This whole "experiment" disturbs me profoundly, and for about a dozen of factors, of which i can only cite a few :<p>- They take the appearance of science, name this an experiment, when this is much more of a sensationalist TV show in the very style of the ones it's supposed to denounce.<p>- A (very big) flaw that the milgram experiment already had, but that this show suffers from even more, due to the context and to the size of the sample, is the fact that they're working on a sample that isn't representative in any way of the global population, but only of the people susceptible of answering the announcements -- in the case of this tv show, people willing to go on television, and that's probably not a small thing. Also this pretends to be a reproduction of the milgram experiment, while the conditions are very different. Obeying to a show hostess and obeying to a doctor isn't the same thing, and shouldn't be analyzed as being the same.<p>- Going further in my first point, while this is supposed to be scientific, it obviously is not. But even the motivations of the show are unclear. Supposedly it's there to warn us about the dangerous power of television, while it's actually obvious that the show is using the very mechanisms it's supposed to denounce. People act shocked while they satisfy those very appetites of violence and voyeurism. How clever.<p>BTW I'm french, and watched a few extracts of the show, but i didn't have the occasion to watch it in full. It looks very fakeish, and very disturbing too. I guess the minimum the show director could do is display some proofs of the veracity of the show.<p>Sociology, and human sciences in general, ought to be something serious, in the process and in the display. Mocking it while playing on people's indignation (which is almost as easy to exploit as their appetite for violence) is disgusting.
<a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/17/torture/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/17...</a><p>Glenn Greenwald compares this linking of television and torture to the swing of public opinion in America regarding our government's use of torture.
Aren't most people aware of the Milgram experiment these days? I did participate in a psychology experiment once at university, and it was painfully obvious that the "person" in the other room I was playing against was a computer. I do worry about the validitiy of some of these experiments.
Is it really all that strange to find out that we aren't that different from how we were in 1960 with respect to authority? Back then we thought of authority as a government and the nation state, but today it's you and me, our entertainment, tvs, xboxes, corporations, and facebook that exert more control over us. In this case who is the authority? The game show host or the crowd? Is this the power of the perception that "everyone's doing" it has authoritative control over us?<p>Scary stuff still. Does anyone want to volunteer for the new TV show "Alcatraz" where we recreate Stanford prison experiment?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment</a>
Those interested in further examination of psychology of this subject should look in Canadian scientist Bob Altermeyer's work on authoritarian personality traits.
Dupe ;)
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197224" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197224</a>
On some level it's good to know source does matter (npr vs. yahoo)
I'm a little bit surprised and amused that people continue to be surprised at what horrible things humans are capable of doing. I mean, nearly all of us went to high school right?
"They say they simply wanted to see if we would go so far as to kill someone for entertainment."<p>The ancient greeks built the Colosseum for this kind of entertainment. So it's not surprising really.
Philip Zimbardo described this principle in depth:<p><a href="http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/459" rel="nofollow">http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/459</a><p>He discusses Milgram, and Guantanamo. How seemingly well adjusted good citizens can rapidly and without notice turn into little lucifers at the drop of a hat with the right social engineering.