, according to a new French documentary series, people would be willing to kill their countrymen for their 15 minutes of fame … The 80 wannabe famesters were each asked to punish the contestant, when a wrong answer was given, by administering up to 460 volts of electricity. The Washington Post's Lisa de Moraes is a tad complacent as she notes, American reality TV has left a trail of corpses, but we can still say this: No one appears to have been executed on any of the U.S. ![]() And even if your partner screams begging you to stop you’re still in a game.” “In a game the boundary between reality and fiction disappears. “There is the fact that you’re in a game and because of that on the game set you can get people to do absolutely anything,” he says in an interview with ABC Television. Producer Christophe Nick blames the pernicious power of television. That’s even worse that the Milgram outcome, where 65% were prepared to go all the way. Only 16 of the 80 "contestants" walked out. It was part of a documentary, The Game of Death, to see how far they would go in obeying authority, reminiscent of Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment at Yale in the 1960s. True, they had signed an agreement saying they would follow orders and were doubtless encouraged by the audience’s shrieks of “Punishment! Punishment!” Nor did they know the whole thing was staged. This was despite his shrieks of pain and pleas to stop. Shockingly (literally and figuratively), 80% of the people taking part were prepared to up the punishment to a level sufficient to kill the balky respondent. ![]() The event was staged in a typical studio setting, with a glamorous hostess, a well-known TV weather woman, and a wildly enthusiastic audience cheering them on. Participants were told they could punish a contestant who gave the wrong answers to questions by administering electric shocks. ![]() It’s hard to feel very enthusiastic about my fellow human beings after reading about a French TV game show called Zone Xtreme. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receiptįull Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a regular dose of international punditry at its finest. ![]()
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