People will agree to anything!

People will agree to anything! A paper by professors Debra Pogrund Stark and Jessica M. Choplin in the NYU Journal of Law & Business sheds remarkable light on what people will agree to without reading. Titled "A License To Deceive: Enforcing Contractual Myths Despite Consumer Psychological Realities" (enable Javascript and click "Download" for the PDF), it addresses the question on whether courts can reasonably assume consumers have read contract terms that contradict sales claims. Part III, a "Fraud Simulation Study," echoes the Milgram experiments in showing what people will agree to do, though no actual button-pushing or screaming was involved.

91 undergraduate psychology students were enrolled in the experiment. They were given a "consent form" to sign, and the researcher told them it was just routine boilerplate. All but four signed it. The large majority didn't even read it. But it wasn't exactly routine:

Buried within the fifth paragraph, however, were clauses that were certain to be unacceptable if read by participants. In particular, these clauses committed participants to administering electric shocks to fellow participants, if instructed to do so, even if that participant screamed, cried, and asked for medical assistance. It also required participants to do push-ups, if the experimenter instructed them to do so. Contrary to human-subject protection guidelines, the form required participants to remain in the laboratory until and unless the experimenter allowed them to leave.
 
The sixth paragraph also contained clauses that would be problematic to participants if they had read it. In particular, these clauses required students who signed the form to participate in any future studies that Dr. Choplin (the second author of this paper) would conduct at DePaul University with or without credit in their undergraduate courses and with or without any compensation for their time. This paragraph also contradicted verbal assurances by explicitly stating that there was no guarantee that they would receive credit of any kind in any of their courses for the time that they had already spent participating in research.

After collecting the forms, signed and unsigned, the researcher explained that the consent form was the study. The purpose was to see whether they would read it and sign it, and it wasn't going to be enforced. There must have been 87 very embarrassed students there.

The paper doesn't include the text of the bogus consent form, but states that it was three pages long, with the body of the form on the first two pages in Times New Roman 11 point. That's a pretty short contract compared with many online EULAs. It's little wonder that those licenses contain such ridiculous terms, when the companies that put them up know hardly anyone will read them.