A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF BRAINWASHING

1. A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF BRAINWASHING • Benjamin Zablocki • Rutgers University • PART ONE: WHAT BRAINWASHING IS • PART TWO: HOW BRAINWASHING WORKS • Do not cite without author’s permission [zablocki@sociology.rutgers.edu]

2. WHAT BRAINWASHING IS • Not a metaphor but a real process whose progress and effects can be scientifically measured • Blacklisting the concept: the battle to discredit brainwashing • The correct response to blacklisting is scientific precision, not broad-brushing.

3. CUTTING BRAINWASHING DOWN TO SIZE • Not everything bad that happens to people in cults is brainwashing • To claim that it is only makes it easier for opponents to discredit the concept as a whole • Not some new mysterious secret form of influence • Not a wholesale technique for obtaining but a retail technique for retaining members • Not easy or inexpensive to do; it cannot be applied to hordes of people at a time, although mob influence is sometimes confused with brainwashing • Not anything to do with destroying free will and absolving people from responsibility in courts of law • Does not turn people into morons or robots but leaves them intact as highly functioning deployable agents

4. A SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION • Brainwashing is an observable set of transactions between a totalistically structured group and an isolated member of that group with the goal of transforming that member into a deployable agent. • It consists of a sequence of phases: (1) identity stripping; (2) identification with the group; (3) symbolic death and rebirth.

5. VALIDATION, MEASUREMENT, AND EVIDENCE • Simply to define a phenomenon is just the beginning. To be accepted as a real scientific concept it must pass three additional tests: • Test of validity (lumping and splitting) • Test of measurability • Test of evidence– that it happens with some frequency in the real world

6. CONVERGENT VALIDITY • Brainwashing is part of a family of similar concepts all of which flow from similar causes • Stockholm Syndrome • Battered Spouse Syndrome • Psychotherapeutic transference • Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12 Step Programs (“Hitting Bottom”)

7. DISCRIMINANT VALIDITY • We must distinguish between brainwashing and other persuasive techniques that have different causes • Deceptive recruitment • Revival techniques for conversion • Susceptibility of crowds to group-think and mob behavior • Direct charismatic exploitation • Traumatic socialization of children

8. CAN CHILDREN BE BRAINWASHED? • Primary socialization vs. resocialization • Socialization can be traumatic without being brainwashing • Differences in long term effects and neurological traces make it wise to distinguish and study separately • Evidence of different post-cult pathways followed by adult children of cults as opposed to adult converts to cults

9. MEASUREMENT ERROR • The brainwashing concept based on self reporting is prone to high levels of measurement error: • False positives: brainwashing claims when no brainwashing has occurred • False negatives: People who don’t realize or deny they were brainwashed. • For this reason, objective measures of brainwashing rather than simple reliance of self reports are essential if the concept is to be acceptable. Objective measures will be discussed in Part Two of today’s talk

11. THE THREE PHASES OF BRAINWASHING • 1. The stripping (unlearning) of the old identity, old loyalties, old beliefs • 2. Identification with the group • Wholesale relearning of ideas, deep beliefs (convictions), and emotional loyalties • 3. Symbolic death and rebirth (sometimes not reached) • Intellectual convictions energized with zeal • Emotional attachments sacralized

12. Fig 2: TheLiftonian Stages of Brainwashing and Their Effect on Hyper Credulity and Emotional Addiction

13. WHY RESISTANCE IS FUTILE • Flight may be possible, resistance ultimately is not • Skepticism is not an antidote • Slow and Subtle: Frog in the pot phenomenon • Research on self-control and resistance to persuasion

14. OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE FOR BRAINWASHING IN CULTS • Three types of evidence: • Ethnographic evidence • Leader and inner circle accounts • Ex-Member accounts • Incidence • Denial of evidence

15. PART ONE CONCLUSIONS • Brainwashing is not a metaphor but a scientifically valid process of traumatic influence that produces deployable agents • It consists of three measurable phases: stripping, identification, and symbolic death and rebirth • It cannot be resisted although it can be escaped from and recovered from • Despite the protestations of many scholars of new religious movements, there is overwhelming empirical evidence that brainwashing (as defined in this presentation) occurs in some but not all cults to some but not necessarily to all of the members

16. FURTHER RESEARCH NEEDED • Expanding scope • Relevance beyond cults to terrorist cells, spousal abuse, and other traumatic situations • Variations in context: • Environments that are not quite totalist • Environments that are episodically totalist • Post-Charismatic cults • Variations in method • Rapid vs. slow brainwashing • Semi-deployability (quantity over quality)

17. HOW BRAINWASHING WORKS • Five Key concepts: • Unlearning of past beliefs and loyalties • New-learning based on trusting assimilation • Emotional addiction to the group • Traumatic aversion to the forbidden or sinful • Gradual asymptotic recovery

18. THE EVOLUTIONARY FOUNDATION OF UNLEARNING • Unlearning is not just forgetting • Emotional memory versus memory of emotion • Unlearning a recent evolutionary achievement essential for the formation of extra-familial macro-social bonds • Oxytocin triggers unlearning of previous litter attachment in sheep

19. UNLEARNING: THE “WASHING” PART OF BRAINWASHING • Remapping of neural connections: the “washing” part of brainwashing • Oxytocin storms triggered by sleep deprivation • Similar to Pavlov’s transmarginal inhibition

20. NEW LEARNING: FEEDBACK IN NEURAL CONNECTIONS • Learning new assimilated meanings • Mirror neurons • Learning culture versus learning facts or ideas • Learning trust and loyalty along with ideas • Trust, induced by unlearning, bridges vast spaces between small areas of assimilated new meanings • The fallacy of picking and choosing

23. EMOTIONAL ADDICTION: ROLE OF EXTROCEPTIVE SENSES • Disorientation and the search for social cues • Evidence that group emotions are transmitted through social cueing (Schachter and Singer, 1962) • Lalich’s (2004) bounded choice shows how choices may be limited to those associated with acceptable feelings

26. THE LINGERING EFFECTS OF TRAUMATIC AVERSION • van der Kolk’s “black holes of trauma” • Areas of the brain are cordoned off • Literally “do not go there!” • Danger of flashbacks • Danger of brief revisit to the “guru” • Need for a special kind of empathy from family and significant others • Assurance of safety more important than understanding

28. RECOVERY FROM BRAINWASHING • Evidence of the brain’s self repair. • Recovery is gradual and never complete • Deprogramming: fighting washing with washing • First aid, not cure • Cannot go back. Can only go ahead. • Those most initially resistant to brainwashing are often the slowest to recover • Recovery from brainwashing is asymptotic. Normalcy can be approached very closely but never fully attained

29. PART TWO CONCLUSIONS • Your brain and my brain are vulnerable, in totalist environments, to the manipulations discussed in part one of tonight’s talk. • The neurological consequences of these manipulations can be observed and fit well with symptoms described by brainwashing victims. • Beware of totalist environments especially those that offer any new kind of relief or salvation. Shun them, escape from them, do not fool yourself into thinking you can resist them or pick and choose from among what they offer.

30. FURTHER RESEARCH NEEDED • 1988: Brainwashing as a label • 1998: Brainwashing as a conjecture • 2008: Brainwashing as a theory • 2018: Brainwashing as a tested theory

31. SELECTED ADDITIONAL READINGS