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How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique
- gruseom 13y agoCialdini's book is one of the best and most readable pieces of popular science writing ever. It's fascinating from start to finish, frequently hilarious, and pretty hard to summarize because there's so much cool stuff in it. The brainwashing scare from the Korean War is central to at least one classic movie, The Manchurian Candidate (1962). It was unavailable for 25 years, which rumor had it was because of its similarity to the JFK assassination (it's not that similar, really). If you like old thrillers and haven't seen it, see it—it's just great!
- jmcintyre 13y agoInteresting, this looks like proof that truth is stranger than fiction. After reading a lot of WW II thrillers, this seems surreal.
- asveikau 13y agoFor the record The Manchurian Candidate was a book before it was a movie. I read the book once long ago but don't remember much about it. In contrast the imagery of the movie is very hard to forget.
- gruseom 13y agoI never read the book but apparently it was a favorite of JFK's and he was instrumental in getting the movie made. That explains how something so politically edgy could have come out of Hollywood in 1962—it had the President vouching for it. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/movies/film-a-co-production-of-sinatra-and-jfk.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/movies/film-a-co-productio... <-- Contains Spoilers
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoJust a nit, but there was nothing special about Hollywood in 1962. Hollywood has always been a "cool kids" club, and JFK was right in the middle of it. What we see over time is that various people are considered cool kids or not, and the cool kids all like one thing or another, but Hollywood in the 50s and 60s wasn't some kind of propaganda machine, although folks today make it out to be. It was just that's what all the cool kids were doing back then. There was some really edgy stuff made in the 50s and 60s.
- coob 13y agoAlso if anyone is thinking of watching the 2004 remake/'re-imgainging' … don't bother.
- gruseom 13y agoYes. I thought Demme would do something interesting with it and was disappointed. The only thing I remember is Robyn Hitchcock's cameo as an arms dealer, and even that was bad.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- firstOrder 13y agoIf an American POW comes back to the US and says the US was the aggressor in the Korean War, he does not have an opinion, he has been "brainwashed". What kind of mental gymnastics do I have to perform to think this way. It's about a step removed from saying someone who denies Jesus Is Lord has been possessed by a demon. Or the same thing really.
- StavrosK 13y ago> What kind of mental gymnastics do I have to perform to think this way. They probably used the foot-in-the-door technique on themselves.
- nostromo 13y agoThe key here is the delta, not what opinions are right or wrong. > compared to the POWs in North Korea, their beliefs had changed massively since they’d left home The title does color the outcome by calling it brainwashing, but that word is not used in the actual article.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pessimizer 13y agoConvincing someone of something that later, under investigation, turns out not to be true, is not brainwashing.
- pyre 13y agoI thought that brainwashing was a label applied to the technique used to convince someone. You can brainwash someone that holds strong convictions which are wrong to believe in the truth.
- pessimizer 13y agoBrainwashing is a label applied to the mysterious techniques that communist foreigners and non-Christian religions use to convince someone. Labels applied to the techniques used to convince someone are 'rhetoric,' and 'argumentation,' amongst others.
- liopleurodon 13y agoI wonder if the 'foot in the door' technique was just used on me to get me to buy the book....
- liopleurodon 13y agobecause if it was, it worked....
- jimzvz 13y agoIf the techniques described in the book have been used to make me buy the book then it is a good purchase.
- Volpe 13y agoI thought america WAS the aggressor? (Korea isn't really near the US), and it was quite apparent the US wanted satellite states near russia/china, to potentially launch further attacks. Also did the communists do a bad job in china? That is at most controversial... not "brain washed".
- mikegagnon 13y ago"Brainwashing" isn't a precisely defined word. I believe the word is often used to describe persuasion via psychological vulnerabilities. In this sense, the article is correct in calling the technique a form of brainwashing.
- dsrguru 13y agoInterestingly enough, it comes from the Chinese word 洗脑 (xǐnǎo), literally meaning to "wash brains", which was used to describe the 1984-like attempts Mao used to re-educate dissident intellectuals.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoLet me give you a tl;dr: the North Koreans started it by rolling over into South Korea, McAuthur went too close to the Yalu in the counter attack, Chinese entered the war, Truman fires McAuthur. Stalement ensues, borders preserved, Kim Jong Un has ex-girlfriend executed. The communists of the 50s were busy starving their own people in great leaps forwards, in the 60s they innovated on that with a cultural revolution; Mao finally dies; China didn't start to stabalize until Deng brought back capitalism.
- RodericDay 13y agoI can't wait til I get to downvote
- rayiner 13y agoI love the rationalization people have to use to explain China's economic success. If what Deng brought was capitalism, then Obama is an anarcho-libertarian.
- alokm 13y agoThis foot-in-the-door techniques and many other things have been covered beautifully in an ongoing course https://www.coursera.org/course/socialpsychology https://www.coursera.org/course/socialpsychology. It is about to be over. I do recommend going through the videos. There is a lot to learn.
- mikegagnon 13y agoCorollary: sales techniques are often a form of brainwashing. I mean this seriously.
- samineru 13y agoIt's mental violence. You're exploiting human nature to impact their free will. Perhaps part of "being an adult" is shouldering the responsibility of propping up your own illusory free will, I can't say.
- 001sky 13y agoSo is blind indocrination to "obey" (or be drugged) in grade school?
- mikegagnon 13y agoPerhaps http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why-anti-authoritarians-are-diagnosed-as-mentally-ill/ http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why-anti-authoritarians-...
- contravert 13y agoFor this reason, I try to avoid ads and marketing as much as possible, although it seems almost impossible. Although any individual advertisement is trivial to dismiss, I don't trust myself to resist the ubiquitity of these messages.
- andyl 13y agoBrainwashed? If that is brainwashing, then it seems like there's brainwashing everywhere you look. For example: - http://www.foxnews.com/ http://www.foxnews.com/ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBbBfrKsVqY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBbBfrKsVqY
- samineru 13y agoYes.
- daenz 13y agoIt sounds more like de-brainwashing to me. If those soldiers go in with this perfect idea of America, how we can do no wrong, and how everything we do is justified, then turning that on its head seems more like...rational thinking.
- comex 13y agoIf an opinion is being slowly but inexorably pushed on you from all sides by your captor over a long period of time, as part of an explicitly designed program of of propagandizing, it's brainwashing, regardless of the opinion's merit!
- grandalf 13y agoIt could still move the person's mental state toward improved rationality.
- stephengillie 13y agoIs this what "deprogramming" a brainwashed person is? Moving them from the position of their captors' propaganda to a position within the propaganda believed by an entire society? Patriotism being one example of this type of propaganda -- the idea that some of us are better than others because we were born on one side of a line in the dirt.
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- tokenadult 13y agoI see no one has mentioned so far in this thread that the term "brainwashing" originated in Chinese ( 洗腦 in the original language), and originated as an internal practice in China after seizure of power in China by the Communist Party of China. I'll paste in here part of the history of the term from Chinese Wikipedia, which has some interesting differences from the parallel article in English Wikipedia: 中华人民共和国[编辑] 中華人民共和國執政黨中國共產黨成立以來，早期通過文藝、宣傳提出的「沒有共產黨就沒有新中國」、「穩定壓倒一切」等口號，被一些人認為是“洗腦”行為。中國共產黨操控媒體、民間沒有輿論自由，又透過教育，局部呈現現代歷史等方式進行“正面意識形態宣傳”也被認為屬於洗腦行為。有評論指，中华人民共和国文革時期大規模和連續的共產主義宣傳教育運動，明顯是洗腦行為；當時中共將視為反對者的人民劃定為「階級敵人」、將這些人強行施以「勞動改造」（勞改）、「思想改造」，強權和暴力使整個社會幾乎所有人都失去了獨立思考的自由意志。 [12] 中华人民共和国官方電視媒體中國中央電視台，被指責所播放的部分內容存在「洗腦」，有中國年輕學者指央視透過辮子戲灌輸皇權專制，打造奴才人格，是毒化了中國走向自由民主的氛圍，存在洗腦意義，而央視的《新聞聯播》選擇性「報喜不報憂」，像是「宣傳聯播」。 [13][14]但中國共產黨及其支持者並不認同這些批評。 英文「brainwash」意指「洗腦」，由中文「洗腦」一詞翻譯而來；沿於上世紀1950年代的韓戰，美國士兵被中国人民解放军俘虜之後，日夜接受中国共产党的思想改造，獲救之後回到美國，竟然幫中国共產黨講好話，於是美國記者Edward Hunter就用brainwash一詞來描述此事。[15][16]
- walid 13y agoI hate staring at a wall of text without being able to read it. I'll just have to learn Chinese. Googling right now.
- proofofconcept 13y agoIf you actually want to have a discussion of those differences then you're going to need to point them out yourself instead of dumping a homework assignment in everyone's lap since: 1) I don't read Chinese, and I doubt I'm alone here when it comes to that 2) Google translate is far from perfect, and unless the differences are clear to someone who merely gets the gist of the Chinese article they probably won't come across
- pintglass 13y agoIt's amazing how easily one can translate something these days instead of complain about having to read Chinese (http://translate.google.com/ http://translate.google.com/): People [edit] The People's Republic of China since the founding of the ruling Communist Party of China, early through art, propaganda's "no new China without the Communist Party," "stability overrides everything" and other slogans, considered by some to be "brainwashed" behavior. Chinese Communist Party controls the media, civil society without freedom of opinion, but also through education, partial rendering methods such as modern history "positive ideological propaganda" has also been considered to be brainwashed behavior. Some have commented that the PRC during the Cultural Revolution massive and continuous education communist propaganda campaign, obviously brainwashing behavior; when opponents of the CPC will be treated as people designated as "class enemies," these people forcibly impose "Labour transformation "(labor camps)," thought reform ", power and violence, so that the whole community lost almost everyone free will to think independently. [12] People's Republic of China Central Television, the official television media, is accused of playing the part of the existence of "brainwashing" refers to a Chinese young scholars CCTV braids play through indoctrination autocracy, to create personality I was poisoned the atmosphere of freedom and democracy to China, there brainwashing significance, and CCTV "News Network" selective "glossy", such as "propaganda network." [13] [14] However, the Chinese Communist Party and its supporters do not agree with these criticisms. English "brainwash" means "brainwashed" by the Chinese "brainwashing" translated from the word; in the late 1950s along the Korean War, American soldiers were captured after the People's Liberation Army, day and night to accept the idea of transformation of the Chinese Communist Party, were rescued after back to the U.S., even speak good words to help the Chinese Communist Party, then the U.S. correspondent Edward Hunter to use the term to describe the matter brainwash.
- mrj 13y agoFunny, the course I am in right now covers this book. It is well worth the read. Cialdini, R. B. (2009). Influence: science and practice (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education.
- stephenaturner 13y agoThis still seems to ignore the fact that even if the Chinese used these techniques differently and didn't explicitly threaten violence, they were still the captors and the prisoners were still the captives and held in confinement and the power relationship there had to contribute to the success of these techniques.
- sp332 13y agoThis technique was something that came to mind when I heard about Occupy Wall Street's use of the "mic check". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microphone Getting lots of people to repeat borderline-reasonable things, even if they don't really quite agree with them, can make them change their position.
- walid 13y agoIt is so easy to make people with idealistic views switch those views. The reason being that such people attach their views to an unattainable standard clouding their judgement, then when they realize the flaws in their views they backlash. Add to that an environment that doesn't promote any opinion but allows such backlash to flourish and you get the perfect brainwashing technique. Self sustained brainwashing.
- Pitarou 13y agoThis part shocked me: > They also collaborated. “When an escape did occur,” wrote one of the investigators, “the Chinese usually recovered the man easily by offering a bag of rice to anyone offering to turn him in.” This was extremely rare in German and Japanese prison camps. It seems they achieved something more than just moulding the PoWs' political views: they broke their esprit de corps. Still, I dislike words like "brainwash" and "mind control". It significantly understates the complicated dynamic between the washer and the washed. It would be interesting to learn how the Chinese were affected by their contacted with the Americans.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- wjk 13y agoWhats up with the column width of the blog? Am i getting sent to the mobile site on PC by mistake? A column is 1/5th of my screen, it looks quite silly.
- marme 13y agoyes it looks very strange. The entire content div is set to a fixed width of 35em so on a wide screen monitor it will look ridiculous. Even on standard ratio screen it looks strange as the content div does not even take up half the width of the screen
- igl 13y agoThis is so much worse than the torture and rape we did on the Chinese! Keep highlighting this!
- VanillaBooks 13y agoI disagree with the _utility_ of the article's conclusion - "keep the facts in mind when you are asked to do things". Basically it says - be in control of what you do. Or, we are always a step or two behind (we only realize later what happened in a certain situation). So what you do when somebody applies a technique on you, which you don't know yet, in a situation in which you are caught, which you don't yet realize it fully (this perhaps comes later, or never)? I hint that the solution is more about what you do in general when you don't know things, than what to do to know them beforehand (which i think it's impossible). How is one grown to deal with the unknown, without resorting to the "you must also recognize this situation as this or that"
- atroche 13y agoGood points. Can you elaborate on what steps you might take to guard against unknown techniques?
- VanillaBooks 13y agoOf course, that - i wouldn't really know. Perhaps if we attack it from the other side - what happens when a civilized society shifts its balance point from "we don't know a lot, we know only a few things" to "we know a lot, what we don't know isn't important". How is one grown in the first society is with a bigger openness, the need to be sharp in every situaton vs. the "life through recipes" which proliferates in the second society. (sorry for my english and somewhat vague thoughts, i hope something gets through)
- DominikR 13y agoI wouldn't categorize this as brainwashing. Or to be more specific: I wouldn't categorize the description in the blog post as brainwashing or torture. To me, this looks more like some kind of group therapy since the POWs were not forced and the example statement they were asked to make ("The United States is not perfect.") is obviously a fact because nothing is perfect. What I find interesting is to compare this to what is happening today in Guantanamo. I mean they are trying to get information and cooperation, why always default to torture?
- xerophtye 13y agoWell i think that stems from a indoctrinated hatred towards the captives. If you think rationally (albeit coldly/mechanically) you'd figure out that torture isn't that effective. In fact torture just makes the captives hate you more. So that makes your job even harder. But if you could shake their beliefs... Show them the error of their ways. And they actually might help you stop the other terrorists. But all that needs that you actually see the captives as human beings.
- xerophtye 13y agoWhat I find interesting is that most terrorists are a product of brainwashing too. And i mean DELIBERATE brainwashing, not the kind of stuff you learn from society as you grow up. So why not fight fire with fire and deprogram them? Heck the violence actually reinforces their brainwashing that the captors are Evil people.
- LeeHunter 13y agoSaudi Arabia has apparently had considerable success deprogramming militants by engaging them in religious discussions.
- realo 13y agoOh? I thought that militants in that region of the planet were programmed by religious discussions in the first place. Maybe we do not share the same definition of what a "militant" is, in Saudi Arabia?
- madaxe 13y agoHm, site is censored in the UK for being "violent pornographic and/or political material" :|
- Celtis 13y agoCensored by whom? It works fine for me on Virgin Media
- madaxe 13y agoO2. They censor a really odd selection of stuff.
- gadders 13y agoSo censored by one network then, not all the UK.
- madaxe 13y agoNo, but it's the same filtering setup as they're planning on applying to all the networks, so there's little difference in the grand scheme of things. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BUhIcj8CAAAfQEX.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BUhIcj8CAAAfQEX.jpg:large
- alan_cx 13y agoSorry, O2 is censoring "political material" in the UK? Are you kidding?
- madaxe 13y agoThey have been for years, and the list of what I can't browse on 3G only ever grows.
- tekacs 13y agoFine on BT UK, too (see sibling comment).
- forgottenpaswrd 13y agoIt is not that hard when soldiers could discover that they had been lied by their own people and sent to die in order for others(that will never risk a finger) to profit. All wars are full of lies, Roosevelt lied to the American people, "for their own good" of course, as the American public did not want to enter a world war. The Lusitania was full of weapons as divers discover in 2008, the first American sub to be sinked attacked the Germans first before war(that was never said to American public) and Robert Stinnett investigated about Pearl Harbor and how they already knew about it, the reason there were not air carriers there and the radar "confusion". The soldiers in Hawaii were just pawns to sacrifice in order to win the match. The same happened in Irak, US government wanted to get this oil, and they just needed a pretext. 20 people from Saudi Arabia(US tyrannical ally) crashing planes against US buildings somewhat became a pretext to invade Irak and Afganistan, countries that are 2000 miles apart from Saudi Arabia, killing millions in the process and thousands of Americans. Now, Obama is doing the same with Siria. They want to invade a country and they just need to convince the public opinion to support it. The problem with lies is that when you are outside the system that generates them, they are very easy to discover. People feel betrayed and never trust "big brother", that lies to you for your own benefit, any more.
- philwelch 13y agoOne of the most effective ways to persuade people is to mix lies with truth to give the mixture the flavor of truth. For instance, starting with some comfortable truisms (all wars are full of lies) combined with questionable implications (Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were inside jobs) supported by misleading details (the carriers weren't present at Pearl Harbor, but battleships were universally considered the more valuable strategic asset until the battles of Coral Sea and Midway; the 9/11 hijackers were mostly Saudi because they were dissidents against the US-supported Saudi government whose senior leadership moved to Afghanistan to avoid the Saudi authorities). Consider also the general theme of such arguments: always to attack and denigrate the United States' involvement without ever giving consideration to the wider context. Indeed it's easy for the US to come off as the "bad guy" for entering a war against the actual Nazis so far as you keep the focus squarely on what the US did wrong rather than considering a wider context.