https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/would-you-give-a-virtual-electric-shock-to-an-avatar/

One common trait of repressive governments or laws is the emergence of an organized resistance, often involving high-ranking officials and civil figures who aren’t keen on obeying their leaders.

Obedience has been studied for decades, as an insight into how humans respond to authority and factor in their own sense of morality. In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram carried out a controversial experiment on obedience to authority. He asked participants to give a series of electric shocks of increasing voltage to a test subject (who was actually an actor) whenever he gave a wrong answer to a memory test. Participants obeyed and entered in what Milgram described as an “agentic” state, following the orders of the experimenter.