Freakonomics did a segment about "Sleep No More" and psychological manipulation of people/audiences, There is a long history in psychology of manipulating people/subjects. The Milgrim torture experiment. The Stanford prison experiment. Getting people to torture others. All of it is a bit of theater. A secondary consideration has only been about the researcher's specific manipulation in order to get spectacular results. Allowing the subjects in "control" to ham it up.
UX, CX & What Your Audience is Really Seeing