paul@wjvax.UUCP (Paul Summers) (09/11/84)
This show sticks in my mind, since we watched it as a project in Jr High social studies (12 years ago....). It actually was based on a real experiment. The 2 "subjects" were told that it was an experiment in "negative re-inforcement" on learning. For every wrong answer the subject on the hot seat gave, we would receive an electric shock of increasing voltage. (Remember the scene in Ghost Busters where Murray is trying to "make" the attractive female student with the high ESP potential? Same idea.) The experiment actually was testing subject's response to an "authority figure", or, The Man In The White Coat (Shatner) conducting the experiment. The purpose was to see how far the questioner would go before stopping out of sympathy for the person receiving the shocks. In the show, just about every person went to the "lethal" level, which was a shock to the experimenters. The plot twist for dramatic affect was that Shatner's character kept going with the experiment, even though it was causing extreme emotional stress on the actual subjects (the person pressing the button), thus, by not stopping when he knew he was causing damage, he also fell into the same categorey as the subjects who went to the Tenth, or lethal, level. Interesting show. -- Paul Summers Watkins Johsnon, Co. San Jose, Ca. (...ios!wjvax!paul)