French TV show uses famous Milgram torture experiment

Bob Harris pointed me to this BBC story about Stanley Milgram's famous torture experiment, repeated on French TV and contextualized as a reality game show.

Egged on by a glamorous presenter, cries of "punishment" from a studio audience and dramatic music, the overwhelming majority of the participants obeyed orders to continue delivering the shocks - despite the man's screams of agony and pleas for them to stop.

Eventually he fell silent, presumably because he had died or lost consciousness. The contestants didn't know that the man, strapped in a chair inside a cubicle so they couldn't see him, was really an actor. There were no shocks and it was all an experiment to see how far they would go.

Only 16 of the 80 participants stopped before the ultimate, potentially lethal shock.

Row over 'torture' on French TV

• [Panthusiasm]

  These experiments carry an important message about not always obeying authority. But how many participants in a modern French game show would believe they were actually torturing someone, as opposed to the screams being fake? Severe public torture on national television (as opposed to what goes on in freak-out shows like Fear Factor) seems pretty implausible. Also, Milgram’s experiment is at least somewhat famous, although I suppose they could have screened for that knowledge. That’s not to say it’s OK for them to do this, as participants endured anxiety and confusion and were made complicit in something ugly.

  I also wonder how many of the participants in even Milgram’s original experiment went through the experiment with a reasonable belief that it was fake. How plausible is it that a large number of participants in a 1960′s Yale study would believe they were really being asked to shock someone to death? Subconsciously people had to be doubting the veracity of the situation, even if it still freaked them out and traumatized them.

  • [Anonymous]

    Well they weren’t told they were going to kill someone. They were merely told to press the button which would deliver a shock. We’ve all felt a shock so they may have thought it more or less harmless although curious at the beginning of the experiment. But that is the point of the experiment, will otherwise good people obey authority (the white coat telling them so) even when it goes against they own personal judgement. I believe the study was influenced by the nazis who were ‘just following orders’.

• [Anonymous]

  We saw the evening special.
  It was catastrophic : the Milgram experiment was in fact the full documentary : the narrator, by its scientific position was telling that television is doomed, public was ready to follow it blindly. The whole was unhonest shortcuts. The program started with bits of foreign show, completely out of their context (by example, a magic trick about the Russian Roulette on Channel 4).

  And the following debate was biased. There is a polemic about how the host tried to coming out one of the involved participant.
  The whole TV critics (from the reference «arrets sur images» to even the populist «morandini») demolished this program.

  On the same evening, Arte (another public channel both French and Deutch), broadcasted « Le Rapport Karski », a very interesting interview of Jan Karski, the uncut one seen in the « Shoah » movie, the Polish messenger who told to Roosevelt the crude reality of the Holocaust. And how the US President didn’t believe it at all.

• [rationalist]

  We can, as usual, focus on the 64 who went all the way, and bemoan humanity – or, we could study the 16 who didn’t, and learn how to become more humane.

• [Anonymous]

  Oh, I forgot an VERY important detail : before the show, participants were told there was nothing to win, but during the recording of the show, every five minutes, it was told that they could win a Million euro.

  Is it honest ?

  • [Sijay]

    Fascinating. I really want to see this now.

    I think that’s really the center of this particular exercise. It’s not about authority anymore, as Milgram’s ostensibly was, or peer pressure, or fame or greed – it becomes about artifice.

    Before the taping we tell you there are no prizes. During the taping we promise you enormous wealth, and also there appears to be a man suffering grievous harm from your actions. Clearly, some part of this is theater. So how much do you believe, and how much is too distasteful to participate in even if it is all play?

    Just watched “Interview with the Vampire” last night for this first time in years. Compare the “Théâtre des Vampires” scene.

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      Louis: Vampires pretending to be humans, pretending to be vampires.
      Claudia: How avant-garde.

• [Anonymous]

  My bosses used the “Milgram Nasties” and since he/she was so drastic in their approach to get me to retire.
  I figures it is time to go.I am planning to retire at the end of the month. Since some of my retirees don’t like fish. thought I would get some well cured smelly
  herring. For them to sample. What kind of “chant” of other techniques can I use to convince them that it smells ant tasted good. I got informally reprimanded
  for eating a can of mild herring at work. Looking for some clever way to convince them to eat it and say it tasted good- Payback time.

• [Anonymous]

  we do what we’re told
  we do what we’re told
  we do what we’re told
  told to do

  one doubt
  one voice
  one war
  one truth
  one dream

  we do what we’re told
  we do what we’re told
  we do what we’re told
  told to do

  –Milgram’s 37, Peter Gabriel

• [aelfscine]

  So Milgram is the poster child in IRB training of What Scientists Should Never Do Again Ever – why do people keep doing it? It’s not like the results ever change.

• [Anonymous]

  I read about this documentary a few weeks ago. Looked everywhere for it, I guess they were just doing a screening in Berlin. And now again I’m hearing about it being shown on french TV. I would really like to see it.

  And this is why people pirate. Don’t make a film, have the press tell everyone how great it is, and then have no way for for people like us to see it for ourselves!

• [seanpatgallagher]

  I kept waiting for the revelation that the contestants were ALSO actors and that the joke was on the researchers… but I guess we don’t live in that universe.

  -S

• [Phikus]

  Somehow I do not find this shocking.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Even though it’s a current event?

    • [MB]

      It’s revolting, really.

      • [Tdawwg]

        Watt’s up with all of these jokes? You’re really amping up the authoritarian streak in our culture with this kind of humor. Ohm pissed, really!

        • [Sijay]

          You Fifth Coulombnists – Joule get worked up about anything.

        • [Phikus]

          Yeah, I get this way when I’m wired. I tried this sort of experiment when I was a kid and everyone got a real charge out of it, but my parents blew a fuse and I was grounded. The other kids involved had it much worse though, as they were subject to battery. After that, I got a lot of static from everyone in the area and had to start taking a circuitous route home from school. I tell you they they tased me to no end! One even plugged me one time. Luckily it wasn’t terminal, and I found the experience to be quite a life transformer, because at least I had some kind of outlet. If you have these sorts of impulses, you might otherwise be left feeling completely powerless.

        • [Sijay]

          You sound short.

        • [jackie31337]

          You just don’t have the capacity to appreciate Phikus’s humor.

• [Hanglyman]

  For all the people doubting whether the people involved in the experiment (and the TV show) really believed they were giving electric shocks, you should know that this experiment was also done in 1972 by Charles Sheridan and Richard King. They had the same suspicion, that the test subjects suspected the people they were shocking were actors, so they used a puppy instead, and gave it real electric shocks. 20 out of 26 test subjects still gave the shocks until the end, even though some of them were left horrified and weeping by what they had done.

  • [Panthusiasm]

    The experiment by Charles Sheridan and Richard Kingthat was with an animal, which carries much less moral weight than a human. Also, while the puppy was very distressed, it wasn’t killed and it didn’t suffer permanent physical damage. While it obviously shouldn’t be done, I wonder about the results of an experiment like Milgram’s where the human being shocked could be seen by the one giving a shock. These experiments mean something, but are given too much weight, methinks.

    • [dw_funk]

      While I’m far too worn out to aggressively cite sources, I’m relatively confident that Milgram ran the experiment with actor and subject in the same room; while the basic experiment is very well-known, Milgram varied several experimental variables as he followed up on his initial study. While I don’t remember exactly what he changed between experiments, I do clearly remember seeing a table of set-ups and results.

      Common sense would say there would be a significant difference between the actor being in the room versus the actor being in another room; one would assume that the subject would have more difficulty shocking an actual, suffering human being. On the other hand, the clearly important factor in the experiment is the authoritative researcher-actor. As someone earlier said, many people have been driven to do terrible things just because somebody in charge said it was okay.

      In defense of Milgram: I recall that he did debriefings with his subjects and was at some pains to ensure their well-being after the experiment, which was at least better than performing it in front of a live audience. However, I’m not sure that one could ever forget being totally capable of allowing an authority to push one toward torture. No modern IRB would ever approve a study even similar to this; it’s simply too psychologically damaging.

      Finally, one of the most effective ways of avoiding this and other psychological pitfalls is to be aware of them; as many have said, I have a feeling that learning about the Milgram experiment has at least given me enough perspective to have a chance of recognizing when it’s happening to me, in real life.

      • [joeposts]

        afaik, the original Milgram experiment had them in separate rooms. Wikipedia is an accurate source, right?

        “At this point, the ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’ were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other.”

• [Anonymous]

  Didn’t Derren Brown do something like this a few years ago?

• [dainel]

  Why didn’t they do it for real with a taser? It’s supposed to be non-lethal right?

  I can think of some interesting variants. Forcing the contestants to do humiliating things with the taser. If they successfully resists, they get the prize. Otherwise, the other contestants holding the tasers wins. We can have people competing the be “top torturer”.

  Or you taze your family member, and whoever applies it for the longest duration in 5 minutes. A large clock on the wall tells the audience how many seconds it’s been applied. But the twist here is, everytime you apply a shock, immediately afterwards, you get tazed for an equivalent amount of time.

  Sit down 4 contestants on a special chair, with metal seat and their feet resting on a metal plate on the floor. A large clock shows the time. Every 10 seconds, everybody gets a shock. People who stand up or falls off the chair gets eliminated. Last person remaining wins.

  We should have torture game shows. :)

• [H.I. McDonough]

  Salon’s Glenn Greenwald reports on watching Fox coverage of this story. Worth reading.
  http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/17/torture/index.html

  “The Fox anchors — Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum — were shocked and outraged that these French people could be induced by the power of television to embrace torture…. Ultimately, they speculated that perhaps it was something unique about the character and psychology of the French that made them so susceptible to external influences and so willing to submit to amoral authority, just like many of them submitted to and even supported the Nazis, they explained. …. They just prattled away — shocked, horrified and blissfully un-self-aware — about the evils of torture and mindless submission to authority and the role television plays in all of that.”

• [dequeued]

  Here’s a better video of the Milgram experiment being performed, and it’s not in front of an audience, so the subjects shouldn’t be as biased.

  But it was part of a reality tv show, but the subjects were apparently lead to believe this wasn’t directly related to the show:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GxIuljT3w

  This is one where the subjects should have no idea that they’re being filmed:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvSNg0HZwk

• [bereteando]

  brazilian artist Michel Melamed did something related few years ago. in his comic/poetic solo play “Regurgitofagia”, he would take electric shocks (wrists and ankles) whenever the public laughter has reached a certain level. it was a very sour experience — you’d laugh because it’s funny, but that’d hurt him, so you’re throw back into silence and some embarassment. (apart from those jerks who would cough very loudly to disrupt the experiment.) you can see an excerpt in English here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMZCJC9kAx4 from a New York tour.

• [joeposts]

  I was glad to see everybody’s favourite less-than-ethical experiment brought into the modern era. I guess this one goes farther than the original – it seemed to be about peer pressure as well. One day perhaps they can introduce another element: a guilty victim (ie, they’d be told they were torturing a criminal). I’d bet they’d get damn near 99%…

• [zapan]

  I’m glad you talk about this story !

  There is a far more interesting thing that happened during the debate that followed the fake show about the experience :

  The host (Christophe Hondelatte) tried to muzzle one of the guests (Alexandre Lacroix), editor in chief of Philosophie magazine and partner of the event, when he questionned the methods of the show. His point was that they revealed private facts about the experiment subjects to “prove” that they were not “bastards”. Hondelatte menaced him physically, in an ironic situation were he was negating the authoritarian power of tv, while turning everybody on the set against Lacroix. One of the subject was so scared afterwards that she replied she had two children (she had an only child), just because Hondelatte said so.

  They edited the debate to hide the argument, and Hondelatte used media connexions to discredit Lacroix’s declarations (notably fellow tv host Morandini, and the newspaper Le Monde). The only media that accepted to broadcast Lacroix’s version is “Arrêt sur image” a webTV dedicated to media manipulations.

  You must contact them to get more informations on this case, the cover-up and manipulations that ensued are far more interresting than the show itself.

  • [ultranaut]

    This sounds interesting but I do not quite understand what you are saying.

    One of the people behind this documentary was threatened on TV?

    • [zapan]

      I’m sorry, my english is far from perfect.
      The fake show about the Milgram experiment was followed by a debate, with scientists, media experts, and sociologists.

      One of the guests was Alexandre Lacroix, editor in chief of Philosophie magazine. His magazine was partner of the event, their last edition was on the same topic, he was one of the guests, listed as a psychologist.

      When the host (Christophe Hondelatte) which is more famous for his sensationalist crime show “faites entrer l’accusé” (let the accused come in), had his interview methods put in question by Lacroix (Hondelatte’s whole point was to reveal private detail about the experiment subjects without their consent, to “prove” they had morality), he lost his temper and threatened his guest to leave or to shut up. Lacroix resisted the pressures, and kept his cool on the set, but all his interventions were censored, and he had to face mediatic retaliations afterwards, coming from Hondelatte’s influent friends.

      The show was made to denunciate the power of TV, but when someone had the guts to criticize the show in wich he was participating, they tried to crush him.

• [Cowicide]

  Once again, this confirms we humans are only just a few hairs away (in evolutionary terms) from shit-throwing monkeys.

  • [Anonymous]

    It doesn’t really. They did this experiment with rhesus monkeys and the monkeys refused to torture, even when offered treats.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  I’m less surprised at how easily mortal men are swayed by the power of the ring than by the fact that they actually fall for the set-up.

  • [Mark Temporis]

    How do you know they fell for the set-up? I think they more likely just didn’t care. If you’re willing to shock someone to death for a prize, it probably doesn’t matter to you that it’s fake.

• [Sijay]

  Heard a bit about this on NPR the other day. A factor I didn’t hear anybody mention directly is that, based on the reasonable expectation that a game show wouldn’t risk the lives of its participants, a contestant might doubt that the victim was really being seriously harmed and/or *assume* that he was an actor.

  Was this a serious study in its own right or just spicy documentary fodder?

  • [joeposts]

    Probably spicy documentary fodder, I doubt they followed rigid scientific guidelines considering it’s not an ethical experiment. Even the original experiment and the ones that followed are sensational, though I don’t think that makes it less valid considering how much rotten human behaviour occurs because an authority figure ordered it to happen.

    I guess it’s possible they knew it was an actor because it’s unusual to torture people on TV, but people didn’t expect to torture someone when invited to participate in a study on “memory and learning” either, which is how they got people to participate in the first one.

    Another good less-than-ethical authority study is the Stanford Prison Experiment.

    • [Sijay]

      True, but in Milgram’s the situational question has only to do with the trustworthiness of a potentially deluded or sadistic academic. The game show introduces many other elements, not the least of which is a world already well informed of Milgram’s experiment and its potential entertainment value.

  • [Anonymous]

    I watched it. There were a small numbers of participants who declared that they knew it was fake or that they thought it was impossible that a tv would harm a person, justifiyng why they went on to the final shock. They were counted in the 80%. Of course they declared that after they were told the real story, when they were interviewed in the debriefing.

• [nanuq]

  Anyone care to bet that the show producers actually considered real shocks at first but went with the simulation to avoid lawsuits? Welcome to the wacky world of reality TV.

• [Anonymous]

  The Milgram Experiment was also used in Reality TV – in an Australian version of The Mole.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mole_(Australia_season_3)#Episode_3

  Here’s video of it:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tKWKLEcgU#t=5m35s

• [Anonymous]

  Well in the first version of the Milgram experiment, not only could the instructor not see the learner, all the learners responses, from “Ouch” to “Oh my god, please stop” were pre-recorded. Once Milgram found out how many people would proceed to the end, he varied the experiment considerably, including one version where the instructor had to hold the learners hand down on a plate to administer a shock.

• [bkad]

  I think I was taught this experiment half a dozen times in my middle school, high school, and college education. How about you? Is this a standard part of the curriculum? I would think if I were on such a show, I’d recognize the experiment. (Just as I would the Zimbardo experiment). I’m not saying I’d be more or less obedient to authority; I’m just saying I’d recognize the experiment.

  • [Anonymous]

    The participants were screened from 2000 people called by telephone randomly in France. And, trust me, “la France profonde” doesn’t know about milgram.

  • [jacqueline]

    i suspect you were among the few that profited from paying attention. there is also this “about four out of five Americans (79%) correctly respond that the earth revolves around the sun, while 18% say it is the other way around.”
    http://www.gallup.com/poll/3742/new-poll-gauges-americans-general-knowledge-levels.aspx

    • [dculberson]

      Special relativity says that there is no privileged frame of reference. So really, saying that the sun revolves around the earth is just as accurate as the other way around. Or not, I was a little out of it in physics.