People throw around the world ‘brainwashing’ a lot but I still don’t know what it means. Is it a ‘repeated truth’? Is it certain mind tricks? Is it some kind of chemical thing?
Disclaimer: not looking to brainwash anyone but there’s a cult in my area that apparently ‘brainwashes’ people
In: Biology
There isn’t. Brainwashing isn’t an actual thing and you kind of have to pick up a few different psychological conditions, plug them together in ways they can’t actually be plugged together, turn your head sideways, and squint, if you want to see it.
Basically there are all sorts of situations where people will behave in odd ways. People can fall victim to peer pressure when they are young and impressionable. People can make false statements when under duress or sleep deprivation. People can get beaten into feeling trapped in a situation when objectively they are not trapped in it. People can be held hostage in a situation where they start to identify with their captors.
But in the vast majority of instances if you take people out of the bad situation, give them something to eat, let them take a shower, let them get a good night’s sleep, they will pop right back to what they were like before these things happened (barring the expected impact from trauma). In rarer situations religious cults or cults of personality can form but that is much more about taking weak willed people and exposing them to a charismatic, powerful, practised, figure who gives them a semi-cogent philosophy and basically “convinces them” that he or she is right. This is way more about the pre-existing vulnerability of the victim then it is about some kind of brain washing method. 99% of people would never join a cult. But the 1% who would are going to fall victim to the first one they come across be that flat earth, selling herbalife shakes, or a religious cult.
Really though – if you want to convince people of something so that they believe it passionately, you need to make a really persuasive case for it. Drill it into them from when they are young, and make sure they don’t see any contradictory information. That’s the christian and communist playbooks.
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