IF SOMEONE SECRETLY CONTROLLED WHAT YOU SAY, WOULD ANYONE NOTICE?

By: Greg Miller

Published: Wired, September 29, 2014, http://www.wired.com/2014/09/cyranoid-experiment/  

Level of difficulty: **

BEFORE YOU READ

·         Do you determine who someone is by the way they look, or their personality and what they say?

·         Are these concepts separable or not?

·         Would you recognize and be able to pick out your loved ones no matter what?

QUESTIONS

1.       The 12 year old boy’s in depth knowledge about austerity measures and his love of Dostoevsky should have led the subjects ……………………………………………………………….

2.       What basic assumption does the research conducted by two psychologists at the London School of Economics challenge?

3.       Stanley Milgram’s experiment would never pass a modern ethical review because…………………………………………………………………………………(Use your own words)

4.       What is the similarity between cyronoids and Cyrano de Bergerac?

5.       In what respects were Milgram’s earlier test subjects cyronoids? With respect to the fact that…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

6.       The writer says “The consequences would not be good”. What is he referring to? Be very precise.

7.       What does “That” refer to in the phrase “That was a huge surprise”. There are two answers; find both.

8.       What really scared the crowd in the exhibit around South Bank?

9.       Cyronoids are a good way to study human social interaction because they allow researchers to determine…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

10.   The subjects failed to suspect that something was wrong in two later experiments carried out by Cortie and Gillespie probably because ………………………………………………………………………………

11.   We have already entered the world of cyronoids in the 21st century because………………………..

12.   What does “It” refer to in the phrase “It’s a twist”?

WRITING TASK

In the last paragraph but one, Corti says “If you want to get really deep about it, we are all cyronoids. We all say things we hear other people say. Jon Steward is just an amalgam of ghost writers. The stuff I told you earlier about Milgram is based on what other people said at a conference. Where in all this are original thoughts?”. To what extent do you agree? Write an essay in which you state your opinions.

IF SOMEONE SECRETLY CONTROLLED WHAT YOU SAY, WOULD ANYONE NOTICE? KEY AND TEACHER’S NOTES

This fascinating text opens up a whole can of worms about personality and individual character. It points to truisms we are hard put to disagree with but make us jolly uncomfortable never the less. Because of all this, it should go well. The bonus is that it really does lend itself to some wonderful questions and a challenging writing task.

1. To suspect his words were not his own
2. We can recognize some element in all of us that is a permanent part of our nature.
3. Possible answer: It involved harming other people; OR it ,involved people bowing to authority and harming other people
4. Neither of them spoke thoughts originating in their own nervous systems; OR, the words they speak originated in the mind of another person.
5. They ceded control of their own behavior to the guy in the lab coat
6. A world in which the thoughts of one person come out of another person’s mouth.
7. The fact that even people who knew him didn’t catch on; OR, the fact that people who knew him couldn’t get passed the idea they were talking to him.
8. The fact that cyronoids answered in unison
9. Whether it’s what someone says or what they look like that matters more
10. Our brains are wired to treat someone who looks and acts like a person as an individual person; OR, our brains didn’t evolve to deal with people speaking through the bodies of someone else.
11. Identity replacement has become the norm for online interactions.
12. Looking at whether people can tell when the person in front of them is being fed lines from a chat box.