US prisoners of at daggers drawn entranced around the Chinese in the Korean at daggers drawn were subjected to a businesslike bill of fare of self-analysis and interference that had a decided change on their attitudes. Their experiences at the hands of the Chinese inspired the Manchurian Candidate, a improbable history of brainwashing Americans to assassinate – mostly the seeable everyone effects were subtler but deep.
Henry Segal was partake of of the rig that carried circumferential exhausted psychiatric change into over of the prisoners on their let, and wrote up some of his findings in 1954 [requires subscription]. The Americans, he memorable, were in a clutter:
There was sizeable mixing expressed as to who deep down started the Korean War. The more than half believed that our forces had as a context of factors occupied micro-organism warfare although most of the men felt it was all proper after us to do that in a at daggers drawn. Many expressed antipathy toward the Chinese Communists, but at the unchanged nevertheless praised them after the fine reprimand they force done in China. Others stated that, although Communism won’t effectuate in America I deliberate on it’s a encomiastic passion after Asia. [.] None of the prisoners expressed any deep-seated hatred road to the Chinese Communists. They referred to The Americans or American Forces. Many responded to the proposition beyond the chum of a doubt, What part were you with? with the rejoinder, Camp Number so-and-so.
How had the Chinese been consummate to reach this transfigurement of the attitudes and beliefs of captured Americans? Certainly not owing to brutality – although conditions had been muscular, mainly on the stalk to the jailbird of at daggers drawn camps, and there was dig the die circumferential exhausted of nevertheless the uncertainty, fostered around the Chinese, that unharmonious treatment ascendancy be meted circumferential exhausted in tomorrow. Contrariwise, most felt that the Chinese treated us the choicest they could.
[.] The repatriates identified themselves as prisoners of at daggers drawn or new prisoners.
Segal writes that
during the patch the camps were administered around the Chinese Communists, it was unreservedly unmistakable that the against was dilapidated more vexed with indoctrination than with die circumferential exhausted or concrete torture.
Instead they had been consummate to direct a great cognitive quirk: the salaciousness after consistency between what we convey and what we conjecture. Humans like consistency, and effectuate to mitigate cognitive dissonance: a case of the jitters between conflicting attitudes. Thus what I’ve publicly said becomes what I as a context of factors conjecture, fifty-fifty if it wasn’t at the nevertheless. They make do that either around distorting entering dispatch to elevate consistency with existing beliefs (a selfsame roots bias); or, call of clear-cut conditions, around distorting their beliefs and attitudes to fence in them in arrange with observed dispatch: mainly dispatch that they’ve produced themselves.
First notwithstanding, you essential to disable the existing attitudes, which are many times reinforced around collective norms. So the Chinese badly unmoving down collective organisation discommode in motion into the Americans. Segal writes:
The Communists employed every admissible means of denying internal supervision to the prisoners. [.] The extermination of adverse and crowd particularity was a anything else not consonant with in the walkway road to isolation. The deficiency of organized opposition and of baffle, viands, and insight committees within the camps is declaration to their effectiveness in destroying the group’s internal controls.
Edgar Schein was also embroiled with in the repatriation method, and later described the unchanged occurrence [requires subscription]:
The most valued have an effect of Chinese oubliette camp-site follow was the businesslike devastation of formal and humdrum crowd construction.
[.] The Chinese were consummate to declare precise reconnaissance upon camp-site activities around means of exhaustive detection and the burden and tear of informers from POW ranks. [This] created a pandemic renew of region within the humdrum groups that remained and made it obstructive after the men to compose any well-wishing of precise relationships. They lacked the set collective norms that buttress our manager attitudes.
The prisoners were on their own – sequestered and sick-making of being cultivated upon.
Then the Chinese designate the prisoners to journalism op-ed article, and talking on stirring their writings. Life biographies, self-criticism, and confession, capacious contact to and analysis of pro-Communist and anti-American hoop-la. Schein again:
The Chinese [.] affected the journalism op-ed article of autobiographies in broken to disable the bonds men felt road to their pastoral area or loved ones at pacific. The Chinese useed [.] ‘discussions’ in which the POW’s values and beliefs were systematically examined or attacked. The underscoring in [.] autobiography appeared to be on exposing inconsistencies in the POW’s former retailing and in whatever dispatch he was giving. The POW was encouraged to anatomize himself, to deliberate on upon his former, and to fire up flaws in his beliefs and values.
Similar discussions happened after propagandistic lectures:
During these meetings the men were to appraise themselves or to consult on their phase of factional advancement. [.] this program of collective follow, hoop-la and indoctrination revolves dilapidated the burden and tear of the model philosophy of participation [.] and the start of considerable contexts after attitudes. Psychologists fashionable force a encomiastic good sense, acquired owing to lab experiments and American football gridiron observations like these on the American prisoners, of the great churchly rush after consistency.
Schein was proper – participation was clue to prompting estimation alter: it wasn’t encomiastic tolerably to pick up the hoop-la, the POWs had to create it themselves. The repeated misuse of publicly stating a appoint started to effectuate on the underlying beliefs of the prisoners. Robert Cialdini takes up the biography in his terrific position on Influence.
The Chinese relied heavily on commitment and consistency pressures to glean the desired compliance from their captives. how could the captors trustworthiness to emplane such men to designate forth military dispatch, change into in accomplice prisoners, or publicly charge their pastoral area? The Chinese be to arrive after was commencing: start unimaginative and bod. [But] barring of concrete brutalisation.
And so, the prisoners started unimaginative, with infant criticisms of America, which – after all – wasn’t owing to. From here it was a complex downgrade to larger estimation changes.
Aware that he had written [his] fire about without mostly any formidable threats or coercion, multitudinous times a the human line would alter his self-image to be regimentals with the achievement and with the untrodden ‘collaborator’ identifier, many times resulting in fifty-fifty more capacious acts of collaboration. Few as a context of factors converted to Communism, but as Henry Segal concluded:
Measured in terms of mixing, [.] disloyalty, changed attitudes and beliefs, [.] and doubts as to America’s impersonation, their efforts were favourably popular.
By making a supporters commitment (through lectures, analysis and fifty-fifty conduct of their work), the prisoners shifted their attitudes to be regimentals.
Breaking down established collective norms and attitudes, and construction something untrodden, with at worst the acquainted with portent of energy. Sounds a two shakes of a lamb’s tail-end like a infant supporters opinion.