Virtual Milgram (Edmundson)

The notorious Milgram results have been duplicated, sort of.  In the original experiments, the roles of  "teacher" and "learner" were both filled by humans.  In the new study, led by  Mel Slater, of the Catalan Polytechnic University in Barcelona and University College London, the learner role was filled by a virtual character.  Despite the teachers' knowledge that the learner was virtual, not real, they exhibited the same patterns of what could be called "distressed obedience" as in Milgram's trials in the 1960s.