Hidden camera shows are a guilty pleasure of mine. I love seeing how people react to situations. With shows like Candid Camera, these reactions were largely annoyance or disbelief. No harm was intended. But in this cutting edge world, we have developed a more aggressive taste. Hidden camera shows have become more focused on totally manipulating the victim (as some shows call them) into a certain reaction using elaborately set up scenes. I am ashamed to admit it, but I love one of thos shows; a show on the Sci Fi network called Scare Tactics.
On Scare Tactics, people nominate their "friends" to be scared in one of what I have narrowed down to three categories: supernatural, wrong place at the wrong time, and victim-caused scenarios. The categories are rather self explanatory: supernatural may be an alien (the episode I link to has a young woman believing she has just seen the birth of Satan's baby) or bigfoot, etc, wrong place at the wrong time implies a runin with a crazy or homicidal person (one episode had a chimney sweep find the body of the grandmother hanging in the chimney), and victim-caused usually means the victim has been recruited to a show called "Fear Antics" to scare someone else (really a Scare Tactics actor) and some tragedy befalls them (usually a reaction to fear like a heart attack or something of that nature) leaving the actual victim to stand in shocked guilt and dismay at what they have done. At the end of the stunt, one of the actors always says "Are you scared? Well you shouldn't be, because you're on Scare Tactics".
These clips are interesting on a psychological level because they allow us to see a person's reaction in what would be considered unethical for a psychological experiment (try something like that and you'll never get a license anywhere). They put me in mind of Milgram's experiments in the 1950s. Milgram tested obedience by telling participants that they were to give a small electric shock to a second participant behind a partition in increasing severity with every wrongly answered question. In reality there was not another participant and the first participant was listening to a casette recording. You can read more about Milgram's experiments here: http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm
and an updated version of the milgram experiment can be found here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3498891302995765561
While the Milgram experiments aren't along the same line as Scare Tactics, they do deal with similar emotions. The "Teacher" in the experiment likely feels the same emotions as many of the "wrong place wrong time" situations in Scare Tactics.
Scare Tactics opens up a can of psychological worms. One question that came to mind as I watched these episodes is "Why do we enjoy enducing fear in others?"
I love my best friend dearly. I lived with her for a year and a half in college. For the life of her, though, she could not stop herself from scaring me. She used to hide for up to half an hour waiting for me to come to the dorm just so she could jump out and scare me. My brother got a kick out of jumping out from behind doors at my mom and making her scream. Why do we enjoy this so much? Is it because by manipulating fear in others we ourselves have power over fear? Is it the old middle school child in us creeping out saying "If I put her down, no one will be able to put me down"?
Another question that the show itself seems to ask is "What would you do if placed in an abnormal, frightening situation?" Many people think that they would not be fooled (many of those get the supernatural scenario) or scared, and that they would react in a cool manner. Social psychologists will be the first to tell you that the only way to know what someone will do in a situation is to put them in that situation. That is why training for the armed forces is so psychologically assaulting. They are trying to recreate as best they can the situations a person will face at war. Nursing clinicals are a bit tamer, more realistic example of seeing what someone will do in a situation before they are fully immersed (gotta hand it to the nursing school for really preparing these RNs!). Resident Assistants go through a similar training scenario (but that's top secret).
I would love to say that I would not resort to begging or obey someone in a situation I thought immoral or threatening of my life. I would love to say I would not be fooled if I suddenly saw a dwarfish figure covered in viscus spring from an "alien pod" and down my boss, but who knows what I would do in a given situation?
I don't think that I would be a prime candidate for Scare Tactics, despite my jumpiness. I have been brought up to look around and observe my situation and evaluate whether or not it is a safe place to be in, to always be taking in my surroundings (my room mate, by the way, hid behind the coke machine, which is why I didn't see her). I've also been taught some basic self defense and while many people don't believe me, I know I could do some damage and hopefully get away. I would venture to say that people who are not constantly thinking up their own plausible scenarios and how to get out of them would be better candidates. Growing up, I used to look around and see where I could climb up and run away if someone was chasing me...a habit I haven't grown out of. My dad would not be a prime candidate because he carries a gun on him everywhere he goes.
Which opens up another question: How do they screen their victims? How do they decide whether the victim is a good candidate or not?
What are your thoughts on Scare Tactics? I hate to see people so afraid, but I also find it fascinating to see the way people act in given abnormal situations.
Hmm, this Milgram experiment deserves another post. Look for that in the future.
1 comment:
Huh. This is fascinating. I've often wondered how I'd react. Have you heard anything about 'Trick or Treat'?
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