A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments

By Mel Slater, Angus Antley, A. Davison, David Swapp, Christoph Guger, Chris Barker, Nancy Pistrang, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives. PLoS ONE, 2006

613 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Stanley Milgram's 1960s experimental findings that people would administer apparently lethal electric shocks to a stranger at the behest of an authority figure remain critical for understanding obedience. Yet, due to the ethical controversy that his experiments ignited, it is nowadays impossible to carry out direct experimental studies in this area. In the study reported in this paper, we have used a similar paradigm to the one used by Milgram within an immersive virtual environment. Our objective has not been the study of obedience in itself, but of the extent to which participants would respond to such an extreme social situation as if it were real in spite of their knowledge that no real events were taking place. Methodology Following the style of the original experiments, the participants 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 an ‘electric shock’ to her, increasing the voltage each time. She responded with increasing discomfort and protests, eventually demanding termination of the experiment. Of the 34 participants, 23 saw and heard the virtual human, and 11 communicated with her only through a text interface. Conclusions Our results show that in spite of the fact that all participants knew for sure that neither the stranger nor the shocks were real, the participants who saw and heard her tended to respond to the situation at the subjective, behavioural and physiological levels as if it were real. This result reopens the door to direct empirical studies of obedience and related extreme social situations, an area of research that is otherwise not open to experimental study for ethical reasons, through the employment of virtual environments.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4f118d8cfd9e4eb3df249e97844af338fc171b4f

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Citations in the corpus

Enhancing Our Lives with Immersive Virtual Reality (2016, methodology): “In 2006, a virtual reprise of one version of the Milgram experiments was carried out (Slater et al., 2006), with full ethical approval.”
Virtual Self-Modeling: The Effects of Vicarious Reinforcement and Identification on Exercise Behaviors (2009, methodology): “IVET has been incorporated in studies of persuasion (Guadagno, Blascovich, Bailenson, & McCall, 2007), obedience (Slater et al., 2006), behavioral mimicry (Bailenson & Yee, 2005), and videogame violence and aggression (Persky & Blascovich, 2007).”
Real Virtuality: A Code of Ethical Conduct. Recommendations for Good Scientific Practice and the Consumers of VR-Technology (2016, background): “4 More recently, an experiment reproducing the famous Milgram obedience experiments in VR found that subjects reacted as if the shocks they administered were real, despite believing that they were merely virtual (Slater et al., 2006).”
Why and how to use virtual reality to study human social interaction: The challenges of exploring a new research landscape (2018, methodology): “Studies from the Slater group include a recreation of the famous Milgram experiment where participants had to execute fatal electric shots to a virtual character (Slater et al., 2006); a violent fight scenario (Slater et al., 2013) and a moral dilemma with an active shooter (Pan & Slater, 2011).”
Would You Deliver an Electric Shock in 2015? Obedience in the Experimental Paradigm Developed by Stanley Milgram in the 50 Years Following the Original Studies (2017, methodology): “In the study by Slater et al. (2006), participants were asked to put on 3-”
Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players (2010, methodology): “…indicating that users automatically respond to virtual environments to a certain extent as though they were real (Bailenson et al., 2003; McCall, Blascovich, Young, & Persky, 2009; Nass & Moon, 2000; Slater et al., 2006; Weber, Ritterfeld, & Mathiak, 2006; Yee, Bailenson, & Ducheneaut, 2009).”
Virtual reality in neuroscience research and therapy (2011, methodology): “For example, VR has been used to replicate the famous obedience study of Milgram, complete with palpable distress on the part of participants tasked with 'shocking' virtual confederate”
Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments (2009, background): “Similarly, people respond according to type when speaking to an audience of virtual characters—people with a fear of public speaking react with anxiety whereas conﬁdent speakers do not (Slater et al. 2006 b ).”