Psychological experiments stopped 40 years ago because of the ethical concerns could be conducted now in the safer environment of cyberspace, according to researchers at University College of London.

The study repeated a 1960s experiment in which people administered electric shocks to a stranger at the urging of an authority figure.

In the new version, instead of using a live subject to be on the receiving end of the shocks, the researchers had participants administer shocks to a human-looking avatar in virtual reality.

The UCL researchers found that participants in the virtual environment acted as though the situation were real.

"It has been argued before that [the] immersive virtual environment can provide a useful tool for social psychological studies in general," said professor Mel Slater, the lead researcher at the UCL department of Computer Science, in his findings.

"Our results show that this applies even in the extreme social situation investigated by Stanley Milgram."

Milgram's original series of experiments were designed to understand how people can carry out horrific acts against others. He found that ordinary people could be persuaded to give what appeared to be lethal electric shocks to another when persuaded by authority figures.

Incorrect answer invited electric shock

The UCL experiment followed the Milgram experiment's blueprint. Participants administered a series of word association memory tests to the virtual human, represented visually as a female. When she gave an incorrect answer participants were invited to give her an electric shock, and to increase the voltage for each incorrect answer.

Of the 34 participants, 23 saw and heard the virtual human while 11 communicated with her only through text.

The results showed those who could see and hear their subject responded quite differently from those communicating only through text. Seventeen of 23 participants working with the virtual reality subject administered the maximum 20 shocks, while three gave 19 shocks and three others gave less than nineteen shocks.

By contrast, 11 participants communicating through text gave the maximum 20 shocks.

"The results demonstrate that even though all experimental participants knew the situation was unreal, they nevertheless tended to respond as if it were," said Slater.

Slater said the results indicate virtual reality experiments can be used to perform experiments that might otherwise be unethical or impractical, opening entirely new areas of study into behavioural psychology.