Can People Really Be Brainwashed?

1064 Words5 Pages
Many cases like “The Elizabeth Smart Case: Why We Need Specific Laws Against Brainwashing” have shown that a persuasive situation may change attitude, but not necessarily change someone’s behavior. Coercion can obviously be affective in changing people’s behavior, but how do we persuade people to change their actual beliefs? One problem that experimenters have is that it is difficult to generalize from the laboratory to real life. Many confounds could be present during the laboratory experiments of attitude and behavioral changes. Still, social psychologists have formed theories about how attitude and behavior changes can occur. Three major categories to theorize how brainwashing can occur are isolation, group pressures, and forcing of somebody to do something. The first technique, which is one of the most effective techniques, is isolation. Isolation breaks the present identify of a person by keeping her/him from all contact from present and past environments. The new environment is considered to be the “in-group”, which makes past environments the “out-group”. This tactic creates and maintains loyalty to the new environment. Group pressure is supported by the reasoning dissonance theory. We do not want to be dissimilar with our own thinking and behaving/behaviors. Difference is strongly undesirable more so within a group. Group members want to be loyal to their group and therefore will not do anything that may disconnect them from their group. Obviously, going against the grain of one’s group may eventually result in being outcaste. Physical forcing of somebody to do something is usually thought to be the most effective technique to conform someone but it is actually the least effective when considering long-term effects. It is true that temporary compliance can be produced very quickly when striving to change one’s attitude and/or behavior. However, once
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