In the 1950s the American public was beginning to receive information about the horrors of the Holocaust, and we fucking HATED it. This was grotesque, abominable, cruel, and the worst of all was that it happened in broad daylight. Mothers kissed their husbands goodbye before walking to their job doing laundry at the concentration camp. Children walked to school past skeletal children who were once their neighbors. An evening stroll to the park could take you past the greatest factory of mass-produced carnage ever invented and NOBODY batted an eye. NOBODY said anything, they didnât speak up, they didnât stop it, they didnât care.
And to Americans, this was abhorrent. We wanted to know how this happened. What travesty of nature made this happen in the light of day without being stopped?
So we made a theory - German citizens were weak-willed. They were predisposed to bey authority by the inherent nature as Germans and so they could not have prevented this. But Americans are rebellious anti-authoritarians by nature and so WE would never let this happen. This cannot happen in the U.S. because weâre innately better than Germans at resisting authority.
This was an idea that brought peace and comfort to many, and this narrative was a source of national pride - tragically for those who found comfort in this idea, psychologists are assholes. We canât help it, tbh, itâs part of the job to poke and prod at what people think and believe. So a man by the name of Stanley Milgram, being a dastardly motherfucker, says âOh, Americans can resist authority, huh? That sounds like a HYPOTHESIS.â And he set up one of the most unethical experiments ever to prove his point. The Milgram Experiment is often taught today as part of ethics courses as part of why internal review boards are needed, and that is correct, but there are also phenomenal lessons we can draw from the experiment now beyond just the need for science to be ethical.
The experiment was set up in an interesting way. It took advantage of some of the common beliefs and theories of the day, and marketed itself as a study on the educational potential of electroshock therapy. To give yâall an idea of where psychology was in the 50s, a guy working for an accredited university said âI wanna see if electrocuting kids will help them learn vocabulary fasterâ and like 300 people said âthat makes sense, sign me the fuck up.â So he gets a shitass fuckload of participants. Iâm gonna dramatize this story a bit to increase emotional investment so history nerds donât @ me.
The way the experiment starts is that you, the examinee, arrive to the lobby âjust in the nick of timeâ and are told the other participant for todayâs study arrived a few minutes earlier. In fact, you can see him, heâs sitting a few feet away in a chair reading a magazine. You take a seat next to him and a few moments later you both are approached by a man in a white coat. He has a stethoscope around his neck and a clipboard in his hand. He introduces himself as âDr Milgramâ and says he flipped a coin in the other room and that the first participant to arrive was selected to be the reader while you were selected to be the electrocutioner. The first participant is led to a room in one hallway while youâre led by âDr Milgramâ to your room. The room is dimly lit, it has no windows or clocks, it is isolated, and âDr Milgramâ stands by the door blocking your exit. There is a desk in the room and a contraption on the desk with a button in it as well as some other readouts.
Now that youâre in the room, the doctor instructs you on how the experiment will proceed - you will provide the speller with words, and then listen to the other man spell the word, and any time he spells a word wrong you push the button in front of you to administer a mild, but painful, electric shock. The machinery then automatically increases the intensity of the next shock. You are to continue electrocuting the reader until they can spell words correctly.
Itâs simple, and somewhat boring, but soon the man begins to complain of chest pain. He says he feels lightheaded and uncomfortable. You ask if you can give him a break, but Dr Milgram says âplease continue.â Soon the speller starts saying that his chest REALLY hurts now, but when you voice discomfort Dr Milgram says âthe experiment must go on.â The next electric shock is met to the man saying heâs had a heart attack recently and he feels really bad, but Dr. Milgram says âI will take responsibility for whatever happens, please continue.â Soon the man becomes unresponsive and the experiment ends.
The experiment was NOT about the effects of electroshock therapy on school kids, itâs actually about authority and control on human behavior. The man being electrocuted is what is known as a confederate - heâs in on it, so to speak. Heâs part of the research team, and is not being electrocuted. Actually, he is just reading you lines from a script. In fact, âDr Milgramâ isnât even the real Doctor Milgram, heâs a college student from the theater program doing this to earn some extra cash. He has no credentials besides what heâs wearing. The purpose of the real experiment was to see how far people would be willing to go when compelled by an authority figure, and the answer was that over 90% of participants were willing to electrocute someone TO DEATH (or so they believed) because a guy in a lab coat was a little pushy about it. 90% of subjects tested were willing to ignore their own discomfort and internal moral compass because someone else pushed them - at least, that was what was believed at first.
Americans HATED this study because it punched a huge gaping hole in their psychological comfort blanket. They pushed back, they rejected the findings at first, but Iâll be God DAMNED if this fucking study doesnât replicate. It in fact replicates extremely well TO THIS DAY. It is messed up how well it replicates.
But we are in luck! Weâre not, as a species, doomed to kowtow to the strongest personality in the room! The cure for fighting authoritarianism isnât even too hard if youâre lucky. And it was found by a shitty replication attempt - a school tried to replicate the study but didnât have the budget for separate rooms and so they had both the participant and the electric-type confederate in the same room. They could hear each otherâs voices without needing an intercom system. And that dropped the number of people willing to go Zeus on the illiterate from 90-95% to about 70-75%. And they say âhey, look, it didnât replicate!â and the field of science as a whole goes âwell yeah, you did it wrong. You didnât follow the studyâs protocol.â and they go âYeah, but thatâs even more interesting, isnât it?â Because what they changed wasnât the perceived authority of the figure in question, what they changed was the ~environment~
So people say âhey wait a second, letâs run with that.â They start by adding Windows and a clock to the room where the âmurderâ is committed, then removing the symbols of authority from the âdoctor,â then by putting the participant and confederate in the same room, then removing barriers to seeing them, then taking the authority figure out of the room, and so on, until the environment was normal, and in a normal environment people were willing to electrocute someone to death at the behest of someone else EXACTLY as often as youâd hope, which is Almost Never. And THAT, in my mind, is the true finding of the study. I donât see the replication studies as separate, I donât see the incorrect studies as different, itâs all study about human nature and human control. And the moral of the study is this:
We, as people, like to think we are in control of what we say/do/think/feel 100% of the time and that is true IF AND ONLY IF the environment you find yourself in is not being manipulated. We learned this in the 50s, and since then people in power have worked to simultaneously manipulate our environments AND keep us in the dark about it.
Take a second to think about how many manipulated environments were in now - our housing system is as segregated as it was before segregation, weâre influenced by social media, T.V., movies, the news, all carefully curated to influence us without our knowledge or consent. All designed to manipulate us to act differently than we otherwise ever would. And then weâre supposed to blame ourselves the whole while.
âWhy canât I relax?â We say, ignoring the anxiety boxes we are given to occupy our every moment. âWhy am I buying so much useless shit?â we wonder as we clean out our closets, while advertisers are sticking forks into our hearts and twisting our feelings around like spaghetti. âWhy canât I stop scrolling?â I ask for the second consecutive hour, fully unaware that I am staring at a manipulation box and being manipulated. While some psychologists take research on human nature and use it to help others, some of my peers have used it to trap you in a cage made of your own heart and soul, thereby keeping you fully blind to it.
And thatâs the point. The point is for us to never know whatâs happening as weâre slowly conditioned, like so many dogs, to obey. And if we ever have to ask ourselves why we did this, the manipulations are so subtle and so aware of our own nature that itâs actually still manipulating us. Part of our nature is to see ourselves as autonomous, so we blame ourselves before we blame our environment or circumstances.
This is NOT to say that we are forced to do things with no control, but it means we ARE being manipulated. How do we stop being manipulated? The first step is to be aware of it - if you find yourself doing things you would never normally do, if you find yourself wondering why you feel so stuck, why you canât escape this cycle of bullshit again and again and again, remember the rules of this game are that they want you to go person, then circumstance, then environment, when looking for causes. That gives them more time to deny, that leaves more room for muddied waters to confuse and disorient, and it gives them space to blame you as part of the whole scheme. Instead, ask yourself if you have control of your environment and circumstances. Are you thinking this because you wanted to? Or because it was cued by an ad, or by a recommended video on algorithmic social media, or because it seems like everyone around you is doing it? If you know itâs environmental, then you know itâs not necessarily endogenous, and that makes it easier to resist. If you know the circumstances you find yourself in are unnatural, ask yourself what it would take to change the circumstance. Be aware of the areas where manipulation happens - once you know itâs hard to not see it. Social media manipulates people extremely well, and once someone has been manipulated like that they can feel confused, scared, and disoriented, which further opens them to manipulation.
So much of modern politics has been set up in advance, and we donât hardly even recognize it. Itâs kinda scary, tbh, but itâs able to be counteracted by acting consciously instead of reacting unconsciously. They are banking on you being as unthinking, unfeeling, and unaware as possible. And itâs working. Our brains are built to minimize energy and time spent thinking about anything so we can do things faster. And in the case of politics, especially political radicalization, that is being fully taken advantage of. So start by slowing down. Start by being more consciously thoughtful and aware of your choices. Start by thinking things through from start to finish. If you let them make things simple for you, you end up exactly where they want you, which is scared, reliant on them, and trapped in a weird limbo space of feeling and being both helpless and responsible for not only your own actions but the actions of your group. This makes people feel pressured to do things as fast as they can, and we know that desperate people donât make good, informed, intelligent decisions.
The marine corps, famous for recruiting the stupidest soldiers of all time. The âcrayon eaters,â the âjarheads,â the lowest common denominators, all gathered together and given rifles and grenades, is dangerous, so to minimize that catastrophe-in-waiting they train them in the phrase âslow is smooth, and smooth is fast.â When you feel pressure, or shame, or fear, and that makes you feel that you need to do something NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW DAMMNIT GO GO GO WE DONâT HAVE ALL DAY JUST MAKE A CHOICE AND COMMIT (something that often happens in politics, btw. Iâm sure we all know what it feels like to have an issue thrust at you and be told you have to pick your team RIGHT NOW and never deviate) you can live by that rule too. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. You canât be manipulated as easily if you take your time and consider your options. You canât be hurried along the path of decision-making if youâre stopping to look at every exit sign, every possible turn, and consider your choices carefully.
When it comes to stuff like people getting sucked into MAGA, it often happens because of manipulated environments and circumstances. Churches can be self-selecting in who they attract, and once youâre there the environment and circumstances do not accurately reflect the whole of human experience, they offer the whole of a specific kind of humanâs human experience. Social media does the same thing. Political parties do the same thing. Schools do the same thing. T.V. and music and companies that want you to identify with them as a personality trait all do the same thing. If youâre feeling stuck in a political environment that feels overly involved in a sense of shared identity that is often a deliberate manipulation tactic meant to make you feel like you have to stay EVEN MORE now because these are your people and your ONLY people. You sacrifice more and more of your self and your actual wants with time to avoid losing that connection to others because now itâs entangled in identity in a way thatâs not even a little bit normal or natural or OK. Weâre not meant to be one thing forever. Weâre not meant to be this isolated. Weâre not meant to be this angry and scared. Itâs all manipulation - itâs not fake, but it also IS fake at the same time.
So for those of you who relate to being manipulated, start by slowing down. And for those of you who donât (yet), just be aware that a day will come when you are face to face with manipulation. Nobody is immune. Autistic or allistic. Gay or straight. Trans or cis. Black or white. Cop or ANTIFA. When it happens to you, remember to slow down. Driving fast down a confusing, dimly lit road is a great way to end up going off the road and into the wilderness. Extremism is the wilderness. Go slow, take your time, be careful with turns, and ignore the assholes tailgating you telling you to hurry.
Remember - be gayer, be kind to each other, be kind to yourself, donât trust your first thought/feeling at face value - examine it whenever you have the ability to do so, and for the love of God GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA.
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