The Truth About Mind Control

Richard Wiseman
newstatesman.com

All you have to do to get someone to believe something is make them behave as if they do.

At the end of the Korean War, 21 American prisoners-of-war chose to remain in communist Korea and openly sided with an enemy that had killed thousands of their comrades. In addition, a surprisingly large number of the American service personnel who did return home enthusiastically expounded the strengths of communism. The family and friends of these servicemen were stunned, and the world’s media flocked to Korea to report the story. Some researchers suggested that the Koreans had brainwashed the American soldiers with flashing lights, hypnosis or mind-altering drugs.

They were all wrong.

My latest book, Rip It Up , examines the curious relationship between behaviour and thought. Your everyday experience tells you that your thoughts cause you to behave in certain ways. Feeling happy makes you smile, and feeling sad makes you frown. However, decades of research have revealed that the exact opposite is also true – behaviour creates thoughts. When you smile you feel happier, and when you frown you feel sad. The same effect applies to belief. Get people to behave as if they hold a certain belief and bingo, they start to actually believe.

Extensive interviews with prisoners-of-war who returned from Korea revealed that the Chinese authorities had employed this principle.