|
Brainwashing or thought reform is the application of coercive techniques
to change the beliefs or behavior of one or more people for political
purposes. Whether any techniques at all exist that will actually work
to change thought and behavior to the degree that the term "brainwashing"
connotes is a controversial and at times hotly debated question.
The term first came into use in the United States in the 1950s during
the Korean War, to describe the methods used by the Chinese communists
to cause deep and permanent behavioral changes in their own people and
foreign prisoners, and especially to disrupt the ability of prisoners
of war to effectively organize and resist their imprisonment.
It was also used in the US as an explanation for why a few American GIs
appeared to defect to the Communists after becoming prisoners of war.
Later analysis determined that sleep deprivation and torture were to blame
for these events, noting that few repatriated prisoners of war retained
allegiance to Marxist doctrine which had been inculcated during their
incarceration.
Although the use of brainwashing on United Nations prisoners during the
Korean War produced some propaganda benefits, its main utility to the
Chinese lay in the fact that it significantly altered the number of prisoners
that one guard could control, thus freeing other Chinese soldiers to go
to the battlefield.
In later times the term "brainwashing" came to apply to other
methods of coercive persuasion and even to the effective use of ordinary
propaganda.
Many people have come to use the terms "brainwashing" or "mind
control" to explain the otherwise intuitively puzzling success of
some methodologies for the religious conversion of inductees to new religious
movements (including cults).
The term 'brainwashing' is not widely used in psychology and other sciences,
because of its vagueness and history of being used in propaganda. It is
often more helpful to analyze 'brainwashing' as a combination of persuasion
and attitude change, propaganda, coercion, and restriction of access to
information. Note that many of these techniques are more subtly used (usually
unconsciously) by advertisers, governments, schools, parents and peers,
so the aura of exoticism around 'brainwashing' is undeserved.
Read more about:
| 
