Prompted by Slater et al’s paper, A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments, BBC radio4’s The Today Programme’s John Humphrys interviewed Mel Slater and Alex Haslam about the opportunities created by virtual worlds for psychologists to revisit ethically controversial , but hugely important, experiments. Slater et al found that, given sufficiently immersive environments, subjects would react normally to their scenarios (despite reminders of artificiality). The Neurophilosopher’s Weblog has a good summary of the Milgram experiments in the context of Slater at al’s work.
The Today Programme discussion focused on the potential for virtual worlds to reproduce the classic conformity and coercion experiments of the 1960s and 1970s. Ethical objections to these experiments (as a consequence of the damage that can be done to the subjects) have prevented social psychologists from building on this work for the last quarter of a century. Many social psychologists regard the discipline to have effectively stalled in the areas probed by these experiments, so much is at stake in these new methods.
There may only be a small window of opportunity for research of this type. The Guardian recently reported that lawmakers in the Bavaria and Lower Saxony are proposing stiff penalties for ‘cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters’. A Korean Times article reports that where virtual worlds are a central component of popular culture, the word, ‘hyon-P’ has been adopted to describe violence passing from virtual to actual space. The article remarks,
“It is not surprising that these situations occur in Korea,'’ said Choi Saet-byul, a professor of sociology at Ewha Womans University. She said that Koreans tend to relate online life with the real world. She said online community members’ gathering offline is an example of the two worlds merging. [source: Korean Times]
The cynical amongst us might think that as soon as virtual $ equates to $ then all other equivalences follow. An earlier article here describes the business enterprises of Ansche Chung in Second Life generating the first millionaire of virtual capitalism. Currencies of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Eve-Online have regularly exchanged for real $ on ebay. Clickable culture have recently reported that a corporation in Eve-Online has ‘gone public’ and is selling shares outside the game’s supported mechanics. Some recent comment has made clear that it is possible to ‘launder’ virtual currency via game time top-up cards in Eve-Online. Perhaps you have to be a new member of global capitalism to see through the peculiarly moral prejudices against the virtual: the Chinese courts have declared crimes against virtual property to be analagous in law to to those against physical property (China Daily).
The conclusion of all of this is that the ‘ethically questionable’ experiments that form the core of late twentieth century social psychology could well be reproduced and developed in virtual worlds. However, virtual contexts allow productive social psychological research precisely because they are real social spaces. Capitalism has already colonised these real social spaces and will rapidly be followed by corresponding property law. Property law will be followed by definitions of ‘crimes against the person’. Social psychology does not have very long to act before virtual domains are included in the same legal protections against abuse that apply elsewhere.
Ref:
Slater M, Antley A, Davison A, Swapp D, Guger C, et al. (2006) A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments. PLoS ONE 1(1): e39. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000039 [Online] http://www.plosone.org/ Accessed: 24 Dec 2006
The Today Programme (2006) BBC, Radio 4. 21 Dec 2006 [Online] Internet: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/ Accessed: 24 Dec 2006: 11.00
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