It's my understanding that they don't know the emotional toll, since they can't relate or empathize at all so they run an experiment to try and tease out emotio

It's my understanding that they don't know the emotional toll, since they can't relate or empathize at all so they run an experiment to try and tease out emotions, but ultimately fail, that is, if the victim is a stoic, (so I would just shrug off these types of actions as being 'kids will be kids'). There are psychopathic people who can't feel emotion and will run these experiments so they can have 'the feels' but again, usually fail.