What Is Brainwashing?

The idea of brainwashing first came into the public domain during the Korean War as an explanation for why American soldiers appeared to defect to Communism. Brainwashing consisted of the notion that Chinese communists had discovered an effective method of causing deep and permanent behavioural changes in their prisoners.

The idea has also been depicted in movies such as The Manchurian Candidate, in which a soldier is converted into an assassin, and The Ipcress File, where Michael Cain attempts to resist being re-programmed.

Robert Lifton and Edgar Schein carried out two studies of the Korean War defections and concluded that “brainwashing” was an inappropriate concept to account for the apparent defections. They found that the Chinese did not engage in any systematic re-education. They were, however, able to get some of the prisoners to make anti-American statements by placing them under harsh conditions of deprivation and then offering them more comfortable situations such as better sleeping quarters, better food, warmer clothes or blankets. The psychiatrists discovered these were ineffective methods of changing basic attitudes for most people. In other words, the prisoners did not really convert to Communism. Many of them decided to behave as though they did in order to avoid the threat of extreme physical coercion. The few prisoners that were influenced by Communist indoctrination did so as a result of motives and personality characteristics that existed before imprisonment.

Brainwashing is also connected with religious Cults. It was alleged that they would recruit new members by isolating them from their family and friends, involving them in a sleep deprivation program and exposing them to loud and repetitive chanting. Religious brainwashing tended to involve an overload of loving thoughts and feelings. Most anti-cult activists now accept that the brainwashing theory has been discredited. Some anti-cult activists have started using the term ‘mind control’ instead.

The concept of brainwashing is not used by most psychologists, and the methods of persuasion and coercion used during the Korean War are not considered to be esoteric.

The word brainwashed is still informally used to describe someone who holds strong ideas that are not necessarily plausible and are completely resistant to evidence, common sense, experience and logic. This is especially true when these ideas are developed by an external influence such as books, films, other people or a religious organisation.