"Game Of Death" Social Experiment- shocking result

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"The Game Of Death had all the trappings of a traditional television quiz show...
But contestants on the show did not realise they were taking part in an experiment to find out whether television could push them to outrageous lengths.
The game involved contestants posing questions to another "player", who was actually an actor, and punishing him with 460 volts of electricity when he answered incorrectly...
Out of 80 players, just 16 refused to shock the victim and walked out."

"One contestant interviewed afterwards said she went along with the torture despite knowing that her own grandparents were Jews who had been persecuted by the Nazis.
"Since I was a little girl, I have always asked myself why the Nazis did it," she said. "How could they obey such orders? And there I was, obeying them myself."
"I was worried about the contestant," said another player. "At the same time, I was afraid to spoil the programme.""


I found this quite staggering, and utterly compelling.

This is an old social experiment, older than most of the people on this forum. There are periodically variations on it where for example a "detective" will call a store and convince an employee that another subordinate employee has been stealing, and he should strip search her etc. All it proves is a combination of stupidity and carelessness on the part of the average human being.

Okay, so, contraversial question:

16 out of 80 contestants refused to take part.
If the 80 contestants had been AS, do you think this figure would have been different?

Since many people with AS have difficulty handling social pressure..,.

I'm pretty sure I have AS, and I tend not to hold authority on a pedestal higher than I hold myself. I don't know if this is true for most aspies. I am 120% certain that I would not only walk away from the show, but call the real authorities and report that state labor laws are being violated.

The original of this is "Milgram's Experiment". Stanley Milgram is, to me, an underrated hero of the 20th Century - I've been fascinated by this experiment since I first heard of it 30 years ago!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

. As I recall, they tried it on different nationalities and found not much difference - apart from Germans were actually *less* likely to follow the orders. Probably due to their recent problems being fresh in their minds...

Anyway, it is a very interesting question regarding Aspies, I can see it going either way: some of us have spent so long ignoring what we feel in order to fit in to 'NT' world, we may go along with it. Others would almost certainly not join in.. It really should be tried out thought! When put on the spot, we often don't behave at all like how we would assume.

If you are intrigued by this experiment, you may also like the Asch experiments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_confo ... xperiments

PS What's surprising is that people still fall for the 'electric shock' trick, I thought *everybody* knew it by now.

Hmm...I gotta go pretty soon, so I'll answer my own question before leaving.

I would say that general AS eye for detail, overanalysis and social awkwardness makes us less susceptible to things such as subliminal messages. But I suppose this experiment is a question of extreme pressure. I think that a lot of us would crack under such extreme pressure, but then I think some of us are so socially detatched from NT's that we would not feel compelled to do anything under peer pressure.
I also find that we are more confident in our morals. That's not to say that the figure of those who walked out would be more...some of us do dabble in Schadenfreude...just I think there would be less debating with ourselves, we would made up our minds and take action immediately.

No 2 Aspies are the same though, and I feel awkward when making such generalisations.

Last edited by AJCoyne on 17 Mar 2010, 12:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's a bit like the Stanford Prison expriment. It's frightening what lies in the human psyche.

Exactly the same format of actors simulating electrocution was used in a "social experiment around the time of the Nuremburg Trials. It was called the Millgram experiment. It (perhaps)
showed what rational , otherwise sane individuals can be made to do if " following orders" and social directives, and being subject to certain peer pressures. Millgram wanted to understand how individuals could live normal family lives then go out to work everyday and industrially murder people for eight hours, before coming back to play with their kids and eat their tea.

Interesting stuff this peer pressure and falling into line , isn't it.

Postures - bump!

I think the real trick would be to get Aspies to appear on a game show, in front of lights, cameras and a studio audience. Put me in a heightened stimulus situation like that and I'd be ready to walk out or kill something before the game started.

My beautiful example of a Schadenfreude Aspie

Interesting game isn't it? Let's raise the stakes. Fifteen years from now Aspies run the information networks. We build the computers that run their missile defense systems. They don't know what we've been doing because they don't actually understand what we've done or how it works, or how to shut it down.

Just to show were not messing about Beijing is evaporated. The rest of the nuclear armed NT self referential groups unilaterally and unconditionally surrender. We've spent years herding them socially, economically, geographically, and right now they exactly where we want them to be.

Some Aspies tell you:" we finish what we've started". After all , think of all the sh*t the NT's have given you over a lifetime. They don't deserve to exist because all the bad stuff they do on the planet.

All you have to do is punch in the launch codes and turn that key.

Do you?

Only out of curiosity. Not because I genuinely would like people to die. I'm just curious to see what it's like to kill.

I'm told it's nothing special.

Goodgood. Means I don't have to.