Row over 'torture' on French TV
Background: Wikipedia / Milgrame Experiment
In the 60s Stanely Milgram created an experiment that aimed (apparently) to identify if Eichmann et al were really just following orders by creating a scenario in which Yale collgee students were enlisted to electrocute someone who answered questions incorrectly as part of an 'experiment to see if negative stimuli improved learning' (a fake study as the student, not the victim, was the one being studied). over 60% would administer a potentially lethal shock to the victim/learner (who wasn't actually wired up at all, simply acting the part).
The French TV programme replaces the psychological study with a game show scenario, with a host and an audience edging on the 'shocker' to administer the increasing voltages to another contestant when the victim fails to answer correctly . The victim, as ever, is faking it.
"Only 16 of the 80 participants stopped before the ultimate, potentially lethal shock. " 80%
Apparently "The show was billed as a warning against blindly obeying authority - and a critique of reality TV shows in which participants are humiliated or hurt." and of societies conditioning of people to obey, not disobey, authority.
We all think we wouldn't do it. But would we? if in the wrong place at the wrong time how easy would it to publically back out when pressured? Experiments like this make the test subject feel like a failure, that they are letting people down, or shaming them in public (depending on the 2 scenario's above). Not to mention the difference between a short term one off experiment versus week after week after week after month of conditioning to what is Right and Correct in your social world.
How easy is it to firstly think apart from the herd, and then act apart from the herd? There is always safety in numbers. Everyone else did it. Our teens say this: everyone else is doing it. Peer pressure. Conventionality. Normality. The need to fit in, belong, be part of the group.
Comments