Computer Characters Tortured for Science

Rob Carr writes "Considered unethical to ever perform again with humans, researcher Mel Slater recreated the Milgram experiment in a immersive virtual environment. Subjects (some of whom could see and hear the computerized woman, others who were only able to read text messages from her) were told that they were interacting with a computer character and told to give increasingly powerful electric shocks when wrong answers were given or the 'woman' took too long to respond. The computer program would correspondingly complain and beg as the 'shocks' were ramped up, falling apparently unconscious before the last shock. The skin conductance and electrocardiograms of the subjects were monitored. Even though the subjects knew they were only 'shocking' a computer program, their bodies reacted with increased stress responses. Several of the ones who could see and hear the woman stopped before reaching the 'lethal' voltage, and about half considered stopping the study. The full results of the experimental report can be read online at PLoS One. Already, some (like William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute) are asking whether even this sanitized experiment is ethical."

Comments

Did subjects know about the Milgram experiment?

[dpbsmith]

I don't see anything in the study that says that they made any attempt to find out whether or not the subjects had ever heard about the original Milgram experiment.

The Milgram subjects almost certainly had no knowledge of whether the situation was real or what the purpose of the experiment was, and probably believed that they were "supposed" to follow orders.

Today's subjects may well have heard something. Even if they couldn't have named "Milgram" as the investigator, they may have had more than an inkling that the purpose of the experiment was to see whether they were virtual sadists, and may have suspected that, despite their instructions, the "approved" behavior was to not to follow orders.

Re:Did subjects know about the Milgram experiment?

[dr_dank]

Last time I checked, the Milgram experiment didn't involve guys in trenchcoats threatening to kill you and your entire family if you don't do your "duty".

That is true, but the authority exuded by the "researcher" in the Milgram experiment is similar. The person doing the shocking feels relieved of responsibility and has a figure to point to if things went sour. It's not like they're going down the street shocking people at random of their own volition, they're being told to in the context of a scientific experiment.

With this kind of disconnect, the results of the Milgram experiment weren't very "shocking".

Re:Did subjects know about the Milgram experiment?

[Kupek]

The point was not to redo the Miligram study in a virtual environment. The point was to demonstrate that people still feel conflicted when harming a subject they know isn't real. That result allows for virtual experiments where the real ones would be unethical.

Re:Did subjects know about the Milgram experiment?

[hazem]

Riiight. The difference between the Milgram experiment and Nazi Germany is pretty significant I think. Last time I checked, the Milgram experiment didn't involve guys in trenchcoats threatening to kill you and your entire family if you don't do your "duty".

That's what is so ground-breaking/terrifying about Milgram. He showed you don't need all those coercive techniques to get "normal" people to do terrible things. You just need someone who is an apparent authority to guide them and absolve them while they're doing it.

He showed that you don't need a whole lot of evil people to do those evil things. You just need a lot of normal people with a few evil people in authority. There was nothing special about the Nazis - we are all (collectively) capable of attrocities, and it doesn't even take much prompting.

Why unethical?

[rewt66]

I consider myself as having more ethics than the average. I am a Christian (yeah, hold your slams, that's not the point). I try to live consistent with what Christianity teaches. More than once I have said what I felt needed to be said, even though there was some chance that it might cost me my job. Once I have done what I felt needed done, even though there was some chance that it might cost me my life.

I don't see what's morally or ethically wrong with the experiment, even with a real human subject. I mean, the "victim" isn't actually being shocked, whether the "victim" is human or virtual.

Is the fear that the experiment desensitizes the subject to situations where they are asked to obey a command that they should refuse? But the results indicate that the subject is likely to already be in that state. If properly debriefed at the end of the experiment, the subject is more likely to refuse such a command in the future, rather than less.

So can someone explain to me what's unethical about this?

Re:Why unethical?

[ebuck]

It's not the damage to the "virtual" victim that's considered the side effect, the Milgram experiment never damaged the "victim" virtual or otherwise.

It's the damage to the administrator of the virtual torture that's considered unethical. As long as that person has any common sense, they'll eventually discover that they are torturing the subject, and if they persist, they will be led to beileve that they have killed the subject. This should bring the administrator in conflict with their sense of morals, and the experiment is designed to break the virtues of compassion and human decency in a high-pressure situation.

We have all felt the pains of high pressure sales tactics, imagine the mistakes you could make if you were initially told that the test was harmless, then put under high pressure to continue it, eventually leading to the death (real in your point-of-view) of the subject? That's the Milgram experiment in a nut shell, and it relies on abusing the trust the administrator has in the researcher. The researcher deliberately lies to the administrator to achieve the desired results.

The fact that you're later debriefed won't console you because the experimenter lied to you, so they could lie to you about "it's all fake, after all". It also prevents resolution of the pain, because complaining about the stresses incurred while virtually torturing someone will either ostracize you from peers or be dismissed as non-real stress. If you actually tortured someone you could atone (if you wish to) for your actions by helping those you hurt, seeking forgiveness within your faith, or by deeds. But nobody understands redressing virtual wrongs; there's no avenue for repentance.

As a good Christian (in the best meaning of the phrase) can you condone the treatment of the real subjects, the ones administring the virtual shocks?

There's also other scientific grounds for dismissal. If the researcher deliberately manipulates the administrator to achieve the desired results, then is it science? In other "hard" science fields, manipulation of the experiment with a desire to achieve certain results would be a serious infraction of the scientific process, but in the near-voodoo corners of Psychology, it's considered a technique.

The news is that they've reproduced it. This one isn't nearly as reproducable as it claims to be, and the effect doesn't support what every Psychology student is told; that "You would do the same thing in the same situation." which (fortunately) isn't true according to the less fantastic failures to reproduce the same outcome.

Re:Why unethical?

[Valdrax]

I consider myself as having more ethics than the average. I am a Christian (yeah, hold your slams, that's not the point). I try to live consistent with what Christianity teaches.

Funny. So were most of the original test subjects in Milgram's 1963 experiments. This stands an an irrelevant comment except to basically brag about how you feel morally superior to most people -- and then you have the sheer, unmitigated gall to ask that people "hold [their] slams." That's Pride. We are all sinners; remember that, and you'll do far better as a Christian than to parade around like a Pharisee waving your religiousity around like it's a badge, proclaming that you have "more ethics than average."

I don't see what's morally or ethically wrong with the experiment, even with a real human subject. I mean, the "victim" isn't actually being shocked, whether the "victim" is human or virtual.

The victims are the test subjects -- the people being pressured into harming other people in spite of their normal moral inclination to avoid such a thing. They are being put under stress and are being led to sincerely attempt to cause mortal harm to another to avoid the displeasure of an authority figure. They are caught between their conscience and the pressure to conform. In the end they are harmed in two ways: (a) they are put under immense stress, (b) they are led to commit a deeply wrong act that they would've never considered.

If tempting people to hurt others and causing distress and emotional turmoil (and in one subject seizures) aren't unethical in your worldview, then I think you need to hit the Good Book a little harder and work some more on those superior ethics of yours.

Re:Of course it's ethical

[Red Flayer]

The original experiment showed that the vast majority of people will kill others if they are told to do so by someone in authority.

Umm, no. Not at all. Milgram's experiment was designed to help determine why people would kill when told to do so by authority figures. It showed that some people would cause harm (not kill) another person when instructed to do so by an authority figure.

John Dean (former aide to Nixon) treats this, and more, in his book "Conservatives Without Conscience", where he helps explain the reasons so many people blindly follow authority (and why some people so like to be blindly followed). Milgram's work was seminal in the study of authoritarian followers, and you do it no justice by blatantly misrepresenting it.

At any ate, the point of this study is that some people do not emotionally differentiate between virtual actions and real actions.

Big difference

[ErGalvao]

There's a big difference: Since the participants were well aware that the subject was a computer character this experiment seems to be basically about psychological/physiological responses from the participants, while the original experiment was much more interesting as people really believed they were hurting human beings.

That's why the original experiment, IMHO, is so important: because it exposed the risks of "obedience-without-thinking".

But then again, I have little knowledge about the whole thing, so these are just my impressions.

Re:Unethical?

[kebes]

The subjects might feel guilty for "hurting" someone else, but that's about it.

Well you seem to think that this is minor, but it really isn't. In the original experiment, people were tricked into believing that they had nearly killed a real human being. In real life, people who are responsible for the death of another person (or for inflicting great suffering) frequently experience a variety of negative emotional effects. The guilt can be quite powerful, and has led some people to depression or suicide.

Of course, in the original experiment the people were eventually told "it's okay, it was just a simulation"... but they may still have felt a deep guilt for a short time, and were probably very emotionall conflicted during the experiment. I've watched some of the footage of the experiment, and it is quite interesting and somewhat scary at times. Some subjects end up begging to the "research authority" to let the experiment end, because they are worried about killing the actor. The anguish and concern in the subjects is quite obvious. (It is also quite scary how many of them continued zapping the actor, even after all their protests, simply because someone in a lab coat kept repeating "please continue with the experiment protocol".)

Though the pain was simulated, the emotional repercussions to the subjects were real. Some may have felt a guilt that continued well after the experiment. ("I know it was just an experiment... but if it had have been real I would have acted the same way... does that make me a bad person?")

This new twist on the experiment (where the subject can very easily tell that the pain they are 'inflicting' is virtual) is interesting. One would naturally assume that the emotional repercussions would be non-existant in such a case, yet this research shows that people nevertheless feel some amount of stress.

MOD PARENT UP

[dpbsmith]

Also, "ouch" and "touché."

But it's not mentioned in the "methodology" section, and I think the paragraph you mention does cast some doubt on the validity of the results:

"For those 12 in the VC who wanted to stop before the end, 5 claimed to be well-acquainted with the original Milgram study, and therefore we cannot rule out the possibility that this influenced their behaviour. However, if we treat 'wanting to stop' as a binary response variable in order to test for differences between the proportions (using binary logistic regression) then the VC was significantly different from the HC (?2 = 6.691 on 1 d.f., P = 0.0097) whereas knowledge of Milgram did not have a significant impact (?2 = 1.525 on 1 d.f., P = 0.22) and there was no interaction effect between group and knowledge of Milgram."

In the first place, this seems a little bit like throwing in a statistical fudge factor, since it does not say in their methodology that they planned to ask about knowledge of Milgram after the experiment, and they seem to have applied this statistical test a posteriori, whereas statistical tests are only valid if the test to be performed is stated in advance.

In the second place, it's all very well to say that five of the subjects "claimed to be well-acquainted" with the Milgram experiment, but that does not take into account the number of subjects that, while not well-acquainted with it, might nevertheless have had some vague or even subconscious knowledge of it. The Milgram study has been around a long time and is practically in the folkways.

There are probably millions of people who would say they knew nothing about John B. Watson's experiments with rats, who nevertheless would be extremely familiar with the idea of running rats through a maze.

Why it's fun

[Rob T Firefly]

Of course, if your playing the Sims and killing your characters perhaps your playing the wrong game - might I suggest GTA, Dead Rising or Manhunt?

I think a large part of the fun of killing off Sims is the fact that it's not really what the game is for. It appeals to the rebellious types, the ones who always tried to shoot the dog instead of the ducks in "Duck Hunt," typed swear words into their old text adventures, or tried to drive the course backwards in "Pole Position" just to see what would happen.

In something like "GTA," killing the other characters is just another expected part of the game. In "Manhunt," it's damn near the whole point of the game. But it doesn't have the same appeal as when you think you just might be experimenting with aspects of a game that its mainstream players don't, or that the programmers might not have even been prepared for.

It's right up there with "Hot Coffee." The mod wasn't necessarily popular because the crude polygonal dry-humping was all that appealing in itself, but because it was a way to get soemthing out of your copy of "San Andreas" that the next guy wasn't, and see more of your game than the company expected.

If they released an official "47 new ways to kill your Sims Torture Pack," where it really was the focus of the game, it just might not be as appealing as it was.

There is a problem with ethics!

[CyberLord Seven]

Sure no one gets hurt. In truth, no one was tortured in Milgram's experiment either. The problem arrives when you realize that you have asked someone to "punish" another person and they do it strictly on your perceived authority.

Whether your "volunteer" has actually harmed someone or not, the psychological trauma is very real. That's the part where they describe the very real stress indicators. For those that don't know, the Nazi's kept free liquor flowing to the guards in the concentration camps. Why did they need liquor? Because of the emotional trauma associated with performing such vile acts on another human being.

It makes me wonder if the human subjects of this experiment truly trusted the statements of those in authority that they were NOT shocking real humans. Was something clicking in the backs of their heads warning them that they may be torturing real humans instead of electronic simulations?

Too bad Philip K. Dick is dead.

Re:Exposure to Video Games Important?

[Vo0k]

I must say the moment I launched my first nuke at a city in Defcon, I felt really bad about it, and seeing "MOSCOW HIT 3.2 MILLIONS DEAD" really got me thinking. But now I launch dozens of nukes at capitol city of my country without remorse.

Mod Parent Up

[fyoder]

I'd mod you up if I had points, as this is a very good question. How many people reading of the Milgram experiment have wondered how they would have performed? One hopes one would have been the exception, refusing to be a tool of authority used to harm others. Given the opportunity to participate in a recreation of the experiment, one knows how to perform in order to maintain one's self image as a decent human being.

Re:Unethical?

[Valdrax]

The subjects might feel guilty for "hurting" someone else, but that's about it.

Spoken like a man who is incapable of the empathy to understand how believing for a moment that you've killed a man through electroshock might make someone else feel. The Milgram experiment made many of the participants believe for a short time that they were guilty of murder due to peer pressure. That's not something that leaves you to be forgotten for the rest of your life.

Neither is having the self-delusion in one's inherent morality stripped away by being pressured into committing an atrocity merely by being told "the experiment must continue" by a man in a lab coat. Finding out that you're essentially a sheep who will harm others just to avoid the disapproval of an authority figure would be a scarring experience for those involved. The damage done to the subjects' worldviews is a large part of what makes it unethical.

Plus, even if the effects weren't long lasting, causing undue stress on a subject and heavy use of deception are generally considered unethical in psychology experiments. I mean, one of the subjects did get so stressed out that they had a seizure.

Re:RTFA

[realisticradical]

Yes.

In fact I'm not sure how this study ever received Institutional Review Board approval for human subjects research.

First I don't see what this study achieves. It recreates an immensely harmful and unethical study with some slight tweaks to make it less harmful. The Miligram study already exists, we don't need to re-try it to ensure that people will follow orders.

Second just because someone is consented to a study does not mean that it is acceptable to harm them. Just to discover how much harm a study does to the subjects does not justify doing that study.

Milgram's own follow-ups explored this a little.

[Valdrax]

Milgram ran at least 20 experiments along this theme. The end result of variations in the base experiment revealed the emotional distance between the "teacher" and the "learner" had a very strong effect on the likeliness to continue. The more dehumanized the learner was, the more readily the teacher went further and further. Conversely, the more empathy the teacher was encouraged to have (say by seeing or directly hearing the learner through an open door instead of a speaker), the less likely they continued.

By demonizing the subject as a criminal, you would definitely observe a higher incidence of going too far. Demonizing your enemies is a central tactic in all societies committing to war for a reason -- it makes it easier to kill the other guy when you don't see him as being the same as you.