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[/custom_frame_center] Psychologist Dr. Philip George Zimbardo is a Stanford University professor emeritus, well-known for his extensive 50-year career in psychology and the breakthrough Stanford prison experiment. In Dr. Zimbardo’s article, “Mind Control: Psychological Reality or Mindless Rhetoric?” (November 2002, American Psychological Association), he references the “human freedom of responsible action” and how mind control by agents or agencies can “modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes.”
This is Zimbardo’s definition of mind control: “Conformity, compliance, persuasion, dissonance, reactance, guilt and fear arousal, modeling and identification are some of the staple social influence ingredients well studied in psychological experiments and field studies. In some combinations, they create a powerful crucible of extreme mental and behavioral manipulation when synthesized with several other real-world factors, such as charismatic, authoritarian leaders, dominant ideologies, social isolation, physical debilitation, induced phobias, and extreme threats or promised rewards that are typically deceptively orchestrated, over an extended time period in settings where they are applied intensively.”
Attempted mind control or manipulation can be seen throughout history in reference to cults, religions and government and military regimes. The theory of mind control is personal; meaning there are specific tactics that are specified for each individual. Prisoners of war have been studied and found to have been victims of extreme thought- control techniques. When you think of mind control, do you think of Hitler or Charles Manson? Would you consider someone in an abusive relationship to have been brainwashed? Or is it something else?
In a previous blog, we discussed mob mentality and deindividuation. While a mob mentality has a broader scope than mind control, mob mentality leans toward part of Zimbardo’s reference to an agency or agencies affecting behavioral outcomes. In our current climate, you could add the media as a powerful catalyst in determining human behavior and even influencing it to the point of complete submission. Advertising, political agendas and the over-sexualization of pop culture all carry heavy influences and play into the mob mentality.
When you are identifying someone who is vulnerable to manipulation, what criteria do you use? Does your list include environmental, psychosocial, psychological and physiological considerations?
Helping your patients be cognizant of potential manipulation is crucial. Zimbardo says, “Understanding the dynamics and pervasiveness of situational power is essential to learning how to resist it and to weaken the dominance of the many agents of mind control who ply their trade daily on all of us behind many faces and fronts.”
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By Melissa Baysinger
