It sounds like a bad study. There are no stakes. They're not in a familiar, safe, and comfortable environment. They don't have any of the aids and doohickeys people use to aid thinking and relaxing. They don't have any particular reason to do one thing instead of another. At some point a lot of people are going to get bored and if there's a button to harmlessly electrocute yourself then why not? You're stuck in there for another eight minutes, might as well amuse yourself while you wait.
"We put humans in these extremely unnatural conditions and asked them to do something unnatural and based on the results we are prepared to make conclusions about the state of humans in nature. Also all the participants were 21 year old white male English speaking Psychology students"
It sounds like a bad study. There are no stakes. They're not in a familiar, safe, and comfortable environment. They don't have any of the aids and doohickeys people use to aid thinking and relaxing. They don't have any particular reason to do one thing instead of another. At some point a lot of people are going to get bored and if there's a button to harmlessly electrocute yourself then why not? You're stuck in there for another eight minutes, might as well amuse yourself while you wait.
"We put humans in these extremely unnatural conditions and asked them to do something unnatural and based on the results we are prepared to make conclusions about the state of humans in nature. Also all the participants were 21 year old white male English speaking Psychology students"