Can we radically alter the beliefs and morality of a mentally healthy person against their conscious predisposition?

Probably one of the most interesting and freighting phenomena related to persuasion and influence studies is the myth of brainwashing. YES, I call it a myth, but as a matter of semantics, I do not regard the term, myth, as meaning something that is false or untrue, rather, I consider myth to be a quality of belief. That said, in order to begin to ponder the reality of the myth we must first define what it means to be brainwashed. Political propaganda, advertising, religious conversion, terrorism, and cult devotion, have all been called and considered by some, forms of brainwashing. For the purposes of this article, I am interested in the most radical concepts of persuasion, the idea that we can take an ordinary healthy individual and force them, against their will, to adopt an attitude and ideology (of our design) that is against their basic preconditioned morality, sense of self, and world view. The question is simple—can we create our own Manchurian candidate?

A little background first

The term, brainwashing, was first used to describe the successful communist indoctrination of American GIs in Chinese POW camps during the Korean War. These American communist converts caused a sensation for the American public and created an intrigue for researchers in what becomes the beginning of a legend. However, according to psychiatrist Edgar Schein, an early researcher of POW repatriation, the real purpose of Chinese brainwashing methodology wasn’t to convert prisoners but to manage them. This was apparently very effective as the POWs policed themselves, readily divulging information about the dissent and escape plans of their fellow soldiers (Robert Cialdini offers a theoretical analysis of POW complacency in his book, Influence: Science and Persuasion).1 Of course, any prospect for mind control is going to interest the government, both as a cause of concern and for its potential utility.

Project MK-ULTRA (MKULTRA) was the code name for a CIA research project in mind control, interrogation, and potentially for broader psychological warfare. MKULTRA began operations during the 1950s, though operational predecessors existed since at least 1947 with Project CHATTER (testing of mind-altering drugs for interrogation and behavior modification) as an example. An interesting legacy of project MKULTRA is that the program instigated the clandestine dosing of LSD (the seeds of another discussion) on unsuspecting non-consenting American citizens.

Meanwhile, a marketing researcher named James Vicary releases a study (1957), which demonstrates that subliminal messages promoting Coca-Cola and popcorn increased sales in movie theatres. This landmark study captured the public’s imagination, inspired CIA attention, and caused concern for public officials, which ultimately resulted in subliminal messages being banned from broadcast media. Notwithstanding, Vicary later admitted that his study had been fabricated and the results were falsified (apparently a publicity ploy) — but public belief now captured, remained unfettered. The idea that thought can be scientifically controlled is blooming at a time of technological revolution— popular media is still in its youth and sweeping American culture with sensation and authority (if it’s on the air it must be true). Culture reaffirmed its belief in mind-control with such cult hit books and films as 1984 and The Manchurian Candidate. Meanwhile, popular belief continues, hypnosis and subliminal self help tapes continue to be popular, advertising and pop culture continue to produce legends and the scientific debate marginally continues.

Beyond popular culture

Brainwashing as we know it is a popular culture phenomena but the desire to impart exacting control over our fellow human being is ages old. If we consider brainwashing to be a narrative unit of human culture then we might classify brainwashing with the Haitian zombie and the Hebrew golem. The creators of the zombie and golem are both practitioners of dark magic, and what could be darker and more magical than controlling another’s thoughts? The brainwasher succeeds the cultural narrative of witchcraft and sorcery. Belief that certain individuals can control supernatural forces over the will of their fellow human beings is widespread and universal. It is reasonable to assume that society readily accepted the brainwashing myth as an adaption to an ages old cultural narrative and or that it is a neurological predisposition to believe that others can control us—after all, status and dominance are both seemingly universal behaviors of the human species. The fantasy of mind-control then seems natural, but is it plausible?

The scientific dilemma

The scientific problem of brainwashing is that we can neither prove nor falsify an absolute hypothesis of the phenomena because of legal and ethical concerns. If we claim that a phenomena exists we must also demonstrate it with certain rigor in way the others can replicate as a condition to calling it scientifically proven. The very notion of radically changing somebody’s personality and ideology is akin to a partial murder because the act of brainwashing is essentially breaking down and destroying the existing personality. The very essence of brainwashing is to make the subject believe and adopt attitudes, which are against their premeditated will. Ethical considerations aside, the theories and ideas regarding the process of brainwashing would put our hypothetical test subject under considerable physical and mental risks. In essence, the way to confirm that brainwashing actually exists is to replicate the phenomena by actually brainwashing test subjects and we simply cannot do that.

Proposed ways to brainwash somebody

William Sargant suggests in his book, Battle for the Mind, that brainwashing is a physiological process that requires the mind to be overwhelmed and over stimulated to the point that it breaks down. Methods for overwhelming the mind include sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, various drugs, and dramatizations and once the mind is no longer able to tolerate such a physical hardship it begins to restructure itself in an attempt to survive the circumstances. Sargant’s inspiration derived from the work of Ivan Pavlov who studied how experiences conditioned the behavior of dogs. Sargant recognized behavioral restructuring similarities between accounts of Pavlov’s traumatized dogs and shell shock victims and concluded that radical attitude change must be biologically based.²

If we are going to brainwash a person from Sargant’s perspective then we have to subject our victim to considerable stress and this stress must have such an impact that the mind can no longer accept its reality. Pavlov had identified four stages of conversion, applied by Sargant, these being the equivalent phase, paradoxical phase, ultra-paradoxical phase, and transmarginal inhibition. With each phase of stress, the mind becomes increasingly susceptible to radical and lasting change. During the equivalent phase, the subject treats major and minor stimuli equally. The paradoxical phase begins when the subject responds stronger to weak stimuli than to strong stimuli (as seen with some posttraumatic stress disorders). In the ultra-paradoxical phase, attitudes are inverted and the subject may like what they once hated and dislike what they once loved. Transmarginal inhibition is recognized by the complete collapse of identity—the subject is no longer able to function as core behaviors and attitudes are lost and forgotten. It is during a transmarginal collapse that an individual’s core attitudes and behaviors can be radically and systematically restructured.²

Psychologists Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson proposed in their book, Age of Propaganda, seven persuasive principals used by cult leaders in a chapter called how to be a cult leader. Principal number one, create your one social reality, which necessarily means isolate the subject, control information, and introduce an alternate ideology. Principal number two is to create a granfallon, which is what authors use to describe strong in-group identity and bias. Principal number three is to create commitment through a rationalization trap (escalating commitment through circular argument). Principal number four is to establish the leader’s credibility and attractiveness. Principal number five is to send members out to proselytize the unredeemed and to fund-raise for the cult (escalates and reinforces self-commitment). Rule six is to distract members from thinking undesirable thoughts. Finally, rule number seven is to fixate members’ vision on a phantom (a common enemy unites the group and the dissonance of the non-believer intensifies the cultist’s beliefs).³

Psychologists Margaret Singer offers six principals for cult conversion in her book, Cults in our Midst. Rule number one is to keep the person unaware of intentions to change him or her. Rule number two is to control the subject’s time and environment. Rule number three is to create a sense of powerlessness (make them dependant). Rule number four is to suppress old behaviors and establish new behaviors with positive and negative reinforcement. Rule five is to establish the new ideology. Rule six is to establish authority, hierarchy, and a closed system of logic. As with Pratkanis and Aronson, Singer emphasizes a systematic approach that isolates the individual, establishes the leader’s absolute dominance, and skillfully reinforcing positive and negative behaviors with cascading commitment.⁴

The Controversy

In 1983, the American Psychological Association (APA) created the Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control (TFDITPl), which was chaired by Margaret Singer. In 1987, the APA rejected the findings of the TFDITPl, claiming they were biased in favor of accepting the brainwashing phenomena and lacked scientific rigor. Prior to concluding the TFDITPI, the APA had issued a memorandum to the California Supreme Court claiming that Singer’s (evidently serving as an expert to the court) hypothesis “were uninformed speculations based on skewed data.” While the APA later revoked its memorandum, those scholars who had signed it did not; among them was David Bromley, a sociologist and critic of brainwashing theories. Some of the other scholars who had signed the memorandum also opposed brainwashing theories, had alternate theories, or viewed brainwashing theory as a threat to religious freedom. Singer tried to sue the APA and the American Sociological Association for defamation but was unsuccessful.

The Taboo

I already mentioned the ethical (and therefore scientific) dilemma of proving the brainwashing phenomena. Cult conversion is often questioned on grounds that the subject must have had a certain predisposition for mental illness or instability. Another criticism of brainwashing theory is the notion that the participant is wholly willing. In this case, brainwashing is a more comfortable prospect to family and friends who oppose the conversion. There is also the idea that mind-control feels something like magic and black magic at that—can scientists accept that? If scientist can’t establish statistical significance for brainwashing merely because basic human decency doesn’t permit them to replicate the phenomena then it certainly doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. The idea that there are greater forces acting on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is taboo, a threat to human supremacy, which is freewill—some might see it as a toss back to a belief in witchcraft, demonic possession, and superstition—an ideological correction against freedom and accountability.

Singer’s theory on brainwashing seems to be an attempt to describe a narrow classification of mind-control methods on a broad phenomenon. Nevertheless, I can’t help but believe that Singer’s position became unpopular with certain scholars when the APA considered an official stance on the matter because others had competing views and therefore it became politically pertinent for them to become advocates and act in coalition. As demonstrated, mind control is simply taboo, especially when ethics and law prohibit one from proving the brainwashing hypothesis.

Also worth remembering is that journalist Edward Hunter popularized the term to describe the communist conversion of American POWs. Ironically, Hunter turned out to have an intelligence background. Needless to say that there is fair amount of speculation that the CIA promoted the idea of brainwashing to alleviate the embarrassment of Americans converting to communist ideologies and to incite fear—another example of how brainwashing becomes the contemporary witchcraft in a contemporary witch-hunt. The relevance of this is that culture, myth, and mythic thinking are not always appreciated in the scientific community as myth is often mistakenly interpreted as the polar opposite of science’s enlightened reason, which the virtuous scientist must automatically oppose. I propose that skeptics may in fact be obsessed with the myth merely because of its symbolic or popular connotations and their bias towards such than for empirically sound reasons.

Circumstantial Evidence

The reality is that so very few POWs converted to communism that it is statistically insignificant. What is interesting about the Chinese POW camps is that they inspired a large degree of cooperation and enemy collaboration.¹ Prisoners regularly informed on their fellow soldiers and this information was often publically broadcasted to the whole camp with enemy accolades and prisoner acceptance.  It appears that enemy collaboration became the norm in Chinese POW camps. However, these behaviors were not lasting and most POWs returned with little empathy for their captors. The ant-loyal behaviors exhibited by POWs of Chinese communist camps are remarkable but they appear to be survival adaptations rather than ideological brainwashing. The Chinese merely reinforced the belief that cooperation was better for everybody and the prisoners concurred.

On the other end of the radical belief spectrum, cult suicide presents an intriguing case study that we cannot take lightly. Let us not forget the nine hundred members of Jones Town who voluntarily took their own lives as well as the lives of their children. The question that begs is how dependent is cult belief on continuous social reinforcement?  Had individual members been isolated from the group would their convictions remain? Nevertheless, the willingness to take one’s own life is significant, regardless. In most cases, members of suicide cults are severely isolated and dependent on the cult—the outside world has seemingly disappeared to them and therefore they are conditioned to the singular worldview of the cult. Can we call it free will if you are encouraged by an imposing authority to systematically give up your past to the point that you feel you can no longer go back?

Our contention however, is whether we can take a mentally competent individual and turn them against their long-standing beliefs and values. Unfortunately, the most famous research on this topic is project MKULTRA. Most of the files related to project MKULTRA were destroyed and therefore we can never know the full extent of the projects experiments or findings. However, I believe there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that brainwashing is possible. The evidence I propose is not the case studies of POWs, cults, or alleged brainwashing but the countless experiments of social psychology that demonstrate our behavior is predictably innate and responsive rather than rational.

There are famous experiments such as those performed by Milgram, Asch, Tajfel, Sherif and Zimbardo that demonstrate that our behavior is much more innately conditioned and situationally predictable than we rationally believe. The Asch conformity experiment, for example, demonstrates the amazing urge we have to conform to groups. In this experiment, participants are shown a card with three lines drawn on it, under each line is a letter, one line is noticeably longer, and the subjects are asked to call out the letter of the longest line. All but one participant are collaborators who have agreed to call out the wrong letter. In most cases, the individual confers with the group and names the wrong answer though they might initially hesitate. However, the Asch experiment is only one example of countless experiments that demonstrate that behavior is innately conditioned.

While Asch demonstrated that we have a natural inclination to conform to group behavior Milgram demonstrated the power of authority. In this experiment, participants deliver electric shocks (fake) to an unwilling subject (an actor) at the repeated demands of authority (a doctor) and successively increase the voltage at his demands. Participants are told that the experiment is designed to study motivation in learning though it is really meant to gauge the participants’ response and willingness to comply with authority. The actor must solve a problem, and when the actor fails to give the correct solution, the participant must shock him, increasing the voltage with each successive failure. As the voltage increases, the actor demonstrates pain and the participant looks to the doctor but the doctor insists that the experiment continue. Most subjects continue to oblige the request of the “doctor” and deliver shocks to an unwillingly subject even though he is now screaming in pain and warning of heart problems. Many of these participants showed reluctance and questioned the doctor but at his absolute demands, they oblige.

The Milgram and Asch experiments are just famous examples of the countless experiments in social psychology that reveal the innate nature of our behavior. Most of us probably believe that our actions are based on thoughtful reasoning though experiments in social psychology consistently demonstrate that our actions are motivated on instinct. We now know many of the innate behavioral predispositions that situations and interactions arouse. The experiments and findings of social psychology, in their sum, constitute significant evidence that situations and social environments influence a person’s behavior in predictable ways. Furthermore, the experiments in and of themselves demonstrate that a social environment can be manipulated to the purpose of influencing a person’s behavior. Finally, in many cases, the experiments of social psychology are counter intuitive and dramatic in their results thus suggesting that behavior can be manipulated in dramatic ways.

An alternate theory

We set out not to discover whether brainwashing exists but whether it is possible. I posit that we could take an average person captive and radically change their beliefs and attitudes as well force them to commit atrocities that are against their prior values. This proposition is not based on the case of cults, POWs, interrogations, and such but on the revelation that social and situational reactions are innate, predictable, and therefore exploitable.

I would suggest that controlled behavior is either conforming or committing and that much of what is exhibited in groups is a conforming behavior. The critical threshold to brainwashing a person would be the transformation of conformance into commitment.⁵ However, conformance can lead to commitment especially when the actions of conformance can no longer be reconciled with a person’s beliefs and values—this is to say that the threshold is a point of no return—the victim accepts their alternate reality based on their own irreconcilable actions or else becomes wholly dysfunctional.⁶ If you are forced to commit murder, will you be the same person that you were before the crime—are you more likely commit murder again?

Further, I would propose that there are many routes to acquiring conformance. Creating an environment of uncertainty will make alternate social and ideological structures easier to accept, even desirous.⁷ I would suggest that disorientation assist the process of commitment, and to these ends psychedelic drugs, sleep deprivation, and extreme stress have significant potential. Combined physiological and psychological stress weakens one’s rational functionality and therefore lowers ability to resists. I believe such states have the ability to challenge ones sense of self and may make one susceptible to false memories or guilt.⁸ Such actions should then facilitate actual and escalating commitments that are against the subject’s initial ideology and reinforce implanted beliefs.  

Finally, I would also suggest that the brainwasher introduce confederates to the victim who appear to be in the same situation as he.⁹ The confederates will provide a behavioral reference for the victim to follow. In the beginning, the confederates will appear to resists the imposed ideology as does the victim and this will encourage the establishment of a group identity. The idea is that the confederates will slowly conform to the desired behaviors and the victim will follow suit. However, the critical phase remains that the victim actually commit to actions that simply cannot be reconciled with his prior identity. Once the critical threshold is past, the victim is compelled to accept the ideology that he once opposed because it now comforts him and justifies his actions.

Having proposed that systematic brainwashing is possible, I in no way condone it.  I would suggest that closed in-groups facilitate the natural mechanisms that brainwashing exploits, however, in most cases this is not systematic and premeditated enough to regard as brainwashing.¹⁰ As for military and intelligence applications, I believe brainwashing simply is not feasible in regards to the cost/benefits ratio in most instances—ethics aside. Finally, if successful, the brainwashed person will likely exhibit moderate to severe symptoms of posttraumatic stress and will always be in danger of self-destruction or retribution because of the dissonance created in betraying their former identity—though in ideal circumstances guilt is alleviated and processed by further commitment to the implanted ideology.

For those who want case studies of actual occurrences, I consider the strip search prank scam an interesting possibility. ¹¹

The author condemns the oppression of individual liberty and offers his opinion as a hypothetical explanation of possibility that could help explain extreme and abnormal conformance.

Notes

¹ Cialdini, Robert. Influence, Science and Practice. Needham Heights: Allyn & Bacon, 2001.

² Sargant, William. Battle for the Mind. New York: Doubleday, 1997, 1st ed. published 1957.

³ Pratkanis, Anthony, and Elliot Aronson. Age of Propaganda. W.H. Freeman and Company, 2001, 1st ed. 1992.

⁴ Singer, Margaret Thaler. Cults in Our Midst. Jossey-Bass, 1996.

⁵ See the Wikipedia article on conformity– special emphasis on internalization (relevant 03-17-10)

⁶ This follows Cialdini’s commitment and consistency heuristics, which are well documented elsewhere. This tactic is also based on the speculation that the cognitive dissonance of committed behavior will force attitude adjustments.

⁷ I am proposing that the need for structure is its own heuristic, especially in an uncertain environment. Cialdini’s social proof heuristic also applies.

⁸ An interesting phenomena to consider is false memory syndrome and while its radical descriptions often cause controversy, more benign experiments have demonstrated that false memories are easily implanted. Interested persons can research this further themselves. My purpose in mentioning this is that extreme stress reduces cognitive functionality and I believe false memory syndrome and memory bias are more likely to occur in such a state, and as such can be used to facilitate the brainwashing process.

⁹ Psychological conformance to ‘social others’ and to ‘authority’ is a well documented dynamic– research the Asch Conformity Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment for an introduction.

¹⁰ Research in-group (ingroup) bias for further information

¹¹ See Wikipedia article for “Strip Search Prank Scam”