thedriveintheatre

I saw a great show called ‘What Would You Do?’ on the graveyard shift. It’s basically a combination of ‘candid camera’ and social experiments which pose moral and ethical dilemmas to unsuspecting bystanders, and challenges them to stand up for victims of injustice or ‘do the right thing’.

The episode I watched had a paid actor and actress pretend to be a couple at a bar. The actress walks away, leaving her drink, while the actor openly spikes it in plain view of the bystander. The bystander doesn’t know he/she’s being filmed, and it is up to him/her to do the right thing and inform the ‘girl’ that her ‘boyfriend’ was trying to take advantage of her.

In the first round, she dresses nicely and acts naively. The unwitting participants felt obliged to protect her because they sympatise with her innocence. But on the second round, when she dressed more casually (in a colourful short dress), the participants (both male) didn’t stop the man when he spiked her drink, and didn’t even react when the actress pretended to feel sick. The best thing they did was they alerted a couple of other diners at the other end of the bar, but that wasn’t enough.

In the final round, the actress again dressed casually. But this time the participants were an old couple, and the lady stood up for the actress, even after the actor confronted them and walked out of the venue. It was very touching to see the old lady’s reaction when they revealed she was being filmed (she cried) and surprisingly, the actress herself revealed she was a victim of drink spiking (but thankfully, she was also saved by a ‘guardian angel’).

Others are not so clear-cut. Another series of experiments were conducted at a supermarket checkout counter.

Old woman approaches you at an express lane and asks you if she could go ahead. You let her go ahead, and then her young adult son arrives with a trolley filled with items.

Now replace that with a pregnant woman. Young adult son tries the ‘bait and switch’ tactic again.

What if you let a man ahead of you, and he wins a $500 cash prize for being the zillionth customer? How about if it’s an old lady? Would you react differently?

It is a fascinating insight into the human psyche of morality, ethics, greed, altruism… the greatest thing is that the experiments in themselves are not entertaining, but rather the bystanders’ reactions to the test of their courage and moral fibre.