The Game of Death

Poststructural Pub
1

Game show contestants turn torturers in a new psychological experiment for French television, zapping a man with electricity until he cries for mercy – then zapping him again until he seems to drop dead.

“The Game of Death” has all the trappings of a traditional television quiz show, with a roaring crowd and a glamorous and well-known hostess urging the players on under gaudy studio lights.

But the contestants did not know they were taking part in an experiment to find out whether television could push them to outrageous lengths, and which has prompted comparisons with the atrocities of Nazi Germany.

“We were amazed to find that 81 percent of the participants obeyed” the sadistic orders of the television presenter, Game show contestants turn torturers in a new psychological experiment for French television, zapping a man with electricity until he cries for mercy – then zapping him again until he seems to drop dead.

“The Game of Death” has all the trappings of a traditional television quiz show, with a roaring crowd and a glamorous and well-known hostess urging the players on under gaudy studio lights.

But the contestants did not know they were taking part in an experiment to find out whether television could push them to outrageous lengths, and which has prompted comparisons with the atrocities of Nazi Germany.

“We were amazed to find that 81 percent of the participants obeyed” the sadistic orders of the television presenter, said Christophe Nick, the maker of the documentary for the state-owned France 2 channel which airs Wednesday.

“They are not equipped to disobey,” he added. “They don’t want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop, but they don’t manage to,” he told AFP.


…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100316/ts_afp/francetelevisionpsychologyentertainment;_ylt=Ak7Qc1pl4.3CSjciJv9aPnSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTRkNDRsYjYxBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDEwMDMxNi9mcmFuY2V0ZWxldmlzaW9ucHN5Y2hvbG9neWVudGVydGFpbm1lbnQEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMxMARwb3MDNwRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX2hlYWRsaW5lX2xpc3QEc2xrA2NvbnRlc3RhbnRzdA--

2

New version of the Milgram experiment, been there, done that, always shocking no matter what.

3

Yes, the article says the TV experiment was based on the ‘Yale experiment.’ Milgram wrote:

‘I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Not much has changed since 1963. Something seems to be the matter with us.

‘Later, Prof. Milgram and other psychologists performed variations of the experiment throughout the world, with similar results[4] although unlike the Yale experiment, resistance to the experimenter was reported anecdotally elsewhere.[5]’

4

I would amend that to, “Something seems to be the matter with roughly 81% of the population.” That is not an “us” in my world.

So there is hope.

5

Hard to overcome millions of years of evillution, wasn’t that long ago that doing those sorts of things were considered perfectly normal in polite society.

6

We seem to be wired to obey authority. The experimenter notes that most people in
the TV experiment didn’t want to do it, but ‘most of them weren’t equipped to disobey.’

In the Milgram experiment, nobody who refused to give the maximum shock protested what
was happening, inquired about the well being of the subject, or left without first getting
permission.

7

Again with the “we”. I am not the only one with an habitual instinct to question authority and at times resist it; this has played out so far as to be a matter of record, and it has often stood me ill in matters hierarchical. As you may well imagine, I’ve always been crap at networking.

And in the recent French TV experiment, you imply there were successful refusals, and protests. So, since 1963, maybe there have been advancements after all.

But much of this has more to do with culture and social conditioning than human nature. I’m willing to assert that you would be unlikely to find similar results nowadays among a selection of Native Americans who are still traditionally connected, for example.

There are demographical tendencies at work, here. But no “we”.

8

This freaks me out. I often think of that experiment and wonder what I would do. I especially wonder what I would do if the pressure and the torture of the victim were much more subtle.

9

Nano, going rouge! :thumbsup:


now there’s a quality for a moderator ta have!

10

for one thing, I am one hell of a lot older than I was in '63…

11

'One contestant interviewed afterwards said she went along with the torture despite knowing that her own grandparents were Jews who had been persecuted by the Nazis.

“Since I was a little girl, I have always asked myself why they (the Nazis) did it. How could they obey such orders? And there I was, obeying them myself,” said Sophie, quoted in a book by the film makers.

“I was worried about the contestant,” said another contestant. “At the same time, I was afraid to spoil the programme.”’

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100316/ts … RhbnRzdA-- (if this doesn’t work, please use link in first post).

12

I am the authority, no one to answer to…except herself.

13

i quoted this earlier, from the wiki piece on Milgram

‘Later, Prof. Milgram and other psychologists performed variations of the experiment throughout the world, with similar results[4] although unlike the Yale experiment, resistance to the experimenter was reported anecdotally elsewhere.[5]’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Nobody is claiming that this is how every last one of us is, but there is some reason to think it’s how
most of us are, which suggests a natural tendency. ‘We’ means ‘humanity generally,’ this doesn’t mean
‘universally.’

14

My complexion is quite healthy on its own, thank you.

15

I maintain that a tendency is only that, and is entirely dependent on culture and socialisation in its going from latency to actuality. But there’s another way to look at this: this “tendency” itself is culturally ingrained. I think this is a possibility that some people would rather not consider, which is understandable. Anyway, you can go on ahead and keep using “we”, and I’ll keep rejecting it. How’s that?

'One contestant interviewed afterwards said she went along with the torture despite knowing that her own grandparents were Jews who had been persecuted by the Nazis.

“Since I was a little girl, I have always asked myself why they (the Nazis) did it. How could they obey such orders? And there I was, obeying them myself,” said Sophie, quoted in a book by the film makers.

“I was worried about the contestant,” said another contestant. > "At the same time, I was afraid to spoil the programme.> "’

Note the section in red. If that isn’t culture and socialisation, I don’t know what is.

16

The French have pretty much always been sheep.

17

Well, they did more bleating this time around than the Yanks did in the sixties, right?

18

Doubtless culture sometimes can play a role, but as the findings appear to be replicated regardless of culture,
the cause appears to go deeper.

Note too:

‘Dr. Thomas Blass of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County performed a meta-analysis on the results of repeated performances of the experiment. He found that the percentage of participants who are prepared to inflict fatal voltages remains remarkably constant, 61–66 percent, regardless of time or place.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

19

My take is this, back when I was taking animal behavior in the '60s we discussed Milgram’s work and concluded that “higher” primates lack some of the social boundaries exhibited by other species on the planet. Dogs have a greater innate sense of what is fair and not fair than humans. But this maybe is what allowed humanoids an upper edge in the evillution game. I’d like to think that my children would not fail such a test. Most of their kin on their mother’s side did not when the time came, I know that.

20

Could be. I don’t see any way to separate day-to-day behavior from culture. Each gives rise to the other, so in that regard the argument to be made for a generally innate tendency to follow authority has merit. But the Milgram and French TV experiments do not tell me anything more than the likelihood that only demographics are at work, here.

You say that the findings appear to be replicated regardless of culture. For this to have any meaning, I would want to know what cultures were tested. To suggest that French and Yank cultures in this experiment are significantly enough different from each other is a mistake, I think, as both cultures share a great deal in common at root level, and the results as we have them in this thread were too similar to support the assertion of cultural disparity, for me. I think one needs to look to specific markers: large societies, cultural cohesion on a big scale, organised military, that sort of thing. Not all societies have these characteristics. If similar findings were to be found in societies that lack those markers, then I would be far more likely to accept the idea that the “follow-the-leader” tendency, at the extreme we are discussing, is even possibly hardwired. One thing seems to be clear: peer pressure was not part of the equation in these experiments.