BB pal Eric Paulos, a computer scientist who has conducted several research projects inspired by the work of Stanley Milgram, points to an art project where actors reenacted one of the maverick social psychologist’s shocking “Obedience to Authority” experiments conducted at Yale University in the 1960s:
During the experiment subjects were asked to give seemingly real electric shocks to another individual. Ostensibly the experiment was to test the limit to which subjects were prepare to follow the orders of an experimenter. How severely would they be prepared to hurt a fellow human because they were ordered to do so.
The Re-enactment represented 8 subjects moving through the Obedience experiment in real time. Using transcripts from the original experiment each actor took the role of a specific subject. Each aspect of the experiment was repeated for each subject. Under the guise of a memory test, subjects were asked to give seemingly real electric shocks to another individual. Ostensibly the experiment was to test the limit to which subjects were prepared to follow the orders of an experimenter, and how severely would they be prepared to hurt a fellow human because they were ordered to do so.