Peter Funt ("Candid Camera") on the TSA and Obedience to Authority

[woo me with science]

Peter Funt (son of Alan Funt, and who took over his father's show, "Candid Camera") writes this piece for the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704496104575627280155938098.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Smile, You're on Candid Scanner
The public no longer blindly submits to authority—and that's progress.
By PETER FUNT

I've never worked for the TSA. But once I spent a day putting airline passengers through what they believed was a full-body scanner, and I learned a few things about the American psyche...
....

It was 2001, just a few months before 9/11. We were doing a sequence at the airport in Bullhead City, Ariz., for "Candid Camera" that was designed to parody the passenger screening process.
....

With the help and encouragement of airport officials, I posed as a security guard....I claimed that the metal detector wasn't working properly, and instructed passengers to lie down on the conveyor belt so they could ride through the X-ray machine along with their bags
...

The "X-ray machine" was a flimsy prop made from a large wooden box with holes cut in each end, placed over a rented conveyor belt. We attached a few blinking lights to the box...There were no actual X-rays involved....All but one passenger, a middle-aged man, willingly laid on the conveyor belt, belly down, and was transported through the box without protest.
....

One of the recurrent themes on "Candid Camera" has involved examining many people's mindless obedience in the face of unreasonable demands by "authority." It's important that we trust and obey police and other agents working to protect us. It's certainly not reasonable to obey, without question, a uniformed guard who says the state of Delaware is "closed for the day," or a cop who tells pedestrians they've entered a "walk backwards zone." Yet I've got a library of footage showing that the public willingly accepts such instruction, time and again.
....

I'm glad to see that many travelers are no longer simply submitting blindly to airport scanners, and are questioning invasive pat-downs. That's actually something worth smiling about.

Mr. Funt is a writer and the long-time host of "Candid Camera" (www.CandidCamera.com).

[pamela]

1. Dateline did a fantastic segment on this in the late 90's...

They had footage of Milgram's classic obedience experiment and a replication of the Asch conformity experiment. They also had some great clips from the old candid camera of people going into an elevator where everyone is standing facing the back wall. Everyone who enters looks puzzled and then turns around and faces the back wall, too. I wish I could find it on the internet as it is extremely powerful.

[Brickbat]

3. Is this it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlOX3PaVKs

[pamela]

6. Yes, thanks! That's the candid camera segment...

The whole Dateline segment started with this and then also showed the Milgram and Asch experiments. I taped it and showed it in my Psych 101 classes for years. Social science experiments on conformity and obedience are kind of an obsession of mine. Candid camera has some great segments that aren't scientific but are nonetheless quite fascinating-funny but also a little scary. That segment is a classic example. Thank you for finding it.

[woo me with science]

7. Oh my god.

Baaaa.


Thank you for posting that.

[AnArmyVeteran]

10. That is hilarious! Thanks....

While in the army if any of my army buddies realized we were walking in step with each other we would do a stutter step so we would be all walking completely out of step with each other. Being uniform and group think were always pounded into everyone, but I always fought against conforming. I have a lot of salmon instinct in me. But no matter how hard you fight its easy to find yourself falling prey to group think.

[treestar]

2. Wish Delaware had been closed the day Christine O'Donnell came in.

[woo me with science]

9. Bwah! nt

[xchrom]

4. Recommend

[madinmaryland]

5. k&r

[katnapped]

8. Blah--everything changed after 9/11

Must bend over and open wide so terrorists don't win. :sarcasm:

[Poboy]

11. very interesting.

[TorchTheWitch]

12. Candid Camera was the best show ever

I LOVED watching it as a kid. The things that people were willing to do without question was hilarious. One of my all-time favorite shows was one where secretaries were being interviewed for an employer who had set up an "office" on the beach. Funniest damn thing I ever saw in my life.

[bvar22]

13. Don't need Candid Camera.

Just look at how many willingly allowed themselves to be herded into "1st Amendment Zones" during the Bush Administration....

AND these were supposedly educated, informed, Activist Leftists!!!!!

[suffragette]

14. Funt stated the point well

K&R