Let me help you steal that...

[LillFilly]

I was watching 'What Would You Do?' with John Quinones (Most episodes are on you tube) where they set-up scenarios like domestic violence and discrimination to see how people will react and if they'll help. Tonight was one where, if you saw a someone trying to steal a bike, what would you do? They try it with a woman and man, a white kid and an african-american kid. I won't spoil the outcomes, but I'm sure you can guess.

This got my boyfriend telling me that a little while back at the hospital where his mother works, hospital security found a guy trying to cut down a small tree that a bike was chained to. The guy said he had lost the key for his lock.

Guess what security did?

Helped him cut down the tree!

And it was the same guard who later had to take the report for the Dr. looking for his stolen bike!

She doesn't know if the guard was fired or not.

Situations like this is why mall employees where I work can't help you do anything involving your car/bike/etc. No changing tires, unlocking doors, nothing. Better safe than stupid.

[Barracuda]

I have personally always hated that show---they create a false situation so they can stand there and judge random strangers on their reaction to the mentioned false situation and feel morally superior to the random strangers who "fail" their test (who are then humiliated on national TV.) Rather smug and juvenile to me. Speaking as a sociologist, they are also unethical "experiments" and would not be performed by anyone familiar with scientific ethics.

[greensinestro]

I also hate that show. If it were to happen in real life, that's one thing. But to have it set up as a test and let millions of people see you on TV, then be judged by them is wrong. A little like Big Brother to me.

[PepperElf]

i think i saw something like that once, where the crew "stole" the woman's purse and when she saw it was missing, they gave her a cell phone to call the bank... but they dialed it for her - so instead of dialing the bank, they had dialed another member of the crew.

after she gave the bank "operator" her account information the crew told her the truth, and of course gave her the purse back.

then they explained to her what happened, so that in the future she would understand to not be so trusting, and to think before acting.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I have personally always hated that show---they create a false situation so they can stand there and judge random strangers on their reaction to the mentioned false situation and feel morally superior to the random strangers who "fail" their test (who are then humiliated on national TV.) Rather smug and juvenile to me. Speaking as a sociologist, they are also unethical "experiments" and would not be performed by anyone familiar with scientific ethics.

I also hate that show. If it were to happen in real life, that's one thing. But to have it set up as a test and let millions of people see you on TV, then be judged by them is wrong. A little like Big Brother to me.

I haven't seen this show, but the idea behind it makes me uncomfortable too.

What, is Ow! My Balls! on hiatus or something?

[customersruinmylife]

I hate those kind of shows. I would most likely be one of the people that "fails" their test. Mainly because every time I try to be a good samaratan it ends up biting me in the ass. So now I don't help anyone.

[Dreamstalker]

Shows like that sometimes end up being more staged than the hosts intend; who's to say that someone doesn't try to 'act nice' for the cameras?

Pepper, that show's called Real Hustle and I kinda like it. There's a book out called Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking that the guy consulted on. Fascinating stuff if you want to know how scam artists manage what they do (and scary to think how many people just fall for it).

[Ironclad Alibi]

This got my boyfriend telling me that a little while back at the hospital where his mother works, hospital security found a guy trying to cut down a small tree that a bike was chained to. The guy said he had lost the key for his lock.

A similar situation happened a few years ago. A guy went to a construction crew and asked to borrow their bolt cutters because he had lost the key to his bicycle lock. He cut the chain, returned the bolt cutters, and rode away. A little while later the bicycle owner came by and found his bicycle missing. This happened in Pensacola, FL, back in the mid 1970s.

[mariamousie1]

At first I thought you were talking about that old Lifetime show "What Should You Do?" and I got excited because it was actually a really interesting show, and I can't find it anywhere. Oh well. That's so stupid. Who would actually cut down a tree without at least talking to their boss?

[emax4]

What, is Ow! My Balls! on hiatus or something?

It's a good thing I'm working from home because my supervisors would have been on to me that I'm laughing at this instead of doing actual work.. almost had cake coming out my nose.

Speaking of Social Engineering, there are two other books I like; The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion by famed former hacker Kevin Mitnick, and he goes into social engineering scenarios in these books as well.

[Shalom]

Don't they have to get someone's permission to put them on TV?

If they tried that shit on me and then asked me permission to broadcast it, I'd tell them exactly where to put their tape and how to fold it first.

[dbblsanta]

I remember that scenario. The bike is chained to a "No Parking" sign, and the guy had industrial-strength tools. I would have assumed he worked for the park and was removing a bike that shouldn't have been chained to the sign.

I have a love-hate relationship with the show. Yes it is entirely unethical: they set up fights then sit back and watch the sparks fly. But it is entertaining lol.

EDIT: I just watched that segment again. The black guy looks much younger and is less professionally dressed (not that the white guy was either, but the black guy's clothes are much baggier, a little more "gangsta" looking), and I could see people being more suspicious there, but not because of skin color.

[Barracuda]

Speaking as a sociologist (not a social engineer, two different fields. Sociology's proper long name would be social psychology,) this reminds me too much of a famous experiment that is held up as probably the most famous example of an unethical sociological experiment. A group of volunteers were asked to administer a test to other volunteers via an intercom (the second group was actually researchers.) They were told the experiment was to measure memory retention, however, the experiment was actually to study people's compliance with an authority figure in a situation that was questionably moral. The volunteers were in one room with the researcher; the researcher posing as a volunteer was in another room connected via intercom. The volunteers were told that they would be giving the test and punishing the test taker with electric shocks for incorrect answers (the test taker was supposedly restrained and hooked to electrodes, with the volunteer controlling the amount of charge, which supposedly progressed after every wrong answer to the last setting, marked, "Danger, Potentially Lethal Charge.") As the "test" progressed, the researcher posing as the test taker would deliberately get answers wrong, then pretend to suffer a shock. At some point, the test taker would complain they felt like their heart was beating irregularly and that they wanted to stop the test. The researcher in the room with the interviewer would instruct the volunteer to ignore the test taker and treat failure to answer as a wrong answer and keep administering shocks. At that point, after maybe another protest, the test taker would stop responding at all to the interviewer. The point was to see how many people would take it all the way to the end at the researcher's instructions despite the moral component. As you can imagine, this test gathered some interesting data, but at a serious psychological cost to the "interviewer" volunteers, especially those who did not stop and even administered the "lethal" shock. This type of practice is considered unethical and banned now because of the psychological harm it can cause, and this show verges all too closely on a variant of the same thing.

[greek_jester]

Speaking as a sociologist (not a social engineer, two different fields. Sociology's proper long name would be social psychology,) this reminds me too much of a famous experiment that is held up as probably the most famous example of an unethical sociological experiment. A group of volunteers were asked to administer a test to other volunteers via an intercom (the second group was actually researchers.) They were told the experiment was to measure memory retention, however, the experiment was actually to study people's compliance with an authority figure in a situation that was questionably moral. The volunteers were in one room with the researcher; the researcher posing as a volunteer was in another room connected via intercom. The volunteers were told that they would be giving the test and punishing the test taker with electric shocks for incorrect answers (the test taker was supposedly restrained and hooked to electrodes, with the volunteer controlling the amount of charge, which supposedly progressed after every wrong answer to the last setting, marked, "Danger, Potentially Lethal Charge.") As the "test" progressed, the researcher posing as the test taker would deliberately get answers wrong, then pretend to suffer a shock. At some point, the test taker would complain they felt like their heart was beating irregularly and that they wanted to stop the test. The researcher in the room with the interviewer would instruct the volunteer to ignore the test taker and treat failure to answer as a wrong answer and keep administering shocks. At that point, after maybe another protest, the test taker would stop responding at all to the interviewer. The point was to see how many people would take it all the way to the end at the researcher's instructions despite the moral component. As you can imagine, this test gathered some interesting data, but at a serious psychological cost to the "interviewer" volunteers, especially those who did not stop and even administered the "lethal" shock. This type of practice is considered unethical and banned now because of the psychological harm it can cause, and this show verges all too closely on a variant of the same thing.

I remember this test. Didn't they first run it in the 60's, then re-run it somewhere in the last decade or so, & discover that despite the general public believing that people were too cynical now to blindly follow orders, about the same percentage of people still kept upping the "current" when ordered? Or am I misremembering? I did take sociology a while ago, after all.

Sucky experiment, sucky scientists. I much preferred the guy who went undercover among lower-class Northern youths in Britain - much more interesting.

[AyreBiskits]

What, is Ow! My Balls! on hiatus or something?

only a matter of time before this is a real show