French TV turns Milgram experiment in TV show

[Peasant Phill]

It's strange nobody mentioned this before on this forum.

Last week I saw a headline mentioning A French TV station letting contestants 'kill' others for money.
I immediatly thought about the Milgram experiment I read about in my University years and hoping it wasn't that.
I really don't see the entertaining value (it's a game show after all) of showcasing persons as willing to kill for money.

An article
The experiment

Not that outraged but I fail to see how this either entertaining or educational. All it does is stigmatise the particular contestant.

[HoreTore]

Cool.

[Centurion1]

dude thats some ****** up ****. mind games, ugh.

i want some straight on gladiatorial combat myself.

[Meneldil]

It's strange nobody mentioned this before on this forum.

Last week I saw a headline mentioning A French TV station letting contestants 'kill' others for money.
I immediatly thought about the Milgram experiment I read about in my University years and hoping it wasn't that.
I really don't see the entertaining value (it's a game show after all) of showcasing persons as willing to kill for money.

An article
The experiment

Not that outraged but I fail to see how this either entertaining or educational. All it does is stigmatise the particular contestant.

It's not a TV show, it's a documentary. It involved three more or less famous french sociologists. The aim was to prove that the authority of TV is even more important than the authority of a doctor/searcher. Which the documentary did, since 84% of the contestants actually went all the way to the last shock (as opposed to around 60% in the original version of the Milgram Experiment). Though most of them knew what they were doing was wrong, most of them accepted to deal the shocks to the actor, even when he was begging for them to stop.

What's even worse, the spectators also looked disgusted, but still encouraged the guests and cheered them when they dealt the shock.
Quite stunning I say, even though I already know the Milgram experiment by heart. And as with the original experiment, people stopped to deal the electrical shocks when the anchor left the room.

[Peasant Phill]

I wasn't aware it tried to be an experinment of sorts of its own rather than infotainement. The way the articles I read told the story, it was a genuine TV show.

[Gregoshi]

Yeah, let's not let the facts get in the way of a good outrage. I was rather miffed too until I read Meneldil's clarification.

[Meneldil]

That's what I thought too, until I heard more details about the show.

Honestly, I'm not sure it really brings anything to the table. Unlike the Milgram experiment, this one was completely one-sided against the "subject".
In the original experiment, the subject only had to confront Milgram, or the searcher. Here, he had to confront the anchor, the spectators, and potentially all the people watching him on TV. The dude had to face not one, but 2 (or 3) authorities, including a crowd cheering at him, without anyone supporting him.

What is surprising isn't that so many people obeyed, but rather that some of them refused to. One of them (a young girl), stopped the game when the actor started to beg her to stop, and then bursted into tears. Poor girl :(

[Gregoshi]

The things to which people are willing to subject themselves to be on TV baffles me to no end. 15 minutes of fame in misery, embarrassment, or looking like a jerk isn't worth it.

[CountArach]

I wonder what the psychological effects on the people who went through this were? Are they now facing some sort of crisis at realising what they are capable of or are they entirely comfortable with it? But yes, thanks for clearing that up Meneldil, I was outraged at first but calmed down a bit after reading your posts.

[Husar]

Shouldn't they all be arrested for assault or something?
And the crowd for failure to assist a person in danger.
Can't say how I would react, but, uhm, they should have arrested me, too.

[Brenus]

What I don’t understand with this kind of “experiment” is what new it is supposed to show.
Fact is thousands of French normal law abiding citizens were obeying orders and didn’t rebel in Algeria when witnessing torture.
Fact is thousands (if not million) were/are watching news and bombing of cities without too much reaction…

Two weeks ago, in UK, a message run all over mobiles to give the name of a now man who was a child when he killed a child. Name, address etc…
This was with the trash newspapers support…
Normal British citizens, without a second though spread the news…
To do what, to achieve what? Revenge, mob mentality…

To add more stupidity to stupidity, it was the wrong person…
So we have now the father of four in hiding with his wife (for how long the poor woman will handle this without starting to hate her husband), under protection of the police, having to change location and job…

And this was not a TV show, but a real event…

[Fragony]

Asch experiment not Milgram's

[Meneldil]

Asch experiment not Milgram's

Nop, while both Asch and Milgram experiments reach the same conclusion (most human beings submit to authority even when the authority ask them to do "bad" or "wrong" things), the TV show was clearly based on the principles of the Milgram experiment.
ie. A figure of authority (the anchor, supported by the spectators) asked a person to deal a painful electrical shock to a third person, even though it becomes apparent at some point that the third person's life is in danger.

What I don’t understand with this kind of “experiment” is what new it is supposed to show.
Fact is thousands of French normal law abiding citizens were obeying orders and didn’t rebel in Algeria when witnessing torture.
Fact is thousands (if not million) were/are watching news and bombing of cities without too much reaction…

Well, the Milgram experiment was trying to explain how so many people became killers and torturers, without ever questioning what they were doing, in nazi Germany. The TV show was only trying to explain it to the public, and to prove that the authority of TV is even harder to confront than the authority of a scientist.
Mind you, as I said, it really didn't bring anything new to the table, but for people who've never heard of Milgram experiment, that might have been interesting.

I wonder what the psychological effects on the people who went through this were? Are they now facing some sort of crisis at realising what they are capable of or are they entirely comfortable with it? But yes, thanks for clearing that up Meneldil, I was outraged at first but calmed down a bit after reading your posts.

Well, a few people were quite disturbed: as stated earlier, a girl stopped playing, then bursted into tears and cried for quite some time, even though she had been explained it was only a sociological experiment.
Most people seemed sad about what they've just done. They said they knew it was wrong, but just obeyed stupidly.
Then, some people refused to admit it, and claimed they knew it was fake from the beginning. Whether they were making this up to lessen their guilt, or they knew of the experiment beforehand, I don't know.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Honestly, I'm not sure it really brings anything to the table. Unlike the Milgram experiment, this one was completely one-sided against the "subject".
In the original experiment, the subject only had to confront Milgram, or the searcher. Here, he had to confront the anchor, the spectators, and potentially all the people watching him on TV. The dude had to face not one, but 2 (or 3) authorities, including a crowd cheering at him, without anyone supporting him.

Aye. See that's what I didn't get. If they wanted to make a point, to add anything to Milgram, then the producers should've thought up a devious experiment that lowers the pressure for the contestants. Instead of drastically increasing the pressure.

All they did now, was to take a person, isolate him, put him in a high pressure environment, confuse him, disorientate him, cheer him on by an audience, put camera's on him. It feels like bloody Guantanamo Bay. Better persons have cracked under this much pressure. Small wonder even more people committed the shocks than in Milgram's experiment.

Milgram's experiment must be, second to Pavlov, the best known psychological experiment in history. I thought it a bit surprising so few contestants recognised it.



I also have a general criticism about Milgram and 'Jeu de la mort', at least againts the common understanding of it. Namely, does it really test people's willingness to follow orders? Does it not say more about social trust than about obeying authority? Me, I hate authority and will usually oppose it, but I generally trust a scientist or a game show host when they tell me they won't kill somebody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1i8...eature=related

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Thing is, if you reran the experiment with the same group of people, how many would do the same thing again? It doesn't really test people's willingness to obey authority, it just tests their willingness to obey authority in new and unfamiliar situations. The TV show added stress to the mix which just makes it hard to think clearly.

[Brenus]

The problem is: Did the subject of the so-called experiment know they would inflict deadly shocks?
I, for instance, as volunteer, suffered a lot in Army training… I was put at the edge of physical, moral and psychological conditions. Exhaustion, lack of sleep, lack of food, water, hard living conditions were the test to succeed to be an NCO.

I then had to train draftees: I submit them in hard situations, ignoring their real suffering and obliged them to do what they thought they couldn’t.
They cursed me a lot (most probably) but never ever think I was willing to kill them.

So the fact that an authority (my superiors and I) inflicting pains is part of life and part of a learning process, at least in these specific cases.
As anybody practicing sports would know as well.

I watched the link provided by Louis and I didn’t see any notion of deadly shock mentioned (potentially only).
So, this pseudo-scientific experiment proved what we already know: Humans are able to inflict pain to other human, mob mentality (as the spectators push for it employing degrading vocabulary to qualify the candidate refusing to push the button) helps it, and the lack of responsibility…

What could have been interesting to inform the woman in charge is that in fact it was not actor screaming but the pain was real…

[Meneldil]

The problem is: Did the subject of the so-called experiment know they would inflict deadly shocks?
I, for instance, as volunteer, suffered a lot in Army training… I was put at the edge of physical, moral and psychological conditions. Exhaustion, lack of sleep, lack of food, water, hard living conditions were the test to succeed to be an NCO.

They knew they would have to deal painful shocks before the show started. Then the actor shown (though yells and complains) an increasing displeasure. Then, at some point, he starts saying "It's not funny, I want to stop now!", then starts crying, then begs for the other person to stop, then stops answering altogether, which was supposed to be understood as "he's unconscious/dead".
The engine with which the subjects inflicted the pain also had big words written on it, like "200 - High", "380 - Danger !", "420 - XX".

As for your analogy with the army, it doesn't really work I fear. You know what to expect when you join an elite unit in the army. This was supposed to be a casual game to win a few thousands € :-P

[Louis VI the Fat]

This was supposed to be a casual game to win a few thousands €

Now that you mention it - I dunno about you, but as for me, I'd mudwrestle my own mother for a tenner, never mind frying some poor sod a bit for several thousand €.

[Brenus]

“it doesn't really work I fear”: I think it does.
We accept a certain amount of pain to succeed, to get what we want: a rank, love, Honor or money.
So a player could accept a certain amount of pain to gain what ever they were told he would get.

Then, you have the problem of the pain I inflicted: It was of a training purpose; to make civilians decent soldiers with the motto “sweat saves blood”.
These persons were not volunteers. They didn’t want to be soldiers as such.
But I did inflict pain and they did sustain pain.
Some really tried hard to avoid the 8 km of “marche commando” (8 km running with pack bag and weapon), and really suffered in doing it.

Yes, I was an “authority”, at least a small part (well, to be frank, with a quite huge power on their life) but nor I or them questioned the validity of the process.

“This was supposed to be a casual game to win a few thousands €”: So we have a case of a candidate volunteering to received pain for few thousand Euro…
Well, from the manipulated people point of view, he was a the guy who put himself in the position, and knew what he was doing…
And the dangers he put himself were not so well visible, and yes, as it was a GAME, the participants would have expected the TV channel to have decent rules and wouldn't endanger a candidate. And they were right.

So we have de facto a absolute non sense in term of scientific experiment.
A real one would have make clear to the manipulators that they will be in position to inflict a visible huge pain and to kill at a certain level, then to see if they would have obey to the orders/pressure to do so...

[Fragony]

Nop, while both Asch and Milgram experiments reach the same conclusion (most human beings submit to authority even when the authority ask them to do "bad" or "wrong" things), the TV show was clearly based on the principles of the Milgram experiment.
ie. A figure of authority (the anchor, supported by the spectators) asked a person to deal a painful electrical shock to a third person, even though it becomes apparent at some point that the third person's life is in danger.

oh noes