The Manipulation of Human Behavior: Your Tax Dollars at Work

Brian Doherty | September 6, 2007

Speaking of "monstrous acts directed against human dignity," I've long been fascinated with the social-control-science of the cybernetics (and other) varieties that the government and some major private foundations were fascinated by in the postwar era.

Via Boing-Boing, here's a very interesting document of that era: the 1961 Wiley title The Manipulation of Human Behavior.

Boing-Boing's quick exegesis from Xeni Jardin's correspondent hombre sin nombre. An excerpt:

Based on the compelling title and the fact that just about every publication in the subject area cites it, you would then probably try to seek it out for yourself--only to discover that it has never been reprinted.

Then you'd find out a bit more: the book is a compilation of seven research reports, and funded at least in large part by the United States government. You can even track down the table of contents online, and your jaw may drop when you read the chapter titles:

* The Physiological State of the Interrogation Subject as it Affects Brain Function
* The Effects of Reduced Environmental Stimulation on Human Behavior: A Review
* The Use of Drugs in Interrogation
* Physiological Responses as a Means of Evaluating Information
* The Potential Uses of Hypnosis in Interrogation
* The Experimental Investigation of Interpersonal Influence
* Countermanipulation through Malingering

These articles were written by the people who were paid by the US government, mostly in the 1950s, to research brainwashing and interrogation techniques by giving people drugs, placing them under sensory deprivation, hypnotizing them, etc. etc....

Access to the full text.

A review essay from me back in May 2003 touching on some of the milder aspects of research into the control and manipulation of opinion, thought, and behavior.

Comments

|9.6.07 @ 4:28PM|#

Ron,

Do you know if this research was associated with the MK Ultra program?

jimmydageek|9.6.07 @ 4:30PM|#

...and your jaw may drop when you read the chapter titles...

Why would one's jaw drop? This seems to be the unspoken norm...

jimmydageek|9.6.07 @ 4:39PM|#

Ok, maybe not the "unspoken norm", but I'd be willing to wager quite a bit that there are still similar studies occurring today...

|9.6.07 @ 4:44PM|#

Countermanipulation through Malingering

Jesus Christ! They really have been watching me....

|9.6.07 @ 4:50PM|#

Do you know if this research was associated with the MK Ultra program?

tk,

If you actually read the very detailed explaination in the text itself, it was based exclusivly on research published in public scientific journals, and has nothing whatsoever to do with secret government research.

Much of the research came from interviewing U.S. victims of Chinese and North Korean torture/brainwashing programs during the Korean war.

I think, as well, that most people probably just read the titles and never bothered to read the entire text.

Here is a basic summary of the book:

1. Physical torture isn't a particularly effective method of getting information.

2. Mind control methods seem to have some sort of effect, kinda. But not all that much.

3. Drugs aren't particularly that effective either.

|9.6.07 @ 4:55PM|#

Classical conditioning is still the best manipulator of mammels!

|9.6.07 @ 5:08PM|#

I read a book in high school called "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate" which was an account of the various mind control methods the US military tried. Don't remember much about it, except that marijuana turned out to be one of the better "truth serums" as it removed people's inhibitions against spilling their guts. Google now has the whole text on the web.

|9.6.07 @ 5:12PM|#

Rex,
Guilty as charged.
Funny though, I guess there is something to be said here, since this research and MK Ultra were both taking place in the early 50's:

Open source public journals conclusion = mind control via drug/torture conditioning negligibly effective.

Super-secret CIA Research = ?
I guess we'll never know what they found out, but probably the same conclusion.

Unless Sirhan Sirhan really wasn't just a nutter.

|9.6.07 @ 5:32PM|#

If you're interested in this stuff, look up Dr. Martin Orne. My mother was his assistant for a while before I was born, played with his kids when I was young. I knew she'd learned how to hypnotize people as part of her work, but I didn't have a clue the kind and variety of crazy shit he was involved in until I chanced across his name in a history of MKULTRA.

Fritz|9.6.07 @ 6:12PM|#

You don't need drugs or hypnosis to manipulate human behavior; just put a tax on the damn thing.

PaulC|9.6.07 @ 6:12PM|#

Check out Alston Chase's book "Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist" (available at Amazon.com).

It seems Ted Kaczinski, who had a somewhat tenuous grip on reality to start with, was "recruited" from his freshman psychology class in the late 1950s to "participate" in these "experiments." A preliminary screening report by one of the investigators suggested they knew how disturbed he was, and consequently they pressured him to participate. The interrogations he was subjected to were pretty hair-raising, done under entirely false pretenses, and supervised and reviewed by some of the leading social scientists in the US at the time.

His subsequent development into the Unabomber owned no small debt to his stay at Harvard.

SIV|9.6.07 @ 6:40PM|#

You don't need drugs or hypnosis to manipulate human behavior; just put a tax on the damn thing.

Targeted tax cuts for politically educated families..... Mao would be proud.

JBinMO|9.6.07 @ 6:51PM|#

MKULTRA? I thought that was a Mortal Kombat game.

William Seward Burroughs|9.6.07 @ 7:08PM|#

They left out the goddamn orgone radiator again.

Confused|9.6.07 @ 7:21PM|#

Boing-Boing's quick exegesis from Xeni Jardin's correspondent hombre sin nombre...

Huh?

|9.6.07 @ 8:05PM|#

Hey, Harvard's undergrad school may have produced the unibomber, but their MBA program churned out G. W. Bush.

The Wine Commonsewer|9.6.07 @ 9:22PM|#

See, I'm not surprised because I read all the James Bond books when I was a kid. Trust me, the books are far more sophisticated than the movies.

|9.7.07 @ 2:03AM|#

Huh?

Boing-Boing's quick analysis from Xeni Jardin's correspondent who is named hombre sin nombre (lit. "man without a name" in Spanish).

She who must be obeyed|9.7.07 @ 6:29AM|#

Jesus, dude, that's two Boing Boing posts in two days. If I wanted to read Boing Boing, I'd head back to that hipper-than-thou, ultra-pretentious bunghole.

If you want to fuck Xeni Jordan, fine, just leave us out of it.

|9.7.07 @ 8:14AM|#

JTUF -
Your comment gave me my first belly laugh of the day.
Thank you.