Cyranoid

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Cyranoids are "people who do not speak thoughts originating in their own central nervous system: Rather, the words they speak originate in the mind of another person who transmits these words to the cyranoid by radio transmission.".[1] The 'cyranoid' concept was created by psychologist Stanley Milgram, who during the late 1970s experimented with various social authority/obedience phenomena involving cyranoids. He showed the 'cyranic illusion', namely, that people are very reluctant to believe that someone they are face-to-face with is being told what to say by an in-the-ear radio.

There are many possible cyranoid configurations.[2] Given that the cyranoid is controlled by a source and interacts with a target the possible configurations are possible: the cyranoid is known/unknown to the target or source; the target is known/unknown to the source or cyranoid; and the source is known/unknown to the target or cyranoid.

The term Cyranoid itself refers to the Edmond Rostand play Cyrano de Bergerac, where Cyrano coaches Christian from hiding, as Christian attempts to woo Roxane.

  1. ^ Milgram, S. (1984). Cyranoids. In Milgram (Ed), The individual in a social world. New York: McGraw-Hill
  2. ^ Mitchell, R., Gillespie, A. & O'Neill, B. (2011). Cyranic contraptions. DESIRE'11, Eindhoven.

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