They were social psychologists, experts in the systematic study of behavior. And they had noble aspirations. Stirred by the events of their time -- the Holocaust, prison riots, the indifference of bystanders as a young woman was stabbed to death on a New York street -- they sought to understand the darkest human deeds in the hope of finding ways to prevent them.

In particular, the psychologists, who carried out a variety of experiments at prestigious universities from the 1950's and into the 1970's, were fascinated by the power of situations to influence people's behavior, sometimes even overriding individual personality traits and the dictates of personal conscience.

The experiments were compelling, and still enthrall undergraduates when they are taught in introductory psychology courses. In perhaps the most famous, Dr. Stanley Milgram's study of obedience to authority, the subjects meekly delivered what they believed were potentially fatal electric shocks to another person when ordered to do so by an experimenter in a white coat.

In another, student volunteers at Stanford University who were randomly assigned to play prisoners or guards for a two-week stay in a simulated prison became so caught up in their roles that the study had to be halted after a week.

But the research also stimulated heated ethical debate. Subjects were sometimes deceived about the true purpose of the experiments, which critics felt was a breach of trust. And some worried about the long-term effects on the subjects, who often acted, under the pressures of the experimental paradigm, in ways they later found abhorrent.

In a famous 1964 critique, Dr. Diana Baumrind, a psychology professor at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote: "I would not like to see experiments such as Milgram's proceed unless the subjects were fully informed of the dangers of serious aftereffects and his correctives were clearly shown to be effective in restoring their state of well-being."

By the late 1970's, ethical guidelines discouraged the use of most deception in psychological research, and required thorough debriefing of subjects. As a result, neither the Milgram study nor the Stanford prison experiment could be carried out today.

That is, in the world of science.

The producers of reality television shows, however, are unfettered by such constraints. Their subjects are "Survivor" wannabes, who stand to win fame and fortune. The purpose is simply to entertain, titillate -- and, oh yes, to make money. And the situations eager contestants are plopped into are limited only by developers' imaginations.

They can put people on islands and make them eat bugs, walk on hot coals and choose between their comrades (as in "Survivor"). They can chain four women to a man for a week (as in "Chains of Love," recently bought by NBC). They can, much like the experimenters in the Stanford study, lock people up in prison (as in "Jailbreak," recently acquired by ABC, in which the inmates will try to escape).

And in a twist that oddly merges the science of the past and the entertainment of the present, one production company, Film Garden Entertainment in Los Angeles, is even planning to re-enact the Milgram study and other social psychology classics in a 13-part series called "The Human Experiment."

"We were very intrigued, long before 'Survivor,' in producing a show that would reveal certain things about human behavior in a context that was entertaining and at the same time educational and legitimate," said Nancy Jacobs Miller, Film Garden's president. She said her company, like other producers, is hoping that a cache of reality offerings might see them through an anticipated strike by actors and writers next year.

Film Garden is also trying to enlist as a consultant Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psychology professor who, with two graduate students, directed the prison study three decades ago.

Ms. Miller has asked him to help choose experiments and guide their execution.

But like other psychologists, Dr. Zimbardo, who said he has not decided whether to participate in the project, has a mixed reaction to reality television.

On the one hand, he said, "Survivor" and other such shows are "wonderful, because they make the public aware of how fascinating it is to observe human behavior."

"Candid Camera," he said, was arguably the networks' first venture into reality television.

Allen Funt, the show's host, "was one of the first intuitive psychologists," Dr. Zimbardo said. "He put ordinary people into unusual circumstances and we watched how they improvised. That's what makes people want to be psychologists."

In fact, at the American Psychological Association's recent annual meeting, the late Mr. Funt was honored for "lifelong contributions to psychology and the public."

And like the experiments of an earlier era, reality TV shows can be useful in demonstrating the power of circumstance to determine behavior, revealing, Dr. Zimbardo pointed out, "that people are incredibly complex, and that we can alternately be Hitler at one time and Mother Teresa the next."

Yet television is not science, despite the advertisements for "Survivor" calling it "the ultimate human experiment." Participants are not randomly selected, the way experimental subjects would be. There are no control groups.

And the very intensity of such situations presents dangers.

"Simulated reality can become reality," Dr. Zimbardo said. "Everybody knew in the prison study that it was an experiment, which is a formal game. But it didn't make any difference. People were having emotional breakdowns."

Psychologists quickly realized the risks of such research, and took steps to address them.

As a result of the prison study, Dr. Zimbardo said, "We were able to do good. We were able to convey to the participants what their behavior illustrated. The public learned something. The scientists learned something. And the participants learned something." B UT television makes no attempt to use reality shows as teaching devices. And as it strings the tightwire, it provides few nets. Ever since the suicide of a contestant voted off the original, Swedish version of "Survivor," American networks have tried to screen applicants for psychological problems. Some shows, including "Survivor," have psychologists on staff and provide counseling for participants voted off.

In general, though, the philosophy appears to be that participants in reality shows know what they are getting into.

The networks are counting on what anyone who has taken a psychology course -- and found the Milgram experiment and the Stanford study the most fascinating research the field has to offer -- knows: Reality, even manipulated reality, is hands down more compelling than fiction.

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The directors of "Survivor" designed their game to require the players to eject other members of their own group and to betray their allies. They surrounded the game with an elaborate and corny setting and a set of rules and rituals that seemed to be inspired by memories of some ill-understood Introduction to Anthropology course. The trappings of a popular image of the primitive were used not only for cosmetic purposes, but also to legitimize behavior that many people would find unacceptable in other contexts.

If, in the course of evolution, human beings really had practiced Hobbes's "war of all against all," our species would not have survived. Nor would we have survived if our families, tribes and communities had been based solely on calculated advantage.

Human groups that depended on Stone Age technologies also depended on mutual caring. More than any other species, Homo sapiens must learn cooperation. Even some sociobiologists who argue a direct application of the "survival of the fittest" acknowledge that fitness refers to reproductive success, which includes, for human beings, caring for the weak.

One of the distinctive characteristics of our species is the ability to think and communicate about conditions that are not real or not verifiable. We can lie. We can make believe.

We can postulate hypothetical subatomic particles and remote planets, opening doorways of scientific exploration. We can believe in gods. We can play. But it pays to know what we are doing.

In "Survivor," the prize went to Rich, the player who was apparently clearest from the beginning that this was a game of strategy and alliances. The prize did not go to players who stood firmly on personal honor (Rudy) or emphasized relationships (Susan).

Several players spoke of what they had learned in the experience -- a kind of reward beyond money. Rich won by concentrating from the start on the game itself -- where Kelly, for example, waffled.

But if Rich were to play the game of life only as he played the game of "Survivor," he would be likely to lose in a more fundamental way -- losing the joy that comes with relationships.

Games draw their metaphors from many sources: big business, power politics, exploration. Game theory tends to focus on the metaphor of competition. As in economic analysis, the theory gets easier if one assumes that human beings have very simple motivations, like always seeking to maximize profit. There is an old joke in which an economist is asked what he would do if he were marooned on a desert island with a case of canned tuna, and he answers, "assume a can opener." The million-dollar prize is the equivalent of the can opener -- something introduced from outside the situation that reduces complex human motivations to a single goal.

If the outcome of "Survivor" convinces people that there is something fundamentally, primally human about competition that legitimizes betrayal, it moves us one step further into being a society whose values are defined by the economists.

But if it reminds us of the artificiality of such a society, it can help us avoid the kind of stage setting that forces such behavior. We might move on from the "Survivor" motto -- "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast" -- to "Outgrow."

The final episode included a test in which the three finalists competed to see who could stand longest on the ends of logs while keeping a hand on a fantasy "idol." This is no more than another piece of kitsch cooked up by the producers, but it makes a suggestive metaphor: Our simplifying assumption about human behavior is the assumption that profit is our god. The danger is that believing it might make it so.

Mary Catherine Bateson is a cultural anthropologist and the author, most recently, of "Full Circles, Overlapping Lives: Culture and Generation in Transition."