A virtual recreation of a classic experiment into obedience found that subjects responded as if the situation were real.

Credit: PLoS

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SYDNEY: Psychological experiments into obedience, stopped 40 years ago because of ethical concerns, have resumed – this time in cyberspace.

Stanley Milgram’s classic experiment on obedience to authority in the 1960s found people would administer apparently lethal electrical shocks to a stranger at the behest of an authority figure. Now a new study has recreated the experiment in a virtual environment, and discovered that participants reacted as though the situation was real.

The study, led by researchers from University College London in the U.K. and reported in the inaugural edition of the journal PLoS ONE, demonstrated that virtual environments could provide an alternative way of pursuing laboratory-based experimental research that examines extreme social situations.

According to lead author Mel Slater, “The line of research opened up by Milgram was of tremendous importance in the understanding of human behaviour. It has been argued before that immersive virtual environment can provide a useful tool for social psychological studies in general, and our results show that this applies even in the extreme social situation investigated by Stanley Milgram.”

Milgram originally carried out the series of experiments in an attempt to understand events in which people carry out horrific acts against others. He showed that in a social structure with recognised lines of authority, ordinary people could be relatively easily persuaded to give what seemed to be lethal electric shocks to another randomly chosen person.

Today, Milgram’s results are often quoted in helping to explain how people become embroiled in organised acts of violence against others; recently they were cited to help explain the psychology behind prisoner abuse and suicide bombings.

Following the style of the original experiments, the participants in the new study were invited to administer a series of word association memory tests to the ‘female’ virtual human representing the stranger. When she gave an incorrect answer the participants were instructed to administer a simulated electric shock to her, increasing the voltage each time she gave an incorrect answer.

She responded with increasing discomfort and protests, eventually demanding termination of the experiment. Of the 34 study participants, 23 saw and heard the virtual human and 11 communicated with her only through a text interface.

The results show there was a clear behavioural difference between the two groups depending on whether they could see the virtual human. All participants in the ‘hidden condition’ – those who could not see the virtual person - administered all 20 shocks. However, in the ‘visible condition’, only about three-quarters of participants gave all 20 shocks, with the remainder delivering fewer.

The ‘visible condition’ experiments were conducted in an immersive virtual reality, formed by a computer-generated real-time display. Within the virtual environment, subjects could experience events and interact with representations of objects and humans.

Participants were asked whether they had considered aborting the experiment. Almost half of those who could see the virtual human indicated they had thought of it, because of their negative feelings about what was happening. Measurements of physiological indicators including heart rate and heart rate variability also indicated that participants reacted as though the situation was real.

“The results demonstrate that even though all experimental participants knew that the situation was unreal, they nevertheless tended to respond as if it were,” said Slater. “This opens the door to the systematic use of virtual environments for laboratory-style study of situations that are otherwise impossible, whether for practical or ethical reasons.”

Slater thinks virtual studies could prove useful in analysing violence associated with football, racial attacks and gang attacks on individuals. “Why do some people participate in such activities even though it is against their nature? The original Milgram experiment helps to explain this, and the exploitation of virtual environments may help to further research into these difficult and pressing questions.”