For the last few years television has been constantly overcoming its boundaries. A few days ago the next one has been demolished. A French TV channel has emitted a new documentary, “The Game of Death”, which has shown that people are putting too much trust into television.
For the sake of documentary the new version of Milgram experiment has been conducted. The participants, similarly to the first experiment, had to ask questions to their fellow participants, and deliver electric shocks for the wrong answers until the man, who is really an actor, appears to die. The results were extremely controversial: 81% of the “players” gave a deathly volt. What is even more terrifying, some people were laughing while torturing other participants.
The main idea of the documentary is to show the willingness of people to obey the orders, even if they violate their deepest beliefs and moral imperatives against hurting other humans. However, the participants not only followed the orders, but also felt no responsibility for the actions taken. They have assumed that since they were merely doing what they were told, the guilt for the immoral behavior lied on the person who was commanding the orders. This belief can be well explained by the institutional theory and agentic state theory. The former is about the structures and rules which become the guidelines for social behavior. However, this theory diminishes moral responsibility of the individual. The latter theory says that a person sees himself as a tool for carrying other person’s wishes, therefore also avoiding personal responsibility. The main consequence of diffusion of responsibility is lack of monitoring of person’s own behavior. That was exactly what has happened in the experiment: the participants refused to think that they were responsible for what happened during the experiment.
I believe that “The Game of Death” was created to show television’s ability to suspend morality. It also showed how easily it is for people to blame others for their actions. I believe that everyone’s moral obligation is to take responsibility for one’s actions.
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1 comment:
The results of this TV-show where the same as the Millgram experiment, but it seems that the TV-cameras make people even go farther than they would do without. Like stated in the principal comment, the moral responsibility disappeared in this experiment; TV-camera's made it even faster disappear.
The title of principle comment is the question whether TV is able to suspend morality. This experiment shows that it is possible to let people do things they normally would not do. The viewer who sees this on television is not in this setting and is able to think rational. He or she will reject with the immoral behaviour on TV. Therefore, I do not think TV alone is able to suspend morality.
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