New Version of Milgram Experiments

A new French experiment recalls the infamous social psychology experiments conducted by Dr. Stanley Milgram, in which it was shown how willing many people are to obey authority. In these experiments, people thought they were giving painful electric shocks to subjects. This was fake, but participants did not know this, and the majority obeyed commands to administer shocks.

The video below is from a recent fake “reality show” done in France where contestants also believed they were giving dangerous electrical shocks to other contestants. Apparently, today an even higher percentage of people were willing to do this, even to the point of killing someone, than when the Milgram experiments were done, back in the early 1960s!

Of course, today the cultural context is a little different, not that this makes it any more comforting. In the 60s, subjects were in a fake scientific study and were obeying the commands of traditional authority figures such as doctors or psychologists. Today, the “victimizers” were caught up in the hype of a reality TV show and were responding to the pressures of mass media hysteria rather than traditional authority….if this makes any real difference.