First things first, what is brainwashing exactly? Wikipedia offers a concise definition:
Mind control (also known as brainwashing, coercive persuasion, mind abuse, thought control, or thought reform) refers to a process in which a group or individual “systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of the person being manipulated”.
Basically, it’s a form of extreme manipulation. We often associate the practice with cults and don’t consider its presence in everyday life, yet the techniques used in brainwashing are frequently leveraged by advertisers, news networks, politicians, and others. Alex Long, writing for hacking blog Null Byte, provides an outline of some of the most common brainwashing techniques. Here are the most notable:
- The manipulator offers you a number of choices, but the choices all lead to the same conclusion.
- The same idea or phrase is frequently repeated to make sure it sticks in your brain.
- Intense intelligence-dampening is performed by providing you with constant short snippets of information on various subjects. This trains you to have a short memory, makes the amount of information feel overwhelming, and the answers provided by the manipulator to be highly desired due to how overwhelmed you feel.
- Emotional manipulation is used to put you in a heightened state, as this makes it harder for you to employ logic. Inducing fear and anger are among the most popular manipulated emotions.
Source/further Info: lifehacker.com/5886571/brainwashing-techniques-you-encounter-every-day-and-how-to-avoid-them
