The answer is most of us, judging by the results of a French experiment which involved asking people to inflict electric shocks on a fellow contestant in what they thought was a new reality TV concept.

Eighty per cent of the participants ignored pleas to stop and shrieks of pain as they continued increasing the voltage in response to wrong answers on Zone Xtreme. ”Is he dead?” asked one contestant when the voltage reached 400 and the victim fell silent.

In fact, Laurent Le Doyen is an actor asked to play the pivotal role in research which has given rise to a television documentary to be screened by the France 2 channel next month.

The French study is a variant of a celebrated experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist, in the 1960s. Milgram told volunteers that they were taking part in a scientific programme to analyse memory capacity and ordered them to inflict electric shocks on a student. More than 60 per cent did so, demonstrating their willingness to put aside moral imperatives ”on the command of an authority”.

In the French test, 80 volunteers were told that they were taking part in a pilot for a new game show which involved memorising words and punishing contestants who made mistakes.

Almost half were delighted by the concept. ”It’s violent, yeah, I love it,” said one. Twenty-eight appeared indifferent and 14 were puzzled. ”One dropped her handbag,” said Christophe Nick, the producer of the documentary, and Michel Eltchaninoff, a philosopher, in LExperience Extreme, a book on the research to be published next week.

Tania Young, a television presenter who was hosting the mock game show, insisted that even the reticent should continue – and almost all did. Mr Nick and Mr Eltchaninoff said they witnessed participants struggling between revulsion at the pain they were causing and their ability to confront the authority of the television star. Most ended up by obeying Miss Young, even going so far as to drown out the victims’ cries by reading the questions louder and louder.

”It is shocking to observe this massive phenomenon,’ wrote Mr Nick and Mr Eltchaninoff. ”The intensity of the shouts grew … Most of the questioners became deaf. Some made the most of a gap between the sobs to complete the question.”

The audience consisted of 100 members of the public, who also thought they were watching a genuine game show concept. They clapped and sometimes showed exasperation when the victim shouted so loudly they could not hear the questions.

Mr Nick and Mr Eltchaninoff said it would be easy to dismiss the contestants as sadistic. ”The lesson is not that people are stupid, it is that the television has a crazy power,” Mr Nick said.

Contestants had been informed that when the show was finally screened, there would be a top prize of 100,000 euros. But no prize money was available for the pilot, and so no material gain for them. But they obeyed Mrs Young anyway.