{"id":67377,"date":"2016-09-23T16:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T23:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=67377"},"modified":"2016-10-07T14:55:27","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T21:55:27","slug":"as-seen-on-tv-the-science-of-brainwashing-big-and-small","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=67377","title":{"rendered":"As Seen On TV:
The Science Of Brainwashing, Big And Small"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This article originally appeared on May 21, 2015 in the \u201cUnder the Hood\u201d section of the <\/em>Medical Daily<\/em><\/a> website, and is reprinted with permission.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Twenty-three years before terrorists sent two commercial airplanes ripping through the 77th\u00a0and 93rd\u00a0floors of the World Trade Center, 909 Americans were swallowing a mixture of Valium, cyanide, and grape Kool-Aid on the northwestern tip of Guyana in what was, at the time, the largest single loss of American life. To this day the Jonestown Massacre swirls with controversy. Was it a suicide, or should it rightfully be called murder?<\/p>\n

The question matters. When Reverend Jim Jones launched Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, roughly two decades prior to the devastation, he had visions of a flourishing socialist new religious movement. But in making a home in Jonestown, the 1,000 or so inhabitants quickly fell into what many now call a cult, and the incident still has scientists and historians studying its catastrophic complexities.<\/p>\n

Within weeks of settlement, Jones began indoctrinating his members. People worked for eight hours a day and afterward they studied for eight more. Often, this included heated, heavily vetted lessons from Jones on Marxist and Maoist propaganda, including books and film screenings. He broadcasted anti-American news reports over the Jonestown tower speakers throughout the day, forced non-compliers to suffer through beatings and time spent in a slim plywood box called a \u201ctorture hole,\u201d and, several months into settlement, was regularly referred to as \u201cDad\u201d by both the settlement\u2019s children and other adults. According to surviving journal entries<\/a>, he routinely performed miracles.<\/p>\n

But as the few Temple defectors in the U.S. gained ground in their fight to dismantle Jonestown, pressure mounted. Despite calling the U.S. intelligence operation a \u201cgrand conspiracy,\u201d Jones, now in declining health, quickly and fearfully informed his residents the end was near. He gave them the option to flee to the Soviet Union, escape into the Guyanese jungle, or commit \u201crevolutionary suicide.\u201d The group decided on suicide.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s how crewmen found the bodies, limp and together. The group\u2019s leader lay next to two other bodies, his head resting on a pillow, a gunshot wound pouring from his temple. On Nov. 18, 1978, he, like the others, had finally stepped over.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Brainwashing Is<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Jonestown Massacre is a famous example of brainwashing in psychology circles because it seems to capture the power of thought control in its most extreme, well-executed form. It offers psychologists a window into the human mind that, for obvious ethical reasons, can\u2019t be recreated in a lab. For Kathleen Taylor, University of Oxford psychologist and author of Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control<\/em>, Jonestown offers startling insights into how easily our brains can change, and how those changes actually happen on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I think\u2019s going on,\u201d Taylor said, \u201cis that people are using techniques of social psychology that we use all the time, but they are applied in very extreme circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

These techniques are so commonplace they might be invisible. Advertisements and salespeople like to distract customers so they stay focused on the message, repeating certain phrases over and over, and, perhaps the most compelling, filling customers with doubt about their past choices. The principles hold whether the product is dish soap or religious fundamentalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople tend not to think about things they believe in very much,\u201d Taylor said. By exploiting that lack of analysis, someone interested in reshaping a belief could instill so much self-doubt in a person that eventually the new idea seems plausible, and even true. People\u2019s uncertainty is seized, recast as new beliefs, and behavior follows.<\/p>\n

Brainwashing sits at the far end of this manipulative spectrum, Taylor argues, but it relies on the same principles. Its aim is ultimately to control what information enters the brain, where the one doing the brainwashing can delete old associations and, indeed, form brand new neural pathways that cement new ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the brain is so malleable, [the information] reshapes what\u2019s going on inside the brain, thereby affecting what behavior comes out the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

That change in behavior seems to come in two distinct forms. The first is brainwashing by force, the kind popularized by prison camps, in which people are tortured and starved and practically destroyed until the \u201cnew\u201d reality replaces the old one. The person doing the brainwashing has complete control of the person\u2019s psyche, stripping the victim of what he or she thought she knew and offering redemption through a new, seemingly better, alternative.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut obviously advertisers can\u2019t do that,\u201d Taylor said, \u201cso what they do instead is use, what I call, brainwashing by stealth.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this case, coercing involves changing the emotional associations people make without them noticing a change is taking place. It doesn\u2019t have to be as sinister as subliminal messaging. For decades, advertisers have known that customers respond to emotional connections on an unconscious level. And that unawareness is important, Taylor says, because of a psychological phenomenon known as \u201creactance,\u201d which states when people know they\u2019re being emotionally manipulated, it tends not to work. So advertisers have a vested interest in being as discreet as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not really concentrating on it,\u201d Taylor said, \u201cbut you\u2019re left with the impression that there is a positive emotion associated with this particular thing they want you to buy.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Finding The Line<\/strong><\/p>\n

Consumption isn\u2019t the only motivation that compels people to be psychologically coercive. Sometimes it\u2019s spite. Dr. William Bernet, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, has seen firsthand the true range of parents\u2019 destruction when divorce leaves children caught in the middle of an ugly war for the upper hand. Confused and scared about who to trust, and sometimes plagued with fears of physical abuse, kids reject one parent in favor of the alienating one, exhibiting what psychologists call parental alienation syndrome (PAS).<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say that PAS is caused by brainwashing or indoctrination of the child,\u201d said Bernet.<\/p>\n

Wracked with resentment, the alienating parent tells the child how awful the other parent is, openly insulting them, forbidding the parent from visiting, and sometimes lying about cases of abuse, just so they can get full custody of the child. In children, the resulting effect is a warped view of the other parent, one that can last well into adulthood if contact is never reestablished.<\/p>\n

PAS can combine both forms of brainwashing Taylor mentions, which makes it decidedly harder to pinpoint when alienation takes place, and therefore harder to measure when a child exhibits signs of the syndrome. What\u2019s more, the line between emotional parenting and criminal activity is whisper-thin, and judges can\u2019t monitor parents\u2019 activity round-the-clock. The best evidence psychologists can use to prove a child\u2019s PAS is his or her testimony, which is<\/em> reliable, but first they have the difficult task of noticing a problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This article originally appeared on May 21, 2015 in the \u201cUnder the Hood\u201d section of the Medical Daily website, and is reprinted with permission.) Twenty-three years before terrorists sent two commercial airplanes ripping through the 77th\u00a0and 93rd\u00a0floors of the World Trade Center, 909 Americans were swallowing a mixture of Valium, cyanide, and grape Kool-Aid on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":67462,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-67377","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67377"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67380,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67377\/revisions\/67380"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}