Shocking: a real business model for Second Life?
SCOTT KIDDER — We already know all about how Second Life has virtual millionaires and "male appendages" for sale, but there may be an even more exciting revenue model in store: virtual experiments!
University College London (UCL) is looking at conducting—in a virtual world—psychological experiments that no longer take place in the real world.
The UCL-led study repeated, in a virtual environment, a classic experiment from the 1960s by social psychologist Stanley Milgram—which found people would administer apparently lethal electric shocks to a stranger at the command of an authority figure—and discovered that participants reacted as though the situation were real.
Time for another round of funding!