Word: milgrams
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...Game of Death is an adaptation of an infamous experiment conducted by a team led by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. In order to test people's obedience to authority figures, the scientists demanded that subjects administer increasingly strong electric shocks to other participants if they answered questions incorrectly. The people delivering the shocks, however, didn't know that the charges were fake - the volunteers on the other end of the room were actors pretending to suffer agonizing pain. The point was to see how many people would continue following orders to mete out torture...
...Milgram found that 62.5% of his subjects could be encouraged, browbeaten or intimidated into seeing the test through to its conclusion by delivering scores of shocks of increasing intensity to the maximum of 450 volts. In The Game of Death, 81% of contestants go all the way by administering more than 20 shocks of up to a maximum of 460 volts. Only 16 of the 80 subjects recruited for the fake game show refuse the verbal prodding from the host - and pressure from the audience to keep dishing out the torture like a good sport - though most express misgivings...
...says he got the idea for the project after stumbling across an episode of the French version of The Weakest Link. The willingness of the adult contestants to allow the hostess to belittle them - and their own eagerness to backstab fellow participants for their own gain - convinced him that Milgram's findings about the human submission to authority figures were particularly applicable to TV. "Television is a power - we know that, but it remained theoretical," Nick told the daily Le Parisien on Wednesday. "I asked myself, Is it so strong that it can turn us into potential torturers...
...media critic Daniel Schneidermann says it would be wrong to limit any conclusions drawn from the show to the impact of television alone. "The Milgram experiment showed that people will submit to authority no matter what its form: military, political, medical, a boss - or now a television host," he says, while noting that he has not yet seen the documentary. "The suggestion that television is the unique or most powerful offender in this manner is just wrong...
...never carries himself like he's the smartest guy in the room, even though he often is." - New Jersey attorney general Anne Milgram, praising her former colleague (New York Times...