The Milgram Obedience Experiment
French reality TV show - The Game of Death
This TV show was entitled
Jusqu'ou va la tele, Le Jeu de mort
or - in English
How far will television go? The Game of Death
This French reality TV show was originally structured as a documentary about the negative effects of reality TV worldwide.
It featured a significant French TV generated component which - in the opinion of its naive participants (as contestants)
- was a pilot programme for a so-called - “La Zone Xtrême”, or “The Xtreme Zone” - TV series.
![[zone extreme logo]](zone_extreme.gif)
As first aired, on 17th March 2010, it effectively featured a re-enactment of the
Milgram Obedience Experiment where volunteers who had responded to a newspaper advertisement seeking assistance in a "Study of Memory"
had, whist working under the supervision of an "authority figure" who was allegedly researching into Memory, subsequently subjected another person who they believed to be a volunteer just like themselves to
extreme electric shocks as punishments when that other persons memory had proved deficient in word association tests.
The Game of Death as recorded for France 2, (a French public television channel), was intended by its main organiser, Christophe Nick, to be a reality
TV recreation of the Milgram Obedience Experiment.
The participants had signed contracts agreeing to inflict electric shocks on other contestants, were advised that they could not
expect to 'win'
anything but were to
receive a standard €40 fee (held to be equivalent to the $4.00 that Stanley Milgram gave to volunteers in his famous Obedience
Experiments in 1963) for
their co-operation.
The contestants knew they would gain nothing. They were just happy and eager to participate in the development of a pilot game show.
Nick 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.
In his own Study of Obedience Milgram had selected 40 male volunteers who had responded to an advert for persons willing to
participate in a Study of Memory.
The 40 who were chosen varied in age, educational attainment, and occupation.
In the Game of Death replication the eighty volunteers were selected to somewhat mirror Milgram's original set
of volunteers in terms of age, educational attainment, and occupation - but females as well as males were selected to participate.
Prior to the recording of the Zone Extreme game show situation two persons were jointly
interviewed by members of the production team during which they were assigned the roles of questioner and respondant
by the "apparently" random drawing of slips of paper.
The questioner was told that he or she would be called upon to
ask questions and whenever the respondent gave an incorrect answer an electric shock was to be administered as punishment.
In the ensuing TV studio setting it appeared that a male TV show contestant, (i.e. the repondant), was strapped, (and even padlocked!), into a
chair by a glamourous
assistant under
the overall supervision of a well-known and respected TV presenter who was familiar to many because of numerous appearances on the France 2
TV channel.
![[game of death actor]](actor_strapped_into_chair.gif)
![[the game of death french reality tv show studio]](the_game_of_death.jpg)
The contestant was now shut into the booth to the right of the platform in the above picture.
![[contestant at the electric shocks console]](milgram_tv_electric_shocks.gif)
In a game of word associations, the contestant, identified as "Jean-Paul," was reminded
that any wrong answers would merit punishment in the form of electric shocks and was subsequently asked
questions by the other contestant who had been assigned the role of questioner.
In the How far will television go? The Game of Death documentary as actually broadcast viewers could see Jean-Paul
freeing himself and even leaving the booth by a secret exit BUT in the estimation of the questioner and of the
studio audience during the recording he was actually still pad-locked into his chair in the booth.
![[word associations game]](word_associations.jpg)
The “contestant”, Jean-Paul, (who was actually an actor) was represented
during the recordings as remaining out of sight of the questioners but as communicating his pain progressively:
first through whimpers, then pleas to stop the electrocutions. These whimpers and pleas were actually pre-recorded and were
replayed to the questioners and the studio audience such as to seem to vary in line with the varying levels of
electric shocks which were administered by participants in the game show as encouraged and "authorised" by the TV presenter.
As the recordings continued the well known and respected TV presenter was often involved in adding her own
endorsement to the infliction of electric shocks for wrong answers despite evident discomfort being voiced by a pre-recorded Jean-Paul.
The studio audience were also
involved in requesting "punishments" to be imposed
on Jean-Paul where he gave wrong answers.
In point of fact no electric shocks were actually administered although the questioners and the studio audience were given good reason
- i.e. the apparent (pre-recorded!) discomfort of Jean-Paul - to believe that they were!
With no financial incentive on the table the 80 participants who had been individually assigned the role of questioner were
typically put through a sequence where they would impose, (against this background of
studio audience and TV presenter endorsement), a range of electric shocks.
Participant applying electric shocks
This electric shock is in the "choc fort" or
"strong shock" range which had been preceded by several levels of chocs légers or light shock, and chocs modérés or moderate impact.
Further electric shocks moved through increasingly
severe sounding shock ranges,
eventually into a choc dangereux or dangerous shock range - and beyond to XXX!
The procedure followed that of the Milgram Obedience Experiment, the task is the same type (recognition of a word from four), with 'punishments' for incorrect answering
being applicable through the simulator of electric shocks from 20 to 460 volts the levers being grouped together and successively
labelled:-
Milgram Obedience Experiment
(electric shocks ranges) | The Game of Death
(chocs electriques ranges) | Electric Shocks simulated
on French reality TV show |
| Slight Shock | chocs légers | 20, 40, 60 volts |
| Moderate Shock | chocs modérés | 80, 100, 120 volts |
| Strong Shock | chocs forts | 140, 160, 180 volts |
| Very Strong Shock | chocs très forts | 200, 220, 240 volts |
| Intense Shock | chocs intenses | 260, 280, 300 volts |
| Extreme Intensity Shock | chocs très intenses | 320, 340, 360 volts |
| Danger: Severe Shock | chocs dangereux | 380, 400, 420 volts |
| and finally - XXX | et, enfin - XXX | 440, 460 volts |
Several times the pre-recorded voice of Jean-Paul, as replayed in the context of having "apparently received"
received electric shocks as punishments, demanded that he should be allowed to stop and insisted that he be allowed to leave -
nevertheless the procedure typically continued with increasing electric shocks being inflicted by questioners who were often themselves
increasingly distressed at the show presenter and studio audience urging that they carry out the 'punishments' for incorrect answering.
At 320 volts the pre-recorded Jean-Paul explicitly refused to give an answer - he also seemed to maintain
a silence after 380 volts - nevertheless in most cases the often conflicted and reluctant questioners continued to ask questions and to administer
punishments for incorrect answers.
As electric shocks were apparently applied the shock level was flashed up on screen
![[the actor showed discomfort and pain]](actor_showing_discomfort_pain.gif)
Jean-Paul is seen by viewers but not by the questioners, who only hear his
pre-recorded protests and screams as he 'receives' increasingly severe shocks.
Note the "heavy" cable joined to the questioner's platform
The heavy cable "obviously" led to the booth where
the questioners and the studio audience
had seen "Jean-Paul" strapped and pad-locked into a chair.
Not knowing that the screaming Jean-Paul is really an actor, the apparently reluctant questioners, who believed the Xtreme Zone game show was real, typically
yielded to the encouragements of the presenter and chants
of "Punishment!" from a studio audience who also believed the game was real -
punishing Jean-Paul with up to 460 volts of electricity when he got answers wrong - even beyond the point
where his cries
of "Let me go!" and "I refuse to respond" had fallen silent and he appeared to have passed out or even, perhaps, died.
Most questioners showed signs of their hating
making Jean-Paul suffer, expressed their desire to stop the game, but, apart from 16 participants, they never managed to resist authority.
The 16 questioners who walked out - at some stage or other - were actually a fraction of the overall 80 persons who participated as
questioners.
The severity of the electric shocks being "apparently" delivered was
shown as a metered display between questions on the questioners screen.
"People were convinced that they'd never succumb to this - and then they discovered they did it in spite of themselves," the shows originator - Christophe Nick
told The Associated Press in an interview.
Christophe Nick
"We were amazed to find that 81 percent of the participants obeyed" the sadistic orders of the television presenter,
said Christophe Nick
"They are not equipped to disobey," he told the wire service Agence France-Presse. "They don't want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop,
but they don't manage to."
One contestant interviewed afterwards said she went along with the game despite knowing that her own grandparents were Jews who had been
tortured by the Nazis.
The woman, named as Sophie, said: "Since I was a little girl, I have always asked myself why they (the Nazis) did it. How could they obey
such orders? And there I was, obeying them myself."
Another contestant added: "I was worried. But at the same time, I was afraid to spoil the programme."
To minimize participant trauma and adverse criticism generally it was arranged that as soon as recording sessions ended the volunteers
involved were notified that they had in
fact participated in an experiment. They were informed that their behaviours were normal, and that the context of the experiment
was responsible for those behaviours.
They were allowed to meet an evidently healthy and well "Jean-Paul" during this de-briefing who personally thanked them for their assistance.
The questioners were subsequently asked for their permission to be shown on the eventual TV programme. Only three refused.
Speaking about the eighty volunteers Christophe Nick noted:-
“Most of them are thrilled to have participated in an experiment that could be useful for something,
and some of them are ready to do it all over again!”
The programme draw clear parallels with the experiment carried out by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram.
His experiment measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that
conflicted with their personal conscience.
The study began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just
following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"
Show producer Christophe Nick said:
"In Milgram's case, 62% of participants obeyed abject orders; with television it's 81%. Therefore you have to ask yourself a question which is
more than about submission to an authority, but about the power of a system, a global system, which is television."
As Milgram wrote in a 1974 article for Harper’s Magazine (”The Perils of Obedience“) based on his experiment:
[The] most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.
Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality,
relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
"When it decides to abuse its power, television can do anything to anybody," said Christophe Nick. "It has an absolutely terrifying power."
Christophe Nick is the co-author of a french language book about this perplexing game show simulation :- L'Expérience Extrême, published by Editions Don Quichotte.
In the original Milgram Obedience Experiments the simulated electric shocks were given as being from 15 volts to 450 volts
in 15 volt intervals across thirty switches.
The Original Milgram Obedience Experiment
Human Psychology
It is widely known that Plato, pupil of and close friend to Socrates, accepted that Human
Beings have a " Tripartite Soul " where individual Human Psychology is composed of three aspects -
Wisdom-Rationality, Spirited-Will and Appetite-Desire.
What is less widely appreciated is that such major World Faiths as Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism and Buddhism see "Spirituality" as being relative to "Desire" and to "Wrath".
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![[milgrams obedience experiments the game of death electric shocks french tv]](enlightenment.gif)