Bogus sensationalistic psych studies

[my_kakistocracy]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/17/AR2010031703594.html

I call bogus on this. Seriously, do you think these people REALLY thought that they were in a game show where they could REALLY kill people!? They probably didn't quite know what was going on, but I would bet a zillion dollars that none of these people really

Comments

[hands_cupped]

I dunno, it wouldn't shock me. Especially after something like Milgram. And all educated people have heard of Milgram, but since a lot of people don't know how to locate all the continents on a map, I seriously... dunno.

I agree it's likely bogus. I'm just saying. It would not shock me anymore.

[hands_cupped]

haha this comment was more bitterness than anything, I'm not actually arguing that I think it's real.

[my_kakistocracy]

Haha I'm sorry I didn't mean to say if you'd never heard of Milgram you're not educated. I never actually learned about it in school, either, it's one of those things you kind of pick up by osmosis over the years. I'm just saying that it was probably really, really obvious to the audience that this whole thing was a setup. If you were invited to be in the audience for this thing, depending on your personality you might not "get into it," but you'd *know* it wasn't real, wouldn't you? Common sense. Is a major TV network really going to kill people on TV? No. Therefore, you might either find it distasteful and not like it, or just get into it and pretend you're in some dystopian future or something and act all crazy excited. I don't know how willing people would be to really fry someone on a game show, but THIS experiment defintely does not give us the answer.

[my_kakistocracy]

Yeah, I'm not arguing that a lot of humans *wouldn't* do it if they *did* think it was real...I mean, you've got a lot of historical precedence of people hurting other people simply because authority figures told them to (basically any dictatorship, ever). I just don't think that you can test this very well experimentally, especially using this type of paradigm. So basically, I believe the results from these tests are not valid, but I am reserving judgment on whether or not the majority of these people would act the same way if they really *were* convinced someone was getting hurt.