The Game Of Death: How television reinforces authority

Have you ever wondered why people in reality shows tend to do things they do not want? Four years ago a French Television documentary, broadcasted by the French Public Television (France 2), stirred controversy trying to answer this question.

“Le jeu de la mort” (The Game of Death) was a fake TV show pilot in which 80 credulous contestants thought they were taking part in a programme. Nothing furthest from reality. The truth was that they were part of an experiment willing to examine humans’ tendency to blindly obey authority and TV mind-numbing power to suspend morality.

Obedience to the authority

To what extent would you obey orders if these came into conflict with your ethical or moral convictions? We may think we are free to choose. However, the truth is that it is hard for human beings to disobey because since we are children we have accustomed ourselves to submission.

In every society there is some sort of hierarchy in which some individuals exercise a degree of authority over the others. Parents have authority over their children, the teacher over his students, and so forth.

Many experts have focused their attention on this topic and there is a wide range of answers to the question: why do people obey even if orders going against their principles? In this post we will be outlining the psychological answer to that question and we are going to connect this issue with real news stories in order to see the dimension of this fact.