US Edition Like any traditional quiz show, "Le jeu de la mort" (The Game of Death) has a lively audience, a glamorous hostess, and a list of trivia questions for contestants.
However, unlike typical game shows, punishment for wrong answers is a 460-volt electric shock.
To chants of "punishment" from the studio audience, contestants zap their victims who scream in agony and eventually appear to die.
The aim of the experiment - to be aired as a documentary on France 2 TV on Wednesday evening - is to show how the manipulative power of television can push people to ever more outrageous limits.
A team of psychologists recruited 80 volunteers, telling them they were taking part in a pilot for a new television show.
They were instructed to pose questions to another "player", and punish him with up to 460 volts of electricity when he got answers wrong.
Not knowing that the screaming victim was really an actor, the apparently reluctant contestants yielded to the orders of the presenter and audience, who also believed the game was real.
The show's producer, Christophe Nick, said of the 80 participants who agreed to take part in the "game show", only 16 refused to obey orders to inflict pain.
Psychologists said the blind obedience seen on the show was the same as that seen among German soldiers ordered to commit atrocities in the Nazi death camps.
The experiment was modelled on a famous study conducted at Yale University in the 1960s, which used similar methods to examine how obedient citizens could be driven to take part in mass murder.
Jacques Semelin, a psychologist who took part in the documentary, said the participants were made to sign a contract obliging them to obey the presenter's instructions.
"They are obedient, but it's more than mere obedience, because there is also the pressure of the audience and cameras everywhere."
One contestant said after filming that taking part had helped her to understand why her own Jewish grandparents had been tortured by the Nazis.
She said: "Since I was a little girl, I have always asked myself why the Nazis did it and how they could obey such orders? And then there I was, obeying them myself.
"I was worried about the contestant, but at the same time, I was afraid to spoil the programme."