Rigged Games
May. 18th, 2014 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebPsychology experiment: Two subjects play a game of Monopoly for 15 minutes. One starts off with twice as much money, gets twice as much money whenever passing go, and gets to use two dice instead of one. What happens?
Here's a TED Talk about that in the Consumer Commentary blog. The TED Talk is 16.5 minutes--you know these are all good. I recommend checking it out or at least reading the summary in the blog.
This made me cry. They try to make a happy ending. I'm not really falling for it.
No one talked about the rich player saying that a rigged game was no fun and trying to make it more fair.
In only a 15-minute game, people seemingly forgot all about how the game was obviously rigged and started attributing their success to their hard work and wise decisions. And in real life, it's much less obvious how much the game is rigged in your favor. And so it's much easier to understand the people who do well talking about their hard work and wise decisions.
**
As you may know, there's a famous psychology study where subjects are put into a room with a machine they are told can shock people, and that each time another subject in the next room (whom they can't see but they can hear) gives a wrong answer (or no answer), they are to administer a shock, starting with the lowest level shock and moving up one step at a time. Although the top shocks were clearly labeled as dangerous, a huge percentage of people administered shocks all the way up the scale in spite of evidence that the other person was hurt or even passed out and in spite of there being no danger to them if they quit (unlike, say, in Nazi Germany). Of course, they expressed concern, but a guy in a white coat at an ivy league university saying, "Please continue with the experiment" was enough to reassure them that it must be alright.
Psychologists are no longer allowed to do experiments like that because they are too traumatizing. On the other hand, none of those subjects will ever do anything like that again.
Those of us who were not in the experiment can all tell ourselves that we wouldn't have been one of the people who went all the way, and we might be right. And having learned about the experiment, we are less likely to do something like that in the future.
**
Surely the same is true for this Monopoly experiment. We can be one of the people who thinks we wouldn't have gotten all cocky and special after blasting someone in an obviously rigged game. And maybe we will be less likely to be like that in the future.
Here's a TED Talk about that in the Consumer Commentary blog. The TED Talk is 16.5 minutes--you know these are all good. I recommend checking it out or at least reading the summary in the blog.
This made me cry. They try to make a happy ending. I'm not really falling for it.
No one talked about the rich player saying that a rigged game was no fun and trying to make it more fair.
In only a 15-minute game, people seemingly forgot all about how the game was obviously rigged and started attributing their success to their hard work and wise decisions. And in real life, it's much less obvious how much the game is rigged in your favor. And so it's much easier to understand the people who do well talking about their hard work and wise decisions.
**
As you may know, there's a famous psychology study where subjects are put into a room with a machine they are told can shock people, and that each time another subject in the next room (whom they can't see but they can hear) gives a wrong answer (or no answer), they are to administer a shock, starting with the lowest level shock and moving up one step at a time. Although the top shocks were clearly labeled as dangerous, a huge percentage of people administered shocks all the way up the scale in spite of evidence that the other person was hurt or even passed out and in spite of there being no danger to them if they quit (unlike, say, in Nazi Germany). Of course, they expressed concern, but a guy in a white coat at an ivy league university saying, "Please continue with the experiment" was enough to reassure them that it must be alright.
Psychologists are no longer allowed to do experiments like that because they are too traumatizing. On the other hand, none of those subjects will ever do anything like that again.
Those of us who were not in the experiment can all tell ourselves that we wouldn't have been one of the people who went all the way, and we might be right. And having learned about the experiment, we are less likely to do something like that in the future.
**
Surely the same is true for this Monopoly experiment. We can be one of the people who thinks we wouldn't have gotten all cocky and special after blasting someone in an obviously rigged game. And maybe we will be less likely to be like that in the future.
no subject
on 2014-05-19 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-21 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-21 12:39 am (UTC)Now, the idea of putting people through such an experiment, then revealing to them the results (i.e., that they personally behaved in a biased/asshat/whatever way), and thinking that will change their behavior later...I just don't know. Maybe the emotional intensity of certain (unethical) experimental designs would change people. But I think about things like how people who are in the hospital for injuries sustained in a car accident they themselves caused still believe that they are better than average drivers and I just don't have a lot of confidence in experience as a good teacher of these lessons in general.
-Sally
no subject
on 2014-05-21 01:21 am (UTC)