Yes, as someone who has been a subject in these kind of psychology studies, you often don't take the situation very seriously and act along with it. If the smoke and alarms weren't fully convincing, they participants probably figured it was some game and they were curious to see where the robot would lead them. This study results just demonstrate how poorly it was conducted.

Despite the accolades from some, Feynman's lectures are far from clear and perfect. What would be more exciting is a collaborative website for adding comments to this online version to work through the kinks.