| The Tenth Level | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Drama |
| Written by | George Bellak |
| Directed by | Charles S. Dubin |
| Starring | William Shatner Ossie Davis Lynn Carlin Estelle Parsons Stephen Macht Lindsay Crouse John Travolta |
| Music by | Charles Gross |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Bob Markell |
| Producer | Tony Masucci |
| Production locations | CBS Broadcast Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York |
| Editors | George Hartman Henry Weiland |
| Running time | 94 min |
| Production company | CBS |
| Budget | $300,000 [1] |
| Original release | |
| Network | CBS |
| Release | August 26, 1976 |
The Tenth Level is a 1976 American made-for-television drama film movie starring William Shatner. Inspired by the Stanley Milgram obedience research, this TV movie chronicles a psychology professor's study to determine why people, such as the Nazis, were willing to "just follow orders" and do horrible things to others. Professor Stephen Turner (Shatner) leads students to believe that they are applying increasingly painful electric shocks to other subjects when they fail to perform a task correctly, and is alarmed to see how much pain the students can be convinced to inflict "in the name of science".
In the movie dramatization there were actually 25 levels of increasing voltage and pain. However, the so-called tenth level was significant in that it was always the first time in which the actual test subject heard the other (false) test subject cry out in pain.
It was the TV debuts of Stephen Macht and Lindsay Crouse, and John Travolta has an uncredited part as a student.
The movie fictionalized Milgram as academic psychologist Stephen Turner, a somewhat quiet man consumed with Nazi concentration camp imagery. He was portrayed by William Shatner. Because the fictional Turner was not Jewish (as Milgram was) but a “WASP", this obsession was pathological, a reflection of guilt and a need for martyrdom, according to Turner's friend Ben, a black psychologist played by Ossie Davis.
With horror-movie music in the background, the movie showed Turner's experiments going forward, particularly emphasizing the intense nervous reactions of subjects, but did not let viewers themselves know that the "learner" was not being shocked until the play was more than half over, thus emphasizing the film's portrait of the psychologist as crazy.
Turner was subjected to an ethical inquiry after one subject, Barry, a student who had served in the army during Vietnam, had a breakdown during the experiment and destroyed the equipment. Many of the subjects that viewers had seen breaking down earlier during the trials testified to the value of the experiment, including Barry. “Had I been over there in My Lai, I would have shot dogs, cats, women, children, old men, babies. I would have wasted them all," he told the ethics board. "I’m grateful to Dr. Turner, ‘cause you see I know what is inside of me."
The last scene of the movie focused on a confrontation between Turner and his former lover, another psychologist on faculty, who demanded that he see the comparison between himself and his subjects: “You’ve been tested like your subjects. You had a choice, you could have stopped. Your ends, which were knowledge, for that you knowingly inflicted pain." The film ended with Turner sobbing on her shoulder. [2]
According to writer George Bellack, when he first presented the idea of The Tenth Level to a group of TV executives, many were outraged by the idea. The president of ABC called it "godless" but it was ultimately shown in prime time on Playhouse 90 . Although scheduled for showing in the Christmas season of 1975, the drama did not air until August 26, 1976, because it took that long to assemble a critical mass of sponsors. Major sponsors like IBM, Xerox. AT&T and General Motors refused to sponsor it. [3] [1]
Shatner gave up his divorce rights to see his children on Christmas Day to film the program. [1]
Milgram was paid $5,000 as a consultant on the film. He had very little input in the film. He felt the movie was dull, with the "genuine drama underlying the obedience problem getting lost in the welter of video cliches". [1]
The Tenth Level was shot directly on videotape at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City and on location at Yale University where the original Milgram experiments had taken place, and presented as a teleplay reminiscent of the "Golden Age of Television".[ citation needed ]
The film has never been released on video or DVD.
Evil, by one definition, is being bad and acting out morally incorrect behavior; or it is the condition of causing unnecessary pain and suffering, thus containing a net negative on the world.
Beginning on August 7, 1961, a series of social psychology experiments were conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, who intended to measure the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner". These sham or fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.
Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale.
The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a psychological experiment conducted in August 1971. It was a two-week simulation of a prison environment that examined the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led the research team who administered the study.
Obedience, in human behavior, is a form of "social influence in which a person yields to explicit instructions or orders from an authority figure". Obedience is generally distinguished from compliance, which some authors define as behavior influenced by peers while others use it as a more general term for positive responses to another individual's request, and from conformity, which is behavior intended to match that of the majority. Depending on context, obedience can be seen as moral, immoral, or amoral. For example, in psychological research, individuals are usually confronted with immoral demands designed to elicit an internal conflict. If individuals still choose to submit to the demand, they are acting obediently.
Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, including sensation, perception, memory, cognition, learning, motivation, emotion; developmental processes, social psychology, and the neural substrates of all of these.
Human subject research is systematic, scientific investigation that can be either interventional or observational and involves human beings as research subjects, commonly known as test subjects. Human subject research can be either medical (clinical) research or non-medical research. Systematic investigation incorporates both the collection and analysis of data in order to answer a specific question. Medical human subject research often involves analysis of biological specimens, epidemiological and behavioral studies and medical chart review studies. On the other hand, human subject research in the social sciences often involves surveys which consist of questions to a particular group of people. Survey methodology includes questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups.
Social influence comprises the ways in which individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment. It takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. Typically social influence results from a specific action, command, or request, but people also alter their attitudes and behaviors in response to what they perceive others might do or think. In 1958, Harvard psychologist Herbert Kelman identified three broad varieties of social influence.
In the fields of sociology and social psychology, a breaching experiment is an experiment that seeks to examine people's reactions to violations of commonly accepted social rules or norms. Breaching experiments are most commonly associated with ethnomethodology, and in particular the work of Harold Garfinkel. Breaching experiments involve the conscious exhibition of "unexpected" behavior/violation of social norms, an observation of the types of social reactions such behavioral violations engender, and an analysis of the social structure that makes these social reactions possible. The idea of studying the violation of social norms and the accompanying reactions has bridged across social science disciplines, and is today used in both sociology and psychology.
Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology that is generally thought of as the loss of self-awareness in groups, although this is a matter of contention. For the social psychologist, the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation. As such, social psychologists emphasize the role of internal psychological processes. Other social scientists, such as sociologists, are more concerned with broad social, economic, political, and historical factors that influence events in a given society.
Nervous laughter is laughter provoked from an audience's expression of alarm, embarrassment, discomfort or confusion, rather than amusement. Nervous laughter is usually less robust in expression than "a good belly laugh", and may be combined with confused glances or awkward silence on the part of others in the audience. Nervous laughter is considered analogous to a courtesy laugh, which may be rendered by more of a conscious effort in an attempt to move a situation along more quickly, especially when the comedian is pausing for laughter.
Under the controversy of person–situation debate, situationism is the theory that changes in human behavior are factors of the situation rather than the traits a person possesses. Behavior is believed to be influenced by external, situational factors rather than internal traits or motivations. Situationism therefore challenges the positions of trait theorists, such as Hans Eysenck or Raymond B. Cattell. This is an ongoing debate that has truth to both sides; psychologists are able to prove each of the view points through human experimentation.
A shock collar or remote training collar, also known as an e-collar, Ecollar, or electronic collar, is a type of training collar that utilizes electronic stimulation to the neck of a dog, at high levels this can cause pain or be extremely uncomfortable or other parts of its body, depending on the desired outcome. These collars incorporate a radio-controlled electronic device and are worn around the dog's neck. Many European countries view shock collars as animal cruelty and have banned their use. The mechanism behind shock collars involve inflicting varying levels and duration of pain, which generates fear and serves as a deterrent for undesirable behaviors. Some models of shock collar models offer additional features such as a tone or vibrational setting that can be used as an alternative or in combination with the shock. Certain advanced collars include Internet mapping capabilities and GPS functionality to track the dog's location or notify the owner about its whereabouts.
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View is a 1974 book by social psychologist Stanley Milgram concerning a series of experiments on obedience to authority figures he conducted in the early 1960s. This book provides an in-depth look into his methods, theories and conclusions.
Compliance is a response—specifically, a submission—made in reaction to a request. The request may be explicit or implicit. The target may or may not recognize that they are being urged to act in a particular way.
A social experiment is a method of psychological or sociological research that observes people's reactions to certain situations or events. The experiment depends on a particular social approach where the main source of information is the participants' point of view and knowledge. To carry out a social experiment, specialists usually split participants into two groups — active participants and respondents. Throughout the experiment, specialists monitor participants to identify the effects and differences resulting from the experiment. A conclusion is then created based on the results. Intentional communities are generally considered social experiments.
Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story or Experimenter, is a 2015 American biographical drama film written, directed and co-produced by Michael Almereyda. It depicts the experiments Milgram experiment in 1961 by a social psychologist Stanley Milgram. The film co-produced and stars by Danny A. Abeckaser, stars Peter Sarsgaard, Winona Ryder, Jim Gaffigan, Kellan Lutz, Dennis Haysbert, Anthony Edwards, Lori Singer, Josh Hamilton, Anton Yelchin, John Leguizamo.
Moral blindness, also known as ethical blindness, is defined as a person's temporary inability to see the ethical aspect of a decision they are making. It is often caused by external factors due to which an individual is unable to see the immoral aspect of their behavior in that particular situation.
Thomas Blass was an American social psychologist, Holocaust survivor, and professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is known for his work regarding Stanley Milgram and the Milgram experiment.
Harold Takooshian is an American psychologist, scholar, and professor at Fordham University. He is best known as an expert on the Kitty Genovese murder case, having spent many years studying the subject and the role that the "bystander effect" played therein.
