The USA is a huge psychology experiment
You might think the USA is really not that relevant, or interesting, if you don’t live there, but in fact it works as a huge psychology experiment.
By February 10th 2025 about 86% of the Republican voters still don’t regret their votes, according to a number of surveys, in spite of Donald Trump having humiliated the USA internationally, and domestically making life more difficult for the US consumers and workers.
The results of three psychology experiments might explain this.
In the first experiment ten subjects are requested to point out the longest of two straight lines. One is clearly slightly longer than the other. The first nine subjects are secretly actors and all point to the wrong line. The tenth subject starts by laughing, then starts doubting himself, and in the end points to the wrong line himself, in more than 70% of the experiments conducted.
In the second experiment people were asked to approve a sign in their front yard, advertising the broadband provider in their neighborhood. Those who accepted later had the sign replaced with a larger one. And then again. And again. In the end the sign was ridiculously large, but most stood by their choice.
In the third experiment teachers were asked to give students electric shocks when providing wrong or no answers. The voltage would go up, as the experiment progressed. The teachers could hear, but not see, the students. The students would moan and scream, and finally go silent, and the teachers could stop the experiment whenever that wanted. They were, however, nudged to continue “for the good of the experiment” or “it would have been a waste of time”.
Luckily there were no actual electric shocks, and the students were actors.
Otherwise most of the students would have sustained serious injuries or died.
Compliance biases and confirmation biases are hardwired in the human brain, as being a part of a group is a necessity for our survival.
Many hard-to-explain group behaviour phenomena can be explained by the compliance bias and confirmation bias. Bullying is perhaps the most common of these phenomena.
It’s one thing to consciously choose to side with the minority and the losers, for reasons of principle, when presented with a hypothetical choice.
It’s another matter to choose to do so in reality.
Faced with resistance from your family, neighbors, and colleagues, it requires enormous personal confidence.
It becomes an even greater challenge, and humiliation, when it requires you to change your mind publicly.
Add to this challenge the Dunning-Kruger effect, a type of cognitive bias where people with limited understanding and ability assume they have superior expertise. It occurs when people don’t have the necessary knowledge to understand that they lack the knowledge or skills, but are encouraged to take pride in their abilities.
This may be best explained with a simplified example:
I decided to learn about the universe, so I read a couple of Wikipedia pages, and remembered the number of stars in the universe, the names of the galaxies and the planets in our solar system, and I learned the names of the most important zodiac signs and the most prominent stars in the night sky.
Whenever I show off my knowledge my family and friends are impressed, and I become known as the local “expert”.
At this point I don’t see any reason to expand my knowledge, as it’s already more than enough to impress the people in my immediate proximity.
Now I meet an actual astronomer, who – as is customary for scientists – is cautious not to answer questions with too much certainty, but says phrases like “we believe”, “I think” and “we can’t be certain”.
I am now confident I know more about astronomy than this “so-called expert”, and I’m outraged that he is actually paid to do a job I could do so much better, and with much more confidence.
As he ventures into subjects I have no knowledge of – like the Big Bang Theory and the curvature of the expanding universe – I simply dismiss this as irrelevant filler words and nonsense. “He is trying, in vain, to impress people who won’t be convinced by this hogwash anyway!”
A political character suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect can actually boost both the compliance bias and the confirmation bias in a larger following so efficiently it will spread and grow quite rapidly.
As a voter I might be affected by a charismatic candidate who boasts self-esteem and confidence. At the same time it’s comfortable to share my convictions with my neighbours, friends, co-workers and family, and at this point I’m committed to the cause. Whatever the candidate utters at this point, that is very obviously incorrect, he or she must do with a purpose. This is not the time to deviate from the course or rock the boat.
Obviously this politician will identify the “crisis”, and the causing “enemy”, and articulate a dehumanization of this “enemy” at this point. A leader without a cause is useless…
The Swedish journalist and writer Jack Werner wrote the book “I don’t give a shit if it’s fake, it’s still outrageous” (“Ja skiter i att det är fejk det är förjävligt ändå”) about people knowingly spreading fake news on social media, simply because these fake stories confirmed their convictions and political views.
According to Jack Werner opinions matter more to these people than factual information, because the end justifies the means.
With a strong personal support network, these people can endure scrutiny, and even ridicule, without difficulty.
“A girl gets detention because her cellphone is decorated with the Swedish flag. But the news is fake. When Mats finds out, he is nevertheless upset: “I don’t give a shit if it’s fake, it’s still outrageous” he writes on Facebook.”
In a small country like Sweden it’s difficult to be encapsulated solely by your personal support network. You will inevitably meet people with different attitudes and opinions all the time, like a pinball machine ball constantly encountering obstacles. In a larger country – like the USA – it’s much easier to build communities of like minded.
At one point the Ku Klux Klan had more than five million paying members in the USA.
Bias is found in both sides of the political friction in the USA, and fed by the Dunning-Kruger effect, along with the confirmation bias and the compliance bias, the polarization is larger than any time earlier in US history. For a Trump opponent to admit that Donald is right, in just a single instance or claim, is considered sacrilege or desertion. There is no acceptance, on either side, for saying that “I’m not a fan, but in this case …”.
Even right before, and right after, the American Civil War politicians from different sides could actually have more civilised conversations, and keep a more open mind towards a better argument, than they can today.
According to some of the more seasoned Senators “The hallway has gone silent”.
The hallway they are referring to is the space where political opponents would previously rest and put aside their differences to exchange pleasantries and smalltalk.
The mutual dehumanization is peaking.
If it’s not, the next step is civil war.
There is a very subjective way of giving “credit” to the political players.
If “our” candidate has been caught with his fingers in the cake tin, it is not nearly as bad as “their” candidate who has not paid his bills.
What’s worse: going to a prostitute or fucking a friend’s wife? Well, that depends on who did what; Which one is a Democrat and which one is a Republican?
Fair ethics and rational reasoning has left the building.
This is not due to lack of intelligence or a moral compass, but simply because the political game has become so heated that everyone sits in their ring corner and snorts angrily.
Towards the end of the Korean war the USA started treating international conflicts as an integral part of domestic politics. The USA didn’t lose the Vietnam war in Vietnam – they lost it in the USA. The same can be said about the lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the soldiers fight in some overseas theatre, the war is in reality about what is going on on the Capitol Hill. And this is where the war is won or lost.
The Viet Cong and the Taliban are just chess pawns in this game.
This can even explain why the USA – with one of the largest armed forces in the world – can win any battle, but will always lose the war. Or rather: they will lose the peace that follows.
They don’t have a plan that will take the local population, and the political, religious and cultural situation into account. The war in Afghanistan was not about Afghanistan. It was about Capitol Hill. That’s how a country – and their allies – can waste so much time, so many lives and so much money, and achieve nothing in the country they are fighting.
The last time the USA won a war – and the peace that followed – was in Japan, in 1945.
Playing on the confirmation and compliance biases the USA has – however – mastered the fine art of convincing.
The best example might be the space race.
The Soviet Union wanted to show the world how they mastered rocket launching, and put a satellite in space. Then a man.
They owned space around the globe.
In an attempt to top this achievement the USA put a man on the moon.
Seen from a purely rational and practical point of view this was completely pointless.
Going to the moon serves no practical purpose, and will not make launching nuclear weapons or surveilling the enemy more efficient. Which was what the space race was all about.
Even for peaceful purposes satellites have changed the way everything works on earth, while the ability to go to the moon has really not had any effect on our lives.
But the USA managed to impress, and convince the entire western world – and even most of Asia and Africa – that they had triumphed.
It’s not about achievements.
It’s all about perception.
If you believe that I’m the good guy, the opponents are the bad guys, and that I’m winning, you will want to comply, you will want to confirm, and your confidence will be fueled by our common triumph.
It doesn’t have to be true, it doesn’t have to be rational, and it doesn’t even have to align with your initial moral compass, ‘cos the end justifies the means.
This is what happened in almost every country in the world where hell broke loose. Cambodia 1977, Rwanda 1994, Iraq 2016…
What it takes to make a u-turn is an almost superhuman show of courage, and the willingness to disrupt the entire situation.
It takes a person who will listen to the opponent with an open mind, and say “Okay, I still disagree with your entire political platform and premise, but at this-and-this point you are actually right, and my candidate is wrong.”
This will take more courage than Rosa Parks sitting down on a bus, simply because the main critics will be your allies. You will have to face the anger from both sides of the division.
You have to imagine Rosa Parks saying “and Reverend Martin Luther King is wrong!” to comprehend how difficult this is.
Making this even more challenging is that Donald Trump has more-or-less monopolised the concept of disruption. You’ll have to disrupt both the “establishment” and the “disruption”.
And at first you will be very very alone, and only a very few will be able to grasp your purpose.
What you are fighting is not the Republicans or the Democrats, but the human nature that is hardwired for survival-by-compliance.
This is what the American experiment is all about.