In 1961, Yale University social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted incredibly provocative experiments in obedience in which subjects administered apparently painful and even lethal electric shocks to others just because an authority figure in a lab coat told them to. (The shocks were fake and the recipients were shills, but the subjects didn't know this.) Now, researchers in London and Spain have recreated the experiment in virtual reality with avatars. It turns out that even though the virtual female recipient was obviously not experiencing real physical pain, "the participants who saw and heard her tended to respond to the situation at the subjective, behavioural and physiological levels as if it were real," wrote the researchers from University College London, Universidad Miguel Hernandez, and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. From their paper at the Public Library of Science:
Stanley Milgram's 1960s experimental findings that people would administer apparently lethal electric shocks to a stranger at the behest of an authority figure remain critical for understanding obedience. Yet, due to the ethical controversy that his experiments ignited, it is nowadays impossible to carry out direct experimental studies in this area. In the study reported in this paper, we have used a similar paradigm to the one used by Milgram within an immersive virtual environment. Our objective has not been the study of obedience in itself, but of the extent to which participants would respond to such an extreme social situation as if it were real in spite of their knowledge that no real events were taking place.
Link (via Rough Type, thanks Ken Goldberg and Michael Idinopulos!)
Previously on BB:
• Stanley Milgram's shocking new biography Link
• Milgram Reenactment Link
• Psychology museum Link
