Public Relations
Marketing
Propaganda
Indoctrination
Coercive mind control
Cults

• Edward Louis Bernays 
  
• Walter Lippmann 
  
• James Vicary 
  
• Vance Packard 
  
• Wilson Bryan Key
  

• Robert Lifton
• Edgar Schein
  
• Margaret Singer
  
• Steven Hassan
  
• Robert Cialdini
• Anthony Stahelski  
  
• Roy Wallis
• Rodney Stark 
  William Sims Bainbridge 
  

Pioneer

Areas of Research

Seminal Works

Edward Louis Bernays 
(1891-1995) 
American public relations pioneer

Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the ‘herd instinct’ that Trotter had described. 

Bernays also drew on the ideas of Gustave LeBon, the originator of crowd psychology, and of Wilfred Trotter, who promoted similar ideas in the anglophone world in his book Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.  

---

Walter Lippmann 
(1889 – 1974) 
Writer, reporter, and political commentator, twice awarded, in 1958 and 1962, a Pulitzer Prize for his syndicated newspaper column, “Today and Tomorrow”. 

• 1913: co-founding editor of New Republic magazine  
  
• A journalist, a media critic and a philosopher who tried to reconcile the tensions between liberty and democracy in a complex and modern world, as in his 1920 book Liberty and the News. 
• During World War I, advised President Woodrow Wilson on drafting of Wilson’s Fourteen Points.
  
• Had wide access to the nation’s decision makers and had no sympathy for communism.  
  
• Brought phrase “cold war” to common usage in his 1947 book.
  
• Examined the coverage of newspapers and saw many inaccuracies. 
  
• With Charles Merz, in a 1920 study entitled A Test of the News, stated that The New York Times’ coverage of the Bolshevik revolution was biased and inaccurate. 
  
• Identified tendency of journalists to generalize about other people based on fixed ideas. He argued that people—including journalists—are more apt to believe “the pictures in their heads” than come to judgment by critical thinking. Humans condense ideas into symbols, he wrote, and journalism, a force quickly becoming the mass media, is an ineffective method of educating the public. 
• Even if journalists did better jobs of informing the public about important issues, Lippmann believed “the mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation.” Citizens, he wrote, were too self-centered to care about public policy except as pertaining to pressing local issues.

Persuasion and propaganda
Walter Lippman, 1922: Public opinion

---

James Vicary 
1915 –1977
Market researcher
Coined term “subliminal advertising” 

1957: Claimed that quickly flashing messages “drink Coca-Cola” and “eat popcorn” on a movie screen would influence people to purchase more. This led to a public outcry and many conspiracy theories of governments and cults using the technique for their advantage and the practice was banned in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. 

In 1962 Vicary admitted that he fabricated the entire incident 

---

Vance Packard 

Brought term to the attention of the general public.

1957 The Hidden Persuaders 

---

Wilson Bryan Key

1973 Subliminal Seduction

---

Cults and Mind Control

Robert Lifton
1928 –
Psychiatrist 

Studied indoctrination methods used on POWs in Korea and China and concluded that thought reform was possible without violence or physical coercion. Mapped eight methods able to change the minds of individuals without their knowledge. 
  
Lifton brainwashing model

• Milieu control: (control access with the outside world)
  
• Mystic manipulation: (group has a unique and higher purpose)
  
• Confession: (confess past and present sins)
  
• Self-sanctification through purity: (push towards unattainable perfection)
  
• Aura of sacred science: (beliefs are sacrosanct and perfect)
  
• Loaded language: (words redefined, encouraging black-white thinking)
  
• Doctrine and group is more important than the individual
  
• Dispensed existence: (insiders are saved, outsiders are doomed)
  

• Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China, Norton (New York City), 1961.
  
• Destroying the world to save it: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence and the New Global Terrorism. 1999
  

---

Edgar Schein
Coercive Persuasion    

Investigated similar programs in China
Concluded that physical coercion was an important feature of brainwashing.

Edgar H. Schein, (1999) "Empowerment, coercive persuasion and organizational learning: do they connect?", Learning Organization, The, Vol. 6 Iss: 4, pp.163 - 172

---

Margaret Singer
Psychologist

Conditions for mind control
Using Lifton’s work, described six conditions that create an atmosphere where thought reform can occur without physical coercion or violence.

• Control a person’s time and environment, leaving no time for thought
  
• Create a sense of powerlessness, fear and dependency
  
• Manipulate rewards and punishments to suppress former social behavior
  
• Manipulate rewards and punishments to elicit desired behavior
  
• Create closed system of logic which makes dissenters feel as if something was wrong with them
  
• Keep recruits unaware about any agenda to control or change them
  

---

Steven Hassan
Psychologist and cult counselor
BITE model
Releasing the Bonds: the BITE (Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotion) model

Discredited coercive “deprogramming” methods

Controversial  “deprogramming” methods
Drew from Singer and Lifton and Festiner’s cognitive dissonance theory. Mind control is a combination of control over behavior, information, thought and emotions. The BITE model dispenses with any required environment control, and its effects can be achieved when the control mechanisms create overall dependency and obedience to some leader or cause.  

Critics argue that Steve Hassan uses the term “mind control” to justify the forcible extraction of believers from religious groups. They argue that Hassan does not merely say that fraudulent salesmanship persuaded the believers; he claims that these groups literally take away a victim’s freedom of mind. For this reason an involuntary procedure must operate in order to “rescue” a “victim” from a “destructive cult”, for “victims” may not realize their victimhood status and may resist rescuing. After participating in deprogrammings in the late 1970s, distanced himself from this practice and the criminal activities  

---

Robert Cialdini
Social psychology researcher

Showed how mind control is possible through the covert exploitation of the unconscious rules that underlie and facilitate healthy human social interactions. He defines common social rules that can be used to prey upon the unwary:

• Reciprocation: Give and Take...and Take
  
• Commitment and Consistency: Hobgoblins of the Mind
  
• Social Proof: Truths Are Us
  
• Liking: The Friendly Thief
  
• Authority: Directed Deference
  
• Scarcity: The Rule of the Few
  

Six broad categories show examples of both mild and extreme mind control (both one on one and in groups), notes the conditions under which each social rule is most easily exploited for false ends, and offers suggestions on how to fight these insidious, and often unconscious mind control methods.

2000
Bait and switch 
Compliance
Influence, Science and Practice 

---

Anthony Stahelski
Social psychological conditioning

Identifies five phases of social psychological conditioning which he calls cult-like conditioning techniques employed by terrorist groups: 

1. Depluralization: strip away all other group member identities
   
2. Self-deindividuation: strip away member’s personal identity
   
3. Other-deindividuation: strip away personal identities of enemies
   
4. Dehumanization: identify enemies as subhuman or nonhuman
   
5. Demonization: identify enemies as evil
   

---

Roy Wallis 
(1945–1990)  
Sociologist 

Introduced differing definitions of sects and cults.

• World-rejecting movements view the prevailing social order as deviant and a perversion of the divine plan. Such movements see the world as evil or at least as materialistic. They may adhere to millenarian beliefs. The International Society of Krishna Consciousness(a.k.a. "Hare Krishnas"), the Unification Church, the Brahma Kumaris and the Children of God exemplify world-rejecting movements.
• World-accommodating movements draw clear distinctions between the spiritual and the worldly spheres. They have few or no consequences for the lives of adherents. These movements adapt to the world but they do not reject or affirm it.
• World-affirming movements might not have any rituals or any formal ideology. They may lack most of the characteristics of religious movements. They affirm the world and merely claim to have the means to enable people to unlock their "hidden potential". As examples of world-affirming movements, Wallis mentions Werner Erhard's est and Transcendental Meditation.

---

Rodney Stark 
William Sims Bainbridge
Sociologists 

Distinguished three types of cults, classified on the basis of the levels of organizational and client (or adherent) involvement

• Audience cults which have hardly any organization because participants/consumers lack significant involvement.
  
• Client cults, in which the service-providers exhibit a degree of organization in contrast to their clients. Client cults link into moderate-commitment social networks through which people exchange goods and services. The relationship between clients and the leaders of client cults resembles that of patients and therapists.
  
• Cult movements, which seek to provide services that meet all of their adherents' spiritual needs, although they differ significantly in the degree to which they use mobilize adherents' time and commitment.