Examples of brainwashing
The True Story of Brainwashing and How It Shaped America | History
John Frankenheimer's classic The Manchurian Candidate built upon the idea of brainwashed GIs in Korea. Still from The Manchurian CandidateJournalist Edward Hunter was the first to sound the alarm. “Brain-washing Tactics Force Chinese Into Ranks of Communist Party,” blared his headline in the Miami Daily News in September 1950. In the article, and later in a book, Hunter described how Mao Zedong’s Red Army used terrifying ancient techniques to turn the Chinese people into mindless, Communist automatons. He called this hypnotic process “brainwashing,” a word-for-word translation from xi-nao, the Mandarin words for wash (xi) and brain (nao), and warned about the dangerous applications it could have. The process was meant to “change a mind radically so that its owner becomes a living puppet—a human robot—without the atrocity being visible from the outside.
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It wasn’t the first time fears of Communism and mind control had seeped into the American public. In 1946 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was so worried about the spread of Communism that it proposed removing liberals, socialists and communists from places like schools, libraries, newspapers and entertainment. Hunter’s inflammatory rhetoric didn’t immediately have a huge impact—until three years into the Korean War, when American prisoners of war began confessing to outlandish crimes.
When he was shot down over Korea and captured in 1952, Colonel Frank Schwable was the highest ranking military officer to meet that fate, and by February 1953, he and other prisoners of war had falsely confessed to using germ warfare against the Koreans, dropping everything from anthrax to the plague on unsuspecting civilians. The American public was shocked, and grew even more so when 5,000 of the 7,200 POWs either petitioned the U.S. government to end the war, or signed confessions of their alleged crimes.
The final blow came when 21 American soldiers refused repatriation.
Suddenly the threat of brainwashing was very real, and it was everywhere. The U.S. military denied the charges made in the soldiers’ “confessions,” but couldn’t explain how they’d been coerced to make them. What could explain the behavior of the soldiers besides brainwashing? The idea of mind control flourished in pop culture, with movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Manchurian Candidate showing people whose minds were wiped and controlled by outside forces. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover referred to thought-control repeatedly in his book Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It. By 1980 even the American Psychiatric Association had given it credence, including brainwashing under “dissociative disorders” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-III. Had Chinese and Soviet Communists really uncovered a machine or method to rewrite men’s minds and supplant their free will?
The short answer is no—but that didn’t stop the U.
S. from pouring resources into combatting it.
“The basic problem that brainwashing is designed to address is the question ‘why would anybody become a Communist?’” says Timothy Melley, professor of English at Miami University and author of The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State. “[Brainwashing] is a story that we tell to explain something we can’t otherwise explain.”
The term had multiple definitions that changed depending on who used it. For Hunter—who turned out to be an agent in the CIA’s propaganda wing—it was a mystical, Oriental practice that couldn’t be understood or anticipated by the West, Melley says. But for scientists who actually studied the American POWs once they returned from Korea, brainwashing was altogether less mysterious than the readily apparent outcome: The men had been tortured.
Robert Jay Lifton, one of the psychiatrists who worked with the veterans and late studied doctors who aided Nazi war crimes, listed eight criteria for thought reform (the term for brainwashing used by Mao Zedong's communist government).
They included things like “milieu control” (having absolute power over the individual’s surroundings) and “confession” (in which individuals are forced to confess to crimes repeatedly, even if they aren’t true). For the American soldiers trapped in the Korean prison camps, brainwashing meant forced standing, deprivation of food and sleep, solitary confinement, and repeated exposure to Communist propaganda.
“There was concern on the part of [the American military] about what had actually happened to [the POWs] and whether they had been manipulated to be [what would later be known as] a ‘Manchurian candidate,’” says Marcia Holmes, a science historian at the University of London’s “Hidden Persuaders” project. “They’re not sleeper agents, they’re just extremely traumatized.”
The early 1950s marked the debut of the military’s studies into psychological torture, and instead of concluding the American soldiers needed rehabilitation, military directors came to a more ominous conclusion: that the men were simply weak.
“They became less interested in the fantasy of brainwashing and became worried our men couldn’t stand up to torture,” Holmes says. This resulted in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape program (SERE), meant to inoculate men against future attempts at psychological torture by using those same torture techniques in their training.
Meanwhile, the American public was still wrapped up in fantasies of hypnotic brainwashing, in part due to the research of pop psychologists like Joost Meerloo and William Sargant. Unlike Lifton and the other researchers hired by the military, these two men portrayed themselves as public intellectuals and drew parallels between brainwashing and tactics used by both American marketers and Communist propagandists. Meerloo believes that “totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union or Communist China were in the past, and continue to be, quite successful in their thought-control programs… [and] the more recently available techniques of influence and thought control are more securely based on scientific fact, more potent and more subtle,” writes psychoanalyst Edgar Schein in a 1959 review of Meerloo’s book, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control—Menticide and Brainwashing.
Psychiatrists, as well as writers like Aldous Huxley, were aided by the dominant theory of the human mind at the time, known as “behaviorism”. Think of Ivan Pavlov’s slobbering dogs, trained to salivate upon hearing a bell, even if they weren’t tempted with food. The basic assumption of behaviorism was that the human mind is a blank slate at birth, and is shaped through social conditioning throughout life. Where Russia had Pavlov, the U.S. had B.F. Skinner, who suggested psychology could help predict and control behavior. Little wonder, then, that the public and the military alike couldn’t let go of brainwashing as a concept for social control.
With this fear of a mind-control weapon still haunting the American psyche, CIA director Allen Dulles authorized a series of psychological experiments using hallucinogens (like LSD) and biological manipulation (like sleep deprivation) to see if brainwashing were possible. The research could then, theoretically, be used in both defensive and offensive programs against the Soviet Union.
Project MK-ULTRA began in 1953 and continued in various forms for more than 10 years. When the Watergate scandal broke, fear of discovery led the CIA to destroy most of the evidence of the program. But 20,000 documents were recovered through a Freedom of Information Act request in 1977, filed during a Senate investigation into Project MK-ULTRA. The files revealed the experiments tested drugs (like LSD), sensory deprivation, hypnotism and electroshock on everyone from agency operatives to prostitutes, recovering drug addicts and prisoners—often without their consent.
Despite MK-ULTRA violating ethical norms for human experiments, the legacy of brainwashing experiments continued to live on in U.S. policy. The same methods that had once been used to train American soldiers ended up being used to extract information from terrorists in Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
“Here, then, is the brief history of brainwashing,” Melley writes in a 2011 paper for Grey Room. “The concept began as an [O]rientalist propaganda fiction created by the CIA to mobilize domestic support for a massive military build-up.
This fiction proved so effective that the CIA’s operations directorate believed it and began a furious search for a real mind control weapon. The search resulted not in a miraculous new weapon but a program of simulated brainwashing designed as a prophylactic against enemy mistreatment. This simulation in turn became the real basis for interrogating detainees in the war on terror.”
While few people take seriously the notion of hypnosis-like brainwashing (outside Hollywood films like Zoolander), there are still plenty who see danger in certain kinds of control. Consider the conversations about ISIS and radicalization, in which young people are essentially portrayed as being brainwashed. “Can You Turn a Terrorist Back Into a Citizen? A controversial new program aims to reform homegrown ISIS recruits back into normal young Americans,” proclaims one article in Wired. Or there’s the more provocative headline from Vice: “Inside the Mind-Control Methods the Islamic State Uses to Recruit Teenagers.
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“I think a program of isolation and rigorous conversion still does have a life in our concept of radicalization,” Melley says. But outside those cases related to terrorism it’s mostly used facetiously, he adds.
“The notion of brainwashing, no less than radicalization, often obscure[s] far more than it reveal[s],” write Sarah Marks and Daniel Pick of the Hidden Persuaders project. “Both terms could be a lazy way of refusing to inquire further into individual histories, inviting the assumption that the way people act can be known in advance.”
For now, the only examples of “perfect” brainwashing remain in science-fiction rather than fact. At least until researchers find a way to hack into the network of synapses that comprise the brain.
Editor's note, May 25, 2017: The article previously misstated that Robert Jay Lifton studied Nazi doctors' war crimes before studying American prisoners of war, and that he coined the term "thought reform."
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Brainwashing has a grim history that we shouldn’t dismiss
In 1937, the longtime Bolshevik leader Georgy Pyatakov was tried in Moscow for treason, sabotage and other alleged crimes against the Soviet Union.
He gave a false confession, declaring: ‘Here I stand before you in filth, crushed by my own crimes, bereft of everything through my own fault, a man who has lost his Party, who has no friends, who has lost his family, who has lost his very self.’ He was executed for his alleged offences shortly thereafter – and he was one of many.
How had the Soviets persuaded so many defendants to testify to such lies? Some observers were convinced they had developed a secret tool for coercion. It wasn’t just that they appeared able to force people to say things, but that their victims actually appeared to believe the lies. The Soviets used a number of techniques to obtain confessions. They were not shy about resorting to brutality; some of the signed confessions found in the archives reveal bloodstains. The accused were repeatedly interrogated until they felt like ‘automatons’. They were kept isolated in solitary confinement, but well within earshot of other prisoners who were beaten.
There was initially no widely used term to explain such attempts at forced persuasion, but that changed in the context of Mao Zedong’s victory in China and the Korean War some years later.
Edward Hunter, a wartime propagandist with the US Office of Strategic Services, is credited with coining the flamboyant term ‘brainwashing’ in 1950 to account for mysterious confessions extracted from Western prisoners of war by the Chinese government. After brutal treatment, some victims not only confessed to unlikely charges but also appeared to be sympathetic to their captors. Brainwashing later made a prominent appearance in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962), in which the evil Dr Yen Lo explains to a Communist co-conspirator that his American prisoner has ‘been trained to kill and then to have no memory of having killed … His brain has not only been washed … it has been dry-cleaned.’
With such origins, it is no wonder that the concept of brainwashing is criticised: it all seems so musty, reeking of the Cold War and questionable science. Some note that the concept has been used as a rhetorical weapon to attack followers of new movements (‘Ignore them; they must have been brainwashed to believe this nonsense’).
Others dislike the term because it seems to blame victims for being gullible and weak, even though some victims of apparent brainwashing have included very gifted individuals. People lose sight of the fact that this form of dark persuasion occurs in extremis, when people are literally at their wits’ end.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein observed that ‘a new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.’ Hunter’s new word might as well have been crabgrass: it crowded out more reasonable alternatives. Some experts have preferred the term ‘coercive persuasion’ to explain the unusual behaviours observed among prisoners of war, cult victims and hostages who have paradoxically sided with their assailants or made palpably false and self-destructive confessions. Despite experts’ research on the subject, many still regard brainwashing as a bubbe-meise, a ghost story from the past.
Lenin was enchanted by the potential for Pavlov’s approach to be used to influence the Russian people
‘Coercive persuasion’ – which I’ll use interchangeably with ‘brainwashing’ – is a much harder term to argue with.
It’s obvious that people can be forced to do things, but it also appears that people can be coerced into believing things under certain conditions. We see this all too frequently in instances of false confessions, Stockholm syndrome (in which a hostage develops a loyalty to their captor), and cults that foster various religious and political ideas. There is even concern today that social media has become coercively persuasive, indoctrinating people to believe preposterous things (eg, ‘vaccines cause autism’, ‘COVID-19 isn’t worth worrying about’). Can social media contribute to coercive persuasion? To answer that question, one needs to more clearly define the sorts of situations that produce it.
The Russian physiologist and Nobel Laureate Ivan Pavlov could be called the father of coercive persuasion science.
When the Neva River in St Petersburg flooded in 1924, Pavlov gained unique insights into the effects of trauma on behaviour. The river inundated his canine lab and almost drowned his caged dogs. Pavlov observed that the dogs were not the same afterward – they forgot their learned behaviours, and the trauma changed their dispositions. Ever the experimentalist, Pavlov re-exposed one of his traumatised dogs to a trickle of water in the experimental chamber, which again disrupted the dog’s trained response. With his enormous patience and skill, Pavlov could condition a dog to respond to one specific note on the musical scale. The fact that trauma could disrupt such precise training seems to have fascinated him.
The Soviet leader Lenin was enchanted by the potential for Pavlov’s approach to be used to influence the Russian people. And the Soviet government provided financial support for a research institute with hundreds of staff. Pavlov observed that sudden stress immersion, sleep deprivation, isolation and methodical patience all contributed to the alteration of dogs’ behaviours.
Glimmerings of brainwashing surfaced during Stalin’s show trials in the 1930s; during the 1940s when wartime governments searched for drugs to speed interrogation; and in the early Cold War years when they raced to persuade enemies to defect. Throughout the 20th century, governments invested heavily in research on coercive persuasion. Government agencies, foundations and universities collaborated on extensive studies of the use of drugs to change behaviour or extract information. They also demonstrated that sensory deprivation and sleep restriction increased suggestibility. For example, in one line of research, subjects listened to persuasive audio recordings about a particular topic (such as the country Turkey, or parapsychology), and some of them did so while placed in a dark and quiet sensory-deprivation chamber. After their experiments were concluded, volunteers in the sensory-deprivation condition tended to show greater interest in the topics and, in some cases, greater influence from the recordings.
Coercive persuasion seems to be more effective when the victim is isolated from other views and beliefs
I wish I could say that all such studies used volunteers, but some experiments involving drugs were performed on unwitting victims. In the ‘midnight climax’ study of the 1950s-’60s, CIA operatives rented an apartment on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco and hired prostitutes to slip LSD into their customers’ drinks to see if they would confide information more readily.
Thus, brainwashing has a more substantial history than is apparent at first glance, but it will always seem fictitious unless there are clear ways of assessing it. So what are its defining and measurable properties? First, coercive persuasion typically involves surreptitious manipulation – individuals might not even know they are being targeted. Further, actions are taken at the expense of the targeted individuals; someone else benefits from the manipulation. Some degree of sleep deprivation is often part of the regimen, leaving the victim fatigued, confused and suggestible.
And coercive persuasion seems to be more effective when the victim is isolated from other views and beliefs.
As a thought experiment, let me suggest how these features might be rated and examine how they appear in documented instances. There are countless examples of purported brainwashing, but many experts would include confessions by the Bolsheviks during Stalin’s ‘Moscow Trials’ of the late 1930s and the behaviour of the Hungarian cardinal József Mindszenty during his show trial in 1949. Most would also label the treatment of some US POWs in the Korean War and some of the victims of the CIA’s infamous MKUltra experiments of the 1950s-’70s as instances of attempted brainwashing – one MKUltra-funded programme in Montreal subjected people to intense electroconvulsive treatment, repeated doses of LSD, and a quarter of a million or more tape loops suggesting how to change their behaviour.
Patty Hearst (right) yells instructions to customers during a bank robbery at the Hibernia bank in San Francisco, 15 April 1974.
Courtesy WikipediaVarious examples of hostage behaviour also seem sensible to consider – including cases such as the kidnapping and conversion of Patricia Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. Finally, it is fitting to consider lethal cults such as Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate. Based on my reading, these instances would score highly on the putative variables that define coercive persuasion, whereas instances of ‘mere’ persuasion would have low scores.
In evaluating each of these unhappy instances, I ask a series of questions:
- Was sleep altered? Sleep is commonly manipulated by interrogators, hostage-takers and cults. Cult initiation ceremonies are sometimes held after a period of sleep deprivation. When sleep is curtailed, judgment deteriorates and people become more suggestible. One can rate the severity of the sleep manipulation by how frequently, consistently and thoroughly it is imposed.
One of the few things that many conservatives and liberals seem to agree on is the darkly persuasive capabilities of social media
- Was there evidence of coercive isolation? Sensory restriction and isolation from friends and family are crucial for coercive persuasion.
One can rate the extent of this isolation. Is the victim forbidden to leave the premises or to communicate with others, or merely discouraged from contacting outsiders? - How much surreptitious control was imposed? Were the victims given disinhibiting drugs – once or many times, surreptitiously? Were they forced to participate in guilt-inducing, demeaning rituals or subjected to harsh group criticism?
- Was the participation in the victim’s best interest or someone else’s? Coercive persuasion commonly takes place in settings where the victim’s freedom and safety are jeopardised and where someone else benefits from the subject’s degradation. One could rate this feature based on the extent to which the persuasive tactics involve imprisonment or jeopardise safety.
When more of these conditions are evident, it is more likely that victims have been subjected to coercive persuasion, as opposed to ‘just’ propaganda or indoctrination. Take Jonestown, for instance. The residents of this commune in Guyana were physically restrained from leaving, and communication with outsiders was sharply limited. They were forced to make demeaning public confessions and were chronically sleep-deprived. When it ended, more than 900 individuals died, sacrificed by their leader, Jim Jones.
It would be inaccurate to portray coercive persuasion as some sort of 20th-century aberration. The recent rise and fall of the Nxivm cult in New York suggests that dark persuasion persists. Court testimony and reporting revealed that the organisation involved, among other things, branding and sexual exploitation of female members. Even after their leader, Keith Raniere, was sentenced to 120 years for abusing women physically, emotionally and financially, some of his acolytes danced outside the prison, protesting his incarceration.
The presence of coercive persuasion in one context or another is not a black-or-white distinction. There are contemporary situations that raise questions about new directions in persuasion. As noted earlier, one wonders if coercive persuasion can be conducted via social media. That question needs careful study. Can social media be used to isolate people, coerce or shame them? Is such manipulation surreptitious or is it above-board? Can social media encourage people to risk their safety and enrich others? Can it interfere with the sleep of its adherents? One of the few things that many conservatives and liberals seem to agree on is the darkly persuasive capabilities of social media.
We have a century of observations demonstrating that people can be coerced to do things and coercively persuaded to believe things. It would be a mistake to dismiss such observations. If we ignore the potential developments of brainwashing in the 21st century, we will be defenceless against it.
The Big Laundry: How to Avoid Being Brainwashed
The author of several bestselling books, psychologist Marina Melia took up, in her opinion, not the most pleasant occupation - she watched Russian television a lot and regularly, in particular the news. There she looked for examples of methods and techniques that modern media use to shape public opinion. All the information about this is included in the chapter of her new book “Simply about complex - How to keep a clear head when we are brainwashed? » , published by " Alpina Publisher " . Forbes publishes excerpts from this chapter.
There is hardly a person who has not at least once been a victim of manipulation. No matter how smart and educated we may consider ourselves, everyone will remember how more than once or twice he succumbed to the persuasion of a fraudster - for example, in the guise of a gypsy or a psychic, fell under the influence of advertising or political propaganda. And it's good if you can just forget an unpleasant episode, but sometimes it affects our lives quite seriously.
A typical example. Two friends who once studied together at a prestigious Moscow university, then worked in the same IT company, were family friends - modern people, with a mathematical mindset, skeptical, ironic - suddenly suddenly became enemies.
Almost any conversation now ended in mutual attacks, insults, screams. Eventually they stopped talking altogether. And it all started with the fact that just during the period of the Ukrainian events in 2014, one worked for six months in the Kiev branch of the company, watched Ukrainian television and listened to local radio, while the other remained in Moscow and received information from Russian sources. When they met, each was convinced that the other had been brainwashed. And they were both right.
In order to keep a clear head, prevent discord in relationships with loved ones, and not start massively “destroying” friends in social networks, it is important to learn how to resist suggestion and manipulation. And for this it is worth understanding how the brainwashing mechanism works.
How it works
For the first time the term brainwashing was used in his sensational article, published in 1950 in the Miami News, by a journalist (and at the same time an employee of the CIA propaganda department) Edward Hunter.
He literally translated into English the Chinese expression "si-nao" - "brainwash": this is how they spoke about the methods of forced persuasion, which eradicated the "feudal" mentality of the Chinese, brought up in the pre-revolutionary era.
Later, it was described in detail how during the Korean War of 1951-1953, which was fought between two Koreas - South (among its allies was the United States) and North (on its side the Chinese army fought), the Chinese Communists in the camps they controlled for prisoners of war achieved profound behavioral changes in American soldiers, how the individuality of a person was destroyed by psychological and physical influence, his whole worldview was changed.
At first, the "object" was isolated from the familiar environment and alternative sources of information, so that the former attitudes and beliefs would not be reinforced from the outside. Then came the turn of vital needs: a person was deprived of food, sleep, basic amenities.
Very soon, he became weak-willed and helpless: if basic needs are not satisfied, values and beliefs willy-nilly fade into the background. When the victim was physically and spiritually exhausted and became completely dependent on the "owners", they were inspired by new "truths". For good behavior - a rejection of previous views - they gradually gave out food, allowed to sleep, improved conditions. Gradually, the person accepted the new value system and agreed to cooperate.
When manipulating mass consciousness, physical methods are not used, but the same “three-component” mechanism is used: turn off the rational (reduce critical thinking), cause fear (create a threat), hook on the “hook of a rescuer” (offer a way out).
Turn off the ratio
Usually we perceive the received information quite critically - it is common for a person to instinctively resist the new, not to take anything for granted.
We scrutinize the shoes we're about to buy, sniff the food before we put it in our mouths, be suspicious of the news: "Come on, that doesn't happen." But when zombified, our ratio no longer works, and we are ready to believe in anything. Criticism is “turned off” in our country, and we begin to operate with images and “facts” of artificially created and imposed on us social mythology. As Kozma Prutkov said, “many people are like sausages: what they stuff them with, they carry in themselves.”
It has been proved that it is even easier to fool us as a group than individually. Communicating, we influence each other, become infected with other people's emotions. Panic is especially contagious.
Influencing one person requires special professionalism, and in the masses, infection occurs instantly - it is difficult to "walk right" when everyone around is "walk left."
The crowd effect works even if each of us sits in a separate apartment, but at the same time watches the same TV show.
Cause fear
How do you turn an adult rational person into a trusting child? Threatening his basic needs. The harshest example is the brainwashing of American prisoners in Korean camps or people who have fallen into sects. Paradoxically, the same method is used in advertising. Of course, we are not deprived of food, water or sleep, but we are immersed in an imaginary world of lack of the most necessary things: the more talented the advertisement, the more reliable the images of people exhausted by lack of sleep, sexual frustration, hunger, thirst, the faster we turn into a “frightened child” and obey the power of the one who will deliver us from torment.
The main thing is to make us afraid in any way. Intimidated people will do anything, even if it is not profitable for them. For example, it is enough just to say the spell "international terrorism" - and we no longer protest when we are searched at the airport, forced to take off our shoes and turn out our pockets.
Manipulation of consciousness involves playing on feelings, turning to fears and prejudices, and any of us have them. National stereotypes and myths are played out. Every nation fears or hates something. For example, for Russians behind the word "fascism" - millions of dead, hatred of enemies, something very terrible. And context doesn't matter anymore. We are told: “Here it is, fascism!” - and immediately the door to the subconscious opens, fears come to life, our pain points become actual. This technique works flawlessly on people with a more developed right hemisphere, emotionally receptive.
They hit the target and "dead words". In propaganda, these are “fascists”, “bombing”, “junta”. In advertising - "insomnia", "pain", "thirst". The gypsy woman has a different set: "conspiracy to death", "crown of celibacy", "family curse". It is as if we are being driven into a narrow space where there is no place for argumentation, where labels, infantile phrases are used, where reality is explained by simple formulas.
"Dead Words" is not designed for critical perception. They must trigger a certain emotional reaction: anxiety, a sense of threat.
Don't think that this is possible in one country and not in another. Of course, somewhere people are generally “more mature”, more rational, they are better aware of their rights and obligations, and somewhere they are more infantile, suggestible, living with myths, emotions, with a “childish” consciousness. Our people are more of a "childish" type. Over the years, we and our parents have developed the habit of “walking in formation” and absolutely trusting the media: if they wrote in the newspaper or said on TV, then it is so. In addition, we are a repeatedly “wounded” nation, we have many real fears that have settled in the subconscious: famine, repressions, revolutions, wars. We had to experience a lot of things from which it is difficult to escape, but which are very easy to influence.
Introduce the rescue hook
We have been frightened, deprived of self-control and the ability to think critically.
And now, when we already feel like a victim and are looking for salvation, a “rescuer” appears to us - and we are ready to fulfill any of his orders.
This technique is well developed among the Gypsies. More than once people came to me for psychotherapeutic receptions, from whom the gypsies pulled out all the money. "How so? They didn’t threaten me with a knife or a pistol, ”they were surprised in hindsight. And the focus is simple. First, the gypsy wins over the victim. Then he suddenly “notices” damage, the crown of celibacy, the evil eye and a terrible disease. Anyone will be frightened, and in a state of passion, we are easily suggestible. At this moment, the gypsy turns into a “rescuer”: “It’s easy to help your grief. This is the evil eye of the envious. Gild the pen...” And the victims give them everything voluntarily.
When faced with difficulties, we look for simple answers and strive to remedy the situation with simple actions, including those that are completely unreasonable.
In advertising, “salvation” is also always offered through pseudo-logic, building a false causal relationship between phenomena: drink this coffee - you will become rich, chew this gum - girls will like it, wash it with this powder - and the husband will never leave for another.
Propaganda "works" in the same way. They frighten us with what we are truly afraid of: wars, fascism, the junta, the dead, the wounded.
And against the backdrop of all this nightmare, they show that this is the way of salvation: for example, to create a strong state that will protect, which the rest are afraid of.
Brainwashing techniques
Distraction
How does a gypsy distract attention? First, a meaningless phrase: “Don’t tell me how to get through ...” Then a sharp change in topic, intonation: “Oh, girl, I can see by your face that you will have two coffins in your family!”, “Oh, sufferer, your husband cheats, and you know the lovebird.
Changing the topic throws the victim into confusion, the ability to think is turned off, the subconscious reacts to "dead words".
For propaganda, as for any other kind of manipulation, it is important to suppress the psychological resistance to suggestion. If, at the time of transmission of the message, the attention of the addressee is diverted from its content, then it is difficult to comprehend it and find counterarguments. And counterarguments are the basis of resistance to suggestion.
In what ways are our attention diverted? Information kaleidoscope. TV shows are usually built like this: short stories replace one another, interspersed with announcements, advertisements, frames flash, a line with additional news runs at the bottom. At the same time, important information is diluted with rumors from the life of celebrities, from the world of fashion, etc. In ten minutes of viewing, so many images flash before our eyes that it is impossible to concentrate on anything.
This kaleidoscope of disparate information, which we are not able to comprehend and process, is perceived as a whole. Our attention is scattered, criticality is reduced - and we are open to any "garbage".
Splitting the topic. If information needs to be introduced into consciousness without causing resistance, it is split into parts - then it becomes more difficult to comprehend the whole. It seems that everyone reported - one earlier, the other later, but in such a way that it is difficult to concentrate and understand what really happened.
Sensational and urgent. When we are bombarded with "urgent", "sensational" news, informational noise, passions and nervousness reduce our criticality, and we become more suggestible. Our brain works at high speed, it increasingly turns on the "autopilot", and we begin to think in stereotypes, ready-made formulas. In addition, we are forced to rely on the information offered, there is simply no time to check it - and it is easier for the manipulator to convert us to the "correct" faith.
Focus on the secondary. It is also very easy to distract us from the disturbing social problems. The announcer will talk about the new law, which will lead to a serious decrease in the standard of living, as something of no particular importance. But arguments about a ban on the import of lacy underwear or the story of a giraffe that was fed to lions in a Danish zoo will be washed out by all media.
To divert our attention from reality, from what is really important to us, we need to offer something in return. The media can dictate what we think about by imposing their agenda for discussion. They throw the ball to us, and we recklessly try to grab it and “play”, forgetting about pressing problems.
Illusion of authenticity
The strongest emotional response creates a feeling of authenticity of events.
Presence effect.
The film Apocalypse Now shows how news stories are filmed. "Run without looking back, as if you were at war!" the director demands. And people run, bend down, noise, explosions, everything is as it really is. Of course, there is honest journalism, and reporters often risk their lives, but such tricks are not uncommon, especially when it comes to propaganda.
Eyewitnesses. "Eyewitnesses" in the news are not much different from "eyewitnesses" in advertising. Here is a young woman, stammering, with ostentatious uncertainty, tells how her son, playing football, soiled his T-shirt, and she washed it. In the news, supposedly random people are interviewed, and from their words a semantic and emotional series is formed, which must be introduced into our consciousness. The strongest impression is made by crying old people, children, young invalids.
October 19In the 1990s, the world media spread the news: according to a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, Iraqi soldiers pulled babies out of the maternity hospital and threw them on the cold floor to die - the girl saw it with her own eyes.
The girl's name was withheld for security reasons. During the 40 days before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush repeatedly recalled this story, and the US Senate, when discussing future military action, also referred to this fact.
Later it turned out that the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, and the rest of the "witnesses" were prepared by the Hill & Knowlton PR agency. But when the troops were already brought in, no one cared about the truth.
A similar story on Russian television with a “witness” story about how a boy was crucified, and his mother was tied to a tank and dragged until she died, was made according to the same scheme: there is no documentary filming, the illusion of reliability is based on the words of “eyewitnesses ".
Anonymous authority. His name is not given, the documents cited are not shown - it is assumed that references to authority add credibility.
“Scientists, on the basis of many years of research, have established ...” - which scientists? "Doctors recommend toothpaste ..." - what kind of doctor? "A source from the president's inner circle, who wished to remain anonymous, reports...", etc. Such information is most often pure propaganda or hidden advertising, but the source is unknown and the journalists are not responsible for the lies.
Halo effect. Popular people - actors, athletes, musicians - often become "agents of influence": they convince fans of what they themselves do not really understand. They are skillfully used by politicians and advertisers, because it is known that if a person is an authority for us in one thing, then we are ready to believe him in another.
Substitution
One of the most important methods of brainwashing is the substitution of one fact or phenomenon for another, often with a completely opposite sign.
Create associations. The essence of the reception is to bind a certain object to what the mass consciousness perceives as unequivocally bad or good. One side says: fascists. Other: terrorists. Such metaphors enable associative thinking and save our intellectual efforts. We are being driven into yet another propaganda trap. And so, instead of comprehending the essence of the problem, we cling to these associations, false analogies and metaphors. This is how our brain is arranged: at every opportunity it tries not to do unnecessary work.
In fact, associations and metaphors rarely make things clear. For example, we are told: "Putin is like Peter the Great." We are hinted that we know what the times of Peter and the results of his activities really were. “Ah, well, I understand,” we agree, although in fact we don’t understand anything.
When information is associated with known facts, phenomena, people whom we perceive positively, a positive emotional transfer occurs.
Messages are often reinforced with video. For example, we are told about something, and on the screen - Hitler, the Nazis, the swastika, everything that causes fear and disgust in us. The information itself has nothing to do with German Nazism, but in our minds one has already grappled with the other.
A conditioned reflex connection is also used. Say, one event (a person, a product) is presented as good, another as bad. When they talk about good things, the background is an optimistic, pleasant melody that we all love. If they show “bad”, disturbing music sounds and sad faces flash. Everything: the conditioned reflex circuit is closed.
Sign change. The main purpose of the reception is to call black white and white black, change "plus" to "minus" or vice versa. You can "recolor" any events, call pogroms protest demonstrations, bandits - freedom fighters, mercenaries - volunteers.
Outright falsification.
In order to create the necessary moods in society, the desired is presented as reality. For example, the news reports that "in the opposition camp, confusion and vacillation", "demand for prestigious offices in the center exceeds supply." And since the majority thinks in stereotypes - "since everyone is talking about it, then it is the way it is." In fact, the "facts" are taken from the ceiling.
In elections, we are often guided by sociological ratings: we want to vote for the strong, not for the weak. If the average citizen, who strives to be “like everyone else”, creates the feeling that he is in the minority, he will vote for the one with whom the majority is.
Figures, graphs generally make us believe what we are told: wrinkles disappear by 90%, complexion improves by 30%, the number of people supporting such and such a politician has doubled.
Strengthening
Typical signs of a person's behavior in a crowd are the predominance of situational feelings, loss of responsibility and the ability to think independently, increased suggestibility, easy controllability, etc.
All this can be enhanced in many ways: lighting, music, posters. At show programs, mass political events, election concerts, where pop stars shout something like “Vote or lose!”, we become infected with a certain mood - and it is already possible to introduce the necessary information into us.
Repetition
If we repeat the same thought in simple phrases, we get used to it and begin to consider it our own. What we remember always seems convincing to us, even if the memorization occurred during the mechanical repetition of a commercial or an annoying song. Before the April 1993 referendum, all you could hear on radio and TV was: “Yes, yes, no, yes.” Came to vote. How to answer? Yes, yes, no, yes. Everything, no questions. And today, many will remember this “slogan”, but few will say for what or against what these “Yes, yes, no, yes” were.
Why do such “miracles” happen? Repetition effectively affects the poorly controlled subconscious and leads to the unconscious assimilation of other people's formulations, thoughts, ideas and views.
Goebbels, the famous brainwashing virtuoso, said: “The masses name the true information that is most familiar. Ordinary people are usually much more primitive than we imagine ... The most outstanding results ... will be achieved by those who are able to reduce problems to the simplest words and expressions and who have the courage to constantly repeat them in this simplified form, despite the objections of highbrow intellectuals.
In the 1980s, political psychologists Donald Kinder and Shanto Iyengar conducted an experiment. They edited the evening news in such a way as to focus the attention of viewers on one problem, and the rest went in the background: for example, the first group of subjects was told about the weakness of American defense every day, the second was frightened by bad ecology, the third - by growing inflation. As a result, a week later, most of the participants in the experiment were convinced that the problem that was emphasized in “their” news should be addressed by the country in the first place, and they evaluated the current US president by how he copes with it.
It turns out that the manipulator does not have to fight with the enemy's ideas, it is enough to tirelessly repeat the necessary formulations.
What to do?
First, let's understand what happens to us when we fall under the scope of skilled manipulators. We become uncritical, we think with imposed stereotypes, we are content with simple answers to complex life questions, we believe only in our own truth, we are intolerant of other people's opinions. There is social polarization in society, even the most sensible, reasonable and objective people begin to think bipolar.
We no longer have time to think, we must quickly decide, urgently take a position.
Each side hears only itself and resents what the opponent says. We seem to close ourselves in an information cocoon and happily catch only “our” information. We stop thinking for ourselves: we start speaking in clichés, repeating remarks from newspapers, television and radio programs.
Stamping simple views, simple oppositions destroys the complex reality of life and, in general, the meaning. The result is a split into two warring camps. Meanwhile, the polar truths feed each other, forming a single whole, a kind of symbiosis, because they cannot exist without each other. Bipolar simplification leads to aggression.
In order not to be manipulated, the main thing is to become an adult. What does it mean? To regain the ability to analyze information, to maintain an unclouded consciousness with a high level of criticality, to abandon simple recipes, because there are many other shades besides black and white. The more difficult a person perceives reality, the less aggression in him.
And, of course, do not be offended by the government, propaganda or advertising. All over the world, rulers and intellectuals are two poles. Power, the state strives for uniformity, the task of the state is to simplify everything, because it is difficult, as Mitterrand said, to manage a nation that knows 300 varieties of cheese.
And the intellectual reproduces complexity, his task is not to be afraid of diversity, otherness, to be able to be in the minority and live in conditions of uncertainty, when it is not clear who is “good” and who is “bad”.
In order not to lose ourselves in our time, to maintain normal relationships with friends and relatives, we need to develop psychological immunity that will protect our personal space and help resist brainwashing.
How to keep a clear head when we are brainwashed
Personal qualities and skills Melia Marina Paolo Chiabrando / Unsplash There is no person in the world who has not at least once been a victim of manipulation. No matter how smart and educated we consider ourselves, everyone will remember how more than once, not two, or even ten, he succumbed to the persuasion of a fraudster, for example, in the guise of a gypsy or a psychic, advertising, political propaganda.
And it's good if you can just forget an unpleasant episode, but sometimes it affects our lives quite seriously.
Let me give you an example. Two friends who once studied together at a prestigious Moscow university, then worked in the same company, were family friends, modern people, moreover, IT people, with a mathematical mindset, skeptical, ironic, suddenly became enemies overnight. Almost any conversation now ended in mutual attacks, insults, screams. Eventually they stopped talking altogether. And it all started with the fact that one half a year I worked in the Kiev branch of the company, watched TV and listened to the radio there, and the other stayed in Moscow and received information from Russian sources. When they met, each was convinced that the other had been brainwashed. And they were both right.
This is just one example, but today the front line is in offices, on social networks, in families. Hostility, aggression swept society. This worries me very much, both as a practicing psychologist and as a citizen.
In order to keep a clear head, to prevent discord in relations with loved ones, not to start massively “destroying” friends in social networks, it is important not to succumb to the glamor of suggested “knowledge”. And for this, let's try to figure out how the brainwashing mechanism works.
Brainwashing: how it works
The term brainwashing was first used in a sensational 1950 Miami News article by journalist (and CIA propaganda officer) Edward Hunter. He literally translated into English the Chinese expression "si-nao" - "brainwash": this is how they spoke of the methods of forced persuasion that the Chinese, brought up in the pre-revolutionary era, eradicated the "feudal" way of thinking.
Later, it was described in detail how during the Korean War (1951-1953), which was fought between two Koreas - South (among its allies were the United States) and North (the Chinese army fought on its side), the Chinese Communists in their prisoner of war camps achieved profound behavioral changes in American soldiers, how psychological and physical influence destroyed the individuality of a person, his whole worldview was changed.
When manipulating mass consciousness, physical methods are not used, but the same psychological “three-part” mechanism is used: turn off the ratio (reduce critical thinking), cause fear (create a threat), hook a person on the hook of a rescuer (offer a way out).
Turn off the ratio
Usually a person perceives the received information quite critically. People instinctively resist the new, do not take anything for granted. We scrutinize the shoes we're about to buy, sniff the food before we put it in our mouths, be suspicious of the news: "Come on, that doesn't happen." But when zombified, our ratio no longer works, and we are ready to believe in anything. Why? Our realistic adult is being turned into a frightened child. Criticism and all other means of psychological protection of the individual are “turned off” in our country. And we begin to operate with images and "facts" of artificially created and imposed on us social mythology. As Kozma Prutkov said, “many people are like sausages: what they stuff them with, they carry in themselves.
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Cause fear
How do you turn an adult rational person into a trusting child? Threatening his basic needs. The harshest example is the brainwashing of American prisoners in Korean camps or people who have fallen into sects. At first, a person is isolated from the familiar environment and alternative sources of information so that the old attitudes and beliefs are not reinforced from the outside and the victim becomes completely dependent on the new owners.
Next comes the turn of vital human needs: they are deprived of food, sleep, basic amenities. Quite quickly, he becomes weak-willed and helpless: if basic needs are not satisfied, values and beliefs fade into the background. When the "object" is completely, physically and spiritually, exhausted, the owners begin to inspire him with new "truths". For good behavior - a rejection of previous views - little by little food is given out, they are allowed to sleep, and conditions are improved. Gradually, a person accepts a new value system and agrees to cooperate.
Paradoxically, the same method is used in advertising. Of course, we are not deprived of food, water or sleep, but we are immersed in an imaginary world of hunger, thirst, lack of the most necessary - the more talented advertising, the more reliable the images of people exhausted by lack of sleep, sexual dissatisfaction, hunger, thirst, the faster we turn into a "frightened child” and submit to the power of someone who will put us out of our misery with, for example, potato chips, new-flavored chewing gum, soda water.
The main thing is to make us afraid in any way. Anything: insomnia, hunger, fascism, threats to children. This fear is absolutely irrational, but intimidated people will do anything, even that which is not profitable for them. For example, it is enough just to say the spell "international terrorism" - and we no longer protest when we are searched at the airport, forced to take off our shoes and turn out our pockets.
Manipulation of consciousness involves playing on feelings, appealing to the subconscious, fears and prejudices, and any of us have them.
National stereotypes and myths are played out. Every nation has something that you can put pressure on, something to hook on. Every nation is afraid of something. Russians, for example, are fascists. Behind this word are millions of dead, hatred for the enemies who “burned down my native hut, ruined my entire family”, something very terrible. And the context doesn't matter anymore. This key opens the door to the subconscious, actualizes fears, puts pressure on our pain points. This technique especially affects people with a more developed right hemisphere: these are the majority of women, poorly educated men, and children.
They hit the target and "dead words", different depending on the case. In propaganda, these are “fascists”, “bombing”, “junta”. In advertising - "insomnia", "pain", "thirst". The gypsy woman has a different set: "conspiracy to death", "crown of celibacy", "family curse". It is as if a person is driven into a narrowed space, in which there is no place for argumentation, where labels, infantile phrases are used, where reality is explained by simple "childish" formulas.
"Dead Words" is not designed for critical perception. They must trigger a certain emotional reaction: fear, a sense of threat.
Don't think that this is possible in one country and not in another. Of course, somewhere people are generally “more mature”, more rational, better aware of their rights. And somewhere more infantile, inspired, living with myths, emotions, with a more "childish" consciousness. Our people are more of a "childish" type. In addition, we are a repeatedly “wounded” nation, we have many real fears: famine, repressions, revolutions, wars. Our people have had to experience a lot of things from which it is difficult to escape, but which is very easy to influence.
Insert rescue hook
The person was frightened, deprived of self-control and the ability to think critically. And now, when he already feels like a victim and seeks salvation, a “rescuer” appears to him. And the man is ready to carry out his any orders.
This technique is well developed among the Gypsies.
Their victims give them everything voluntarily. When I conducted psychotherapeutic methods, people came to me more than once, from whom the gypsies pulled out all the money. "How so? They didn’t threaten me with a knife or a gun, ”reasonable people were surprised in hindsight. The focus is simple. First, the gypsy wins over the victim. Then he suddenly “notices” “damage”, “the crown of celibacy”, “the evil eye and a terrible disease”. Anyone will be frightened, and in a state of passion, we are easily suggestible. At this moment, the gypsy transforms into a “rescuer”: “It is not difficult to help your grief. This is the evil eye of the envious. Gold the handle." And then she can do whatever she wants with a person.
When faced with difficulties, we look for simple answers and seek to remedy the situation with simple actions, including those that are completely unreasonable. In advertising, “salvation” is also always offered through pseudo-logic, building a causal relationship between phenomena that have nothing in common: if you drink this coffee, you will become rich, if you chew this gum, girls will like you, you will wash with this powder, and your husband will never will go to another.
Propaganda "works" the same way. They frighten us with what we are truly afraid of: wars, fascism, the junta, the dead, the wounded. And against the backdrop of all this nightmare, they show - this is the way of salvation: for example, to create a strong state that will protect, which everyone else is afraid of.
It is easier to fool people in a mass than individually. People, communicating, influence each other, infect one another with their emotions. Panic is especially contagious. In 1897, at the annual meeting of the Imperial Military Medical Academy, V.M. Bekhterev in his speech “The Role of Suggestion in Public Life” said: “At present, there is so much talk about physical infection ... that, in my opinion, it is not superfluous to recall ... mental infection, the microbes of which, although not visible under a microscope, but ... like real physical microbes, they act everywhere and everywhere and are transmitted through the words and gestures of those around us, through books, newspapers, etc.
, in a word - wherever we are ... we ... are in danger of being mentally infected.
That is why the impact on one person requires special professionalism, and in the masses the infection occurs instantly - it is difficult to resist when everyone around behaves in a certain way. The crowd effect works even if everyone is sitting in front of their own separate TV.
Basic brainwashing techniques
I always remembered Bulgakov's professor Preobrazhensky's advice: "Don't read Soviet newspapers before dinner" - and followed it, primarily in relation to our TV. But I had to take a fair dose of the "poison" of today's media in order to understand the methods and techniques that are used to shape public opinion. All these techniques are based on the laws of the functioning of the human psyche. I tried to analyze and systematize them so that they become easily recognizable. Of course, everyone will be able to supplement my list with their own observations.
I hope all this will help to build your own protective barrier and save yourself.
Distraction
How does a gypsy distract attention? First, a meaningless phrase: "You can ask how to get through ...". Then - a sharp change in topic, intonation: “Oh, girl, I can see by your face that you will have two coffins in your family!”, “Oh, sufferer, your husband is cheating on you, and you know the homeowner.” Changing the topic plunges the victim into confusion, the ability to think is turned off, the subconscious reacts to "dead words". A person is paralyzed by sticky fear, his heart is pounding, his legs give way.
For propaganda, as for any other type of manipulation, it is important to suppress a person's psychological resistance to suggestion. If, at the time of transmission of the message, the attention of the addressee is diverted from its content, then it is difficult to comprehend it and find counterarguments. And counterarguments are the basis of resistance to suggestion.
In what way is our attention diverted?
Information kaleidoscope. How is the TV show usually structured? Short stories follow one another, interspersed with announcements, advertisements, frames flash by, a line with additional news runs at the bottom. At the same time, important information is diluted with rumors from the life of celebrities, from the world of fashion, etc. In ten minutes of watching TV, so many images flash before our eyes that it is impossible to concentrate on anything. This kaleidoscope of disparate information, which a person is not able to comprehend and process, is perceived as a whole. Our attention is scattered, criticality is reduced - and we are open to any "garbage".
Splitting the topic. If information needs to be introduced into consciousness without causing resistance, it is crushed into parts - then it is not easy to comprehend the whole. It seems that everyone reported - something earlier, something later, but in such a way that it is difficult to concentrate and understand what was actually said and what happened.
Sensational and urgent. Often in news programs they impose on us: “Sensation!”, “Urgent!”, “Exclusive!”. The urgency of the message is usually false, far-fetched, but the goal is achieved - attention is diverted. Although the sensation itself is not worth a damn: an elephant gave birth in a zoo, a scandal in the family of a politician, Angelina Jolie had an operation. Such “sensations” are a reason to keep silent about important things that the public does not need to know about.
Information flashes, we are bombarded with "urgent" and "sensational" news - informational noise and high intensity of nervousness reduce our ability to criticize and make us more suggestible.
When our brain works at a high speed, it increasingly turns on the "autopilot" and we begin to think in stereotypes, ready-made formulas. In addition, we are forced to rely on the information offered, there is simply no time to check it - and it is easy for the manipulator to convert us to the "correct" faith.
Focus on the secondary. It is also very easy to distract us from pressing social problems. The announcer will talk about a law that seriously worsens the life of the majority as something of no particular importance.
It's like reporting the news in a small-circulation newspaper, and even printing it in small print. But the arguments about the ban on the import of lace underwear, the story of the giraffe will be washed by all the media. And now we are worried.
To take our attention away from reality, we need to create a replacement for it. The media can dictate what we think about by imposing their own agenda for discussion. They throw a ball at us, and we recklessly try to grab it and “play”, forgetting about pressing problems.
The illusion of authenticity
The strongest emotional response creates a feeling of authenticity of events. We seem to fall into this strange reality, not suspecting that this may be a cheap reception, staging, editing.
