THE DEVON WHEELER EXPERIMENT

There are two very famous psychology experiments and the one I inadvertently tripped face first into (Devon Wheeler above) clearly illustrate a lot of what is wrong with us “grand as gravy” people. How many of us have one ounce of individuality, of independent thought, or are we all just the same as sheep or dogs that blindly follow the pack wherever it goes? Merely rhetorical, of course.

Firstly, the Stanford Prison Experiment is probably the most famous one. Briefly, in 1971, at Stanford, Phillip Zambrano conducted an experiment. He randomly selected 24 male students to play either the role of “prisoner” or “prison guard” for two weeks. This was 1971. These guys were not tough Army ROTC guys like say Lee Marvin, or Charles Bronson. These were regular students, some hippies, flower children, peace love and understanding flowery softy boys.

Unsurprisingly, the students quickly adapted to their roles with brutality, inflicting as much psychological torture as possible. Zambrano allowed the abuse to continue and I’m glad he did. It gives real insight into our swingin’ fellow men.

Ten years prior to this, we had one known as the Milgram experiment at Yale, 1961. Can you guess the professor’s name? Oh you got it, Milgram. Remember at the beginning of Ghostbusters with Bill Murray and Rick Moranis and the cutey blonde girl? They were spoofing the infamous Milgram experiment. Milgram wanted to examine the extent to which humans are trained pretty much like dancing seals and conditioned to follow and submit to authority figures.

The subjects (the test subjects) were told to shock the learner behind the wall every time the learner answered a question wrong. Nobody was really being zapped, they just wanted to see how far the “subjects” would go. And every time they, the learners, were shocked they would let out an appropriate (based on the voltage) scream. The subjects (the zappers) kept right on zapping the learners right on up to the lethal level. On this experiment about 65% of the subjects continued to a fatal level.

They pushed it right up to lethal level. On this experiment about 65% of the subjects (switch throwers) continued on to a fatal level. And, get this, 100% of the participants continued up to a level that while not lethal, would have inflicted pain and bodily harm to the learners. That’s 100% baby.

This experiment has been done many times. In one they, the subjects were told to shock (of all things) a puppy when he did wrong. (Damn right!!! Who do those damn puppies think they are?) They couldn’t see the puppy but were told he made a training mistake. 82% of the subjects (pain bringers) went all the way, which would have inflicted horrible pain and eventually could have iced the puppy. Yes, some protested, but 82% gave the puppy all the juice (a fatal dose). Remember that next time you’re at the church social. 82%.

Side note-Before the experiment Milgram pooled the other professors to see how far they thought the subjects would go. The answers on the various experiments (there was more than one done) was that around only 2% to 3% of the subjects would go all the way to death. Wow, those brainy professors really have their hands on the pulse of the nation, don’t they?

Now my barnburner. I call this one the “Devon Wheeler Experiment.” Well, way back in 1972 in Glendale at Glendale High School amazing things had a way of happening. Early summer, June. It was my senior year in high school.

About 10 days before graduation, the strangest of things occurred. This Devon Wheeler fellow, (a popular guy on the track team, athletic, handsome) began going around campus rubbing himself in THAT way. Gad freakin’ zooks I tell you!!! He did it in gym class also, which only served to heighten suspicions about him. Since only boys were in the gym class that obviously meant (dipso facto) that he was a “fag,” “queer”, and what have you. Gay came along much, much later.

What do you suppose happened? Hmm? Does the name Hester Prynne ring any bells? How about Napoleon on Elba or St. Helena? Yes, Devon was given the big Scarlet letter “F” to hang around his neck and the word went out like the word that Pearl Harbor had been splattered, “Devon is taboo, bad Juju, he is to be shunned, ignored, ostracized, avert your good and righteous eyes, gang plank him over a school of starving Piranha.”

Now a little more info. What Mr. Wheeler had was schizophrenia, a physical organic disease that typically strikes young people mostly in the 16 to 25 age range. It strikes about 1% of the population and unfortunately Devon was the unlucky one.

And what timing huh? It was just about a week and a half before the end of our senior year. He just missed having that whole ugly episode away from the school. Now that’s horrid luck.

Here’s my point, and I’m trying to be fair (of course that’s what every unfair person in the world says) our class was about 500, so was the junior and sophomore class, so that totals out at around 1500 students. So, I don’t know, he may have known 200 or 300 of them, that’s a fair amount, I think. And here’s the crux of the whole thing. If he was just some guy that dropped in last week or last month that people didn’t really know, I wouldn’t expect them to show much allegiance or solidarity. But Devon was a lifer with these people. Meaning, he came up through first grade all the way through grade twelve. 12 years together, that’s a long time. So these people not only knew him, they had all grown up together, unlike me who was only at Glendale for 11th and 12th grades.

So out of this 200 to 300 he probably knew, every single solitary student save one turned their back on him, shunned him, acted as if he was like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. (The real one, not the monster movie guy.) I’ve talked to other people about this and these are their recollections as well. Every single student except one shunned him. Who was this one student? And not one person even had his diagnosis right!

Well, it was me of course. Kidding. No, I was as big a piece of garbage, as big a member of the conforming herd as anyone else. It was a guy by the name Larry Cornelius. I’d like to shake his hand. The only individual, to my knowledge and others, the only guy in the entire school with any guts. So what’s the bottom line, the crux of all of this scabrous saga?

Well, ok, this is the part where I try to be fair now. At that time, 1972, homosexuality was a major, major taboo, just marginally ahead of leprosy. I mean everybody that I knew would shun anybody else. My point? Out of those hundreds of students who had been through all of school together, grown up together, (12 years) there was only one guy that was substantial enough, had the gravitas to bust the code, the ostracism.

Devon wasn’t some guy that just dropped by last week. They knew him their whole lives. But only one guy, Larry, out of what, say three hundred! But everybody just blindly followed the other Herefords and that was that. And make no mistake about it; I was a pile of pretty awful offal as well.

One last thing, just like the Stanford Prison or the Milgram experiment, this wasn’t about any particular group of people. Stanford and Milgram were repeated many times over the years (remember the puppy one?) and always came out the same. The Devon Wheeler experiment would have gone exactly the same as well, whether one was in New Haven, Biloxi, or Timbuktu. Funny, I live in Eastern Timbuktu.

Human nature and the human condition. When will it change? Easy as pie. As soon as somebody finds a way to pass the Rock of Gibraltar through a needle.

Nice presentation. Rather than feel pessimistic about these outcomes, I’d like to invent an air freshener that could bring these monsters (we people) to the ideal of ourselves.

The communists think man is malleable and can be shaped into whatever form is most desirous to the state.

A lot of Christians are taught that the nature of man is wicked, and never changes, but it can be managed with the right upbringing and the instillation of proper moral perspective.

laudable sentiment, but the ideal can never exist in the physical world. And if this is how humanity is, then if we stopped doing these things would we still be human? Because to change behavior like this would take some form of genetic change to counter the psychological hard-wiring that caused it. We would be something, just not human as we now define it.

Both experiments support the belief that all human beings are born with the capacity for great good and great evil.
Our environment and culture condition each person to some individual degree.

Most of us learn very early what the expected response is, or what response from us will bestow the most enticing reward. Some never do learn to temper their response to social norms, and remain unconcerned about the responses they get, or lack thereof. That detachment from what the neighbors think can be both a blessing and a curse.

Lastly, the writer had some very interesting concepts to talk to us about, but the writer’s tendency toward chattiness and sub-plots almost threw me off the story here and there.

On a philosophical level, you may be right, but we do strive for the ideal in many things, and we do try to rise above the animal instincts (or whatever that cruel streak is). Lord, I know I have my flaws but sometimes do try to resist the hard wiring I think is unkind. You say, “We would be something, just not human as we now define it.” Again, true. But if I could emulate the better angels of man’s nature, I’d rather rise above the human nature described in these experiments (and the evil things we see in politics today) than sink below.

“A lot of Christians are taught that the nature of man is wicked, and never changes, but it can be managed with the right upbringing and the instillation of proper moral perspective.”

And I wonder why ...

On a brighter note. During the segregation/desegregation era in the deep south a desegregation came out from the Supreme Court and the white population boycotted the school. For one day! The next day a white Baptist minister and his wife escorted their children to the school, immediately followed by most of the town. by the next day it was no longer an issue. We sometimes forgot some of these by line stories.

I think there is something wrong with me.

My mind went from “The Rock of Gibraltar” right back to Devon, 10 days before graduation.

Not just about religion.

This makes the case for limited, weak government.

Those who govern, no matter how nice they may have been, are no different than anybody else.

Given too much power, they will kill us.

It’s Zimbardo not “Zambrano” and no the prison study has not been “repeated many times.” It is considered to have been grossly unethical and Zimbardo has acknowledged his culpability. Beyond that, what it has to do with your little anecdote I fail to see.

I did not make my point well at all. What I was getting at was the fact that the Left does not want progress, but their goals of personal behavior suggest that they are wishing for an evolution of sorts to some better type/form of Man. or so it appears to me anyway. I may be off-base with this, but their actions suggest this to me.

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