Asch, Milgram, and the Lockdown
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The Asch Conformity Experiment
In the magical year of 1951, the same twelve months that brought us nuclear testing in the Nevada desert and the first-ever commercially available color television (discontinued a month later), one Solomon Asch, a pioneer in social psychology, conducted what has since been considered to be one of the most telling and repeatable experiments in psychology history — the Asch Conformity Experiment. The objective was to understand better how “intelligent, well-meaning people” could be swayed into blatantly incorrect group think through peer pressure.
The format of the testing involved eight college students, with all but one being paid actors. The subjects were told they were participating in a visual perception test, whereby they were shown a series of cards, each containing a single line (baseline), flanked by another set of three lines labeled A, B, and C. The participants were then asked to say out loud which line (A, B, or C) matched the length of the baseline.
Simple enough, right? It’s here where the experiment begins as the paid participants were given instructions prior to the experiment as to what answers to deliver on each set of questions. Through the first few trials, all participants gave the correct answers, but all paid participants gave the wrong answer on the following twelve rounds.
The results: One-third of all responses were incorrect, with the incorrect responses often matching the majority of the paid participant’s answers. Out of the twelve trials, 75% of participants gave at least one wrong answer. When asked about the experiment results, Solomon Asch gave a very understated response: “That intelligent, well-meaning, young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern.”
The Milgram Experiment
Fast forward a few years to the 1960s, during the height of American cultural existentialism often found through tie-dye, psychedelic atmospheres, and just good ol’ fashioned hallucinogens, a few self-professing geniuses in lab coats decided to conduct an experiment. The man in charge was Stanley Milgram, a Yale University psychologist. While his experiments were conducted with slight variations, his most famous of experiments, and the one that still bears his namesake sixty years later, sought to test the extent to which humans would go to obey orders given from a person of perceived authority.
The results? Well, they’re nothing short of shocking — literally.
Here’s how the experiment worked. Adult males from varying backgrounds, education levels, and professions were told they were participating in an experiment designed to learn more about memory, learning, and punishment. They were given the title of “Teacher.” They were then introduced to the other individuals participating in the experiment who were, in actuality, hired actors, and who were given the title of “Learner.”
The setup of the experiment was simple. The Teacher and Learner were placed in separate rooms but close enough to where they could still hear each other through the walls. This part is important. The Teacher was instructed to ask the Learner a series of questions; if Learner answered the questions incorrectly, the Moderator would instruct the Teacher to shock the Learner. Oh, I should have mentioned that prior to the questions being asked, the Learner was wired with electrodes running to a control panel placed in front of the Teacher. The shocks started at 15-volts but would increase at 15-volt increments until the maximum dosage was administered at 450-volts. Yes, you read that correctly.
And, it’s here where the real experiment took place. Milgram wanted to see how far humans would go, knowingly inflicting physical pain and nearing 450-volts, potentially lethal doses of electroshock, all because a person in authority was instructing them to do so. At around 150-volts, the Learner was instructed to scream in pain and ask to leave the room. This crying would continue until the ~330-volt level was reached, at which point he would stop reacting. If and when the Teacher expressed any hesitation, the Moderator would, with increased firmness, tell them that “they had no choices; they must go on.” The study would conclude when the Teacher refused to continue or when the 450-volts had been administered.
The results: 65% of participants gave the Learner all 450-volts.
Where am I going with this, you ask?
Well, consider what’s transpired over the last 691-days since the March 13th, 2020 request from President Trump to stay home and flatten the curve and the national emergency Executive Order that kicked off and continues to fuel the lockdown. Also, consider, based on what we just learned from the Asch and Milgram experiments, that we are, in fact, all participants in a much larger experiment and that very few of us are in on the gag.
330+ million Americans watched as people of authority, often in lab coats, with half a dozen acronyms after their names, informed us that millions would likely die, that a pandemic was in process and that conventional medical remedy and knowledge was no match for this new invisible enemy. That fear fueled by models and projections flawlessly branded with CDC, White House, and NIH logos was all that was needed to get an entire nation, who previously credited itself as being that of rugged individualists, to overnight, completely capitulate, close up shop, and forever change everything about their lives.
Even with the vaccine to save us all, there’s very little substance behind any claims that life will ever return to normal. In fact, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently stated that masks and social distancing would likely be a permanent fixture moving forward, and it’s here we need to take a look in the mirror and have a hard conversation with ourselves.
Much like the Asch and Milgram experiments, each of us, regardless of age, education level, occupation, or financial situation, are all human beings. And we’re all susceptible to the human condition, which in this case specifically refers to our inability to make rational decisions when those in authority are telling us to do something we otherwise would never entertain, and where public opinion is used as a tool of conformity. No matter your position on the virus, the lockdown was undoubtedly a terrible idea and never the right response. From California and Chicago to South Dakota and Florida, we now have enough data to confirm that lockdowns don’t work in stopping the spread.
Bringing this all together.
In this real-life experiment, the Moderators are the doctors, health experts, physicians, heads of state, former operating system developers turned philanthropists (well, he actually stole the code, lawyered up, won in court, and is now worth $115B), and global health experts, and a host of other credible sources.
Who are the Teachers, you ask? It’s you and me. It’s everyone who has done something so extreme, so dangerous, so ludicrous, like shutting down their own business, not seeing family and friends, isolating themselves for months on end, who stopped attending church, social gatherings, missing weddings, funerals, birthdays, and everything that makes life worth living.
All of us are guilty of these actions, and we did it because no matter how we rationalize it to ourselves, a person in authority convinced us it was the right thing to do. We’ve been administering ourselves with all 450-volts for the past eleven months. We need to stop.
We need to reason and weigh the short and long-term implications of a decimated economy, massive unemployment, inflation, increased drug abuse and domestic violence, mental health issues, nationwide rise in murders, increased global poverty (Around 88 to 115 million people will fall into extreme poverty this year. The total could rise to 150 million by 2021.), disrupted education and healthcare, and increased suicide rates.
Can we look back at the damage the lockdown has caused and will continue to deliver, and still tell ourselves with a straight face, “Yeah, but at least I didn’t get the virus.”
