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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."
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
Er Galvão Abbott - IT Consultant and Developer
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
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.
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.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").