French polemic over fake game show electrocutions (AP)
A state-run TV channel is stirring controversy with a documentary about a fake game show in which credulous participants obey orders to deliver increasingly powerful electric shocks to a man, who is really an actor, until he appears to die.
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In the end, more than four in five "players" gave the maximum jolt.
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The experiment was based on the work of late psychologist Stanley Milgram, who carried out a now-classic experiment at Yale University in the 1960s. It found that most ordinary people — if encouraged by an authoritative-seeming scientist — would administer ostensibly dangerous electric shocks to others.
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Recruiters found 80 "contestants" and said they would take part in a real TV show called Zone Xtreme. Each was presented to a man said to be another contestant — in reality an actor — whose job was to answer a series of questions while strapped into an electrifiable chair in an isolated booth.
In a game of word associations, the actor identified as "Jean-Paul" was told that any wrong answers would merit punishment in the form of electric shocks of 20 to 460 volts, zapped by a console operated by the contestant.
As the wrong answers invariably roll in and the voltage increases, the presenter, a well-known TV weatherwoman on France-2, exhorts contestants not to bend to his cries of agony. A goading studio audience adds to the pressure.
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As wrong answers pile up, and the voltage increases, Jean-Paul pleads: "Get me out of here, please! I don't want to play anymore" and finally stops answering, then falls silent despite the electric jolts.
Contestants grow increasingly edgy but told to continue, the vast majority do.
In the final tally, 81 percent of the contestants turned up the juice to the maximum — said to be potentially deadly — level, according to "L'Experience Extreme" (The Extreme Experience), a book authored by … the producer. Only 16 people among the 80 who took part backed out…..
3 comments:
Always terrifying and sobering to learn of the fragility of human decency, according to circumstances. Milgram's experiments were repeated in a number of countries, too. And when orders were given over a phone rather that in person, the rate of full compliance went way up. But in his versions, I think that the people who max'd out the shocks were closer to 60%. So this result is doubly disturbing.
LOVE the "p-o-t-a-t-o-e" graphic, BvT. But I really find disturbing and ugly the double-headed, savage poodle(s)! I suppose it's related to the awful truths revealed in the post. But it seems that such experiments don't reveal that people are mostly savage----rather, they are Eichmanns, "just following orders." (Of course, the result may be the same, so maybe my objection to the poodles is unfounded.)
MAH
MAH, double-headed? I guess so. I just assumed they were two poodle friends, close together. I chose the image only because, for me, poodle sorta means "French," although these might not actually be French poodles. Even very good dogs (in any sense of good one might have in mind, including my own) are quite capable of this sort of display. Indeed, most people are similarly capable. If others perceive these poodles as some monstrous experiment, then I will definitely take the image down. I was attracted to this French TV Milgram story because I do think that TV has come to bring out or produce various forms of mob madness. I wonder if the audience was in on the ruse? Probably so. But my own view is that there is virtually no limit to what ordinary people can be made to do in the context of a so-called "reality" program.
Oh, don't worry, BvT. I was trying to be clever with "double-headed poodle," unsuccessfully, it seems. I'm sure it is just two poodle pals. And somehow I didn't catch the "French" connection.
I agree with you, too, that people are capable not just of following orders horribly, but also of savagery.
So: never mind! (I still find it ugly, though!) :)
MAH
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