Science and Cruelty

Hi Dr. Taylor,
Thank you for your post regarding the recreation of unethical experiments on TV. These TV stations are corporations, and it turns out that corporations can and do commit all manner of harm and unethical treatment be protected under the law - much more so than persons (rights without responsibilities). Watch the documentary called The Corporation. Indeed, contrary to our common beliefs, governmental regulatory bodies function to legalize corporate harm rather than protecting citizens (as demonstrated by the fact that citizens at regulatory hearings are not given the option of saying there will be no corporate dumping of toxic waste or sewage sludge in their community, water systems, etc. If the regulatory bodies allow X amount, citizens have no choice).

To see a really heinous example of corporate experimentation on school children for profit, check out what Office Max did to promote it's products (and the school was complicit and got $$!): http://chiefmarketer.com/multichannel-marketing/making_school_cool/

Here's a description from the website above:

"The centerpiece of the campaign is "Schooled," a reality television special on ABC Family. In the program, eighth graders at Tuckahoe Middle School in Eastchester, NY are duped into believing they have to take an outrageous oral and written admission exam before they enter high school. If they don't pass, they'll spend the next year in "eighth-and-a-half grade."

"Parents, teachers and the school board were in on the hidden camera prank, which took place on a Saturday during summer vacation. The questions on the test were puzzlers, to say the least. "Name a left handed U.S. president." "Why do you think October is necessary?" "Spell Connecticut backwards." "What is more dangerous and why: loitering, littering or laundering?"

"'But we didn't torture them too long,' assures Thacker.

"After the oral quiz, the kids were brought into gym for what they were told would be a two-hour written exam. "They're dying," Thacker says. "Suddenly you hear drums and guitars warming up. The wall parts and [teen idol] Jesse McCartney is there for a live concert."

"OfficeMax products were subtly featured in "Schooled," and all the students who participated got a backpack filled with free school supplies, including pens, notebooks, digital cameras and calculators. The retailer also made an $80,000 donation to the school in the form of two $40,000 gift cards."

*****
Abusing school children for profit......

We need to modify the laws governing corporations in the ways Jane Ann Morris has suggested: Make the directors and shareholders personally liable for the actions of the corporations, prohibit corporations from owning shares in other corporations, make corporate charters limited-purpose and time-limited, etc. Corporations and 'business' are not the same. Lots of colonial exploitation (British East India Company, etc.) was done under corporations so their structure is no accident...

Kathleen Taylor,

Given your professional interest in cruelty's causes and the potential for its amelioration, I find it both prissy and incurious of you to presume that these experiments cross an ethical line.

I've not been able to find evidence of any enduring harm to any of the participants in these experiments.

Many cultures have rites of passage. It seems to me at least plausible that experiencing the moral confusion of such situations as an actor might have benefit. Contrast the intensity and memory retentive qualities of such experiences to merely being a watcher of a film, a reader of a book, or a student in a philosophy seminar contemplating "should I push the fat guy on the lever, killing him, to save the 5 other guys on the tracks?" type puzzles.

It actually seems more than plausible to me that it would have benefit for some of the people some of the time, the benefit being a propensity for more nuanced thinking about moral decision-making (and one's socially constructed self-image). Anyway, this is an empirical question.

But how quickly you gravitate to concern for imagined ethical transgressions? A willingness to challenge one's own (socially constructed) likability may be a precondition for advance in social science.