Mind Control on Dr. Phil

by brotherdan 29 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  brotherdan

  Usually I'm not into Dr. Phil at all. But yesterday he had on Dr. Philip Zimbardo from Standford university on the show to talk about obedience to authority. Now the focus was on people doing BAD and CRUEL things when obeying authority, but I could not help but see how many of the psychological issues also seemed to take place in Jehovah's Witnesses.

  For example, a man was waiting outside the studio when a security gaurd walked up to the waiting man with a supposed thief. He said he had to go get his supervisor, and would the man watch this guy for him. "If he tries to run, just take this tazer. It won't hurt him, it'll just imobilize him" is what he said. So the guy took the tazer and the guard walked off. The thief then said to the guy, "Ok, I'm out of here." Immediately the man tazed him. And while the guy was still on the ground, he tazed him again for good measure.

  Now this was all setup and planned (except for the man that tazed the "thief"). The question was, why did this guy follow the directions of this guard? The guard was in fact an actor, and had no authority at all.

  Some of the conclusions were VERY interesting. One of the conclusions was that when we preceive that someone has authority over us, we tend to give unquestioning obedience. Sometimes certain environments can also contribute to doing things we NEVER would have thought we would be capable doing. One example given was the experience of what went on at Abu Ghraib. Some of these men and women were "perfect soliders" but found themselves involved with very inhumane practices.

  Anyway, it made me think about the situation of Jehovah's Witnesses. They have the preceived authority of the Governing Body over them. They give it unquestioning obedience. They believe things that they may never have chosen on their own. How many Witnesses would drink the spiked "Kool Aid" if commanded by the GB? Sadly I think a great majority WOULD.

  Here is Dr. Philip Zimbardo's website. http://zimbardo.com/lucifer.html . Most of you will recognize him from the infamous stanford prison experiment in the 1970's where he set up a mock prison with students acting as guards and students acting as prisoners. After 1 day the guards began to be physically and mentally abusive to the prisoners, the prisoners began fighting with the guards, and all hell broke loose causing the experiment to end in only 6 days.
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  brotherdan

  Here is a quote from one of Dr. Zimbardo's book that I think applies to JWs in a GREAT way:

  "People will do almost anything in a group and will do anything not to be rejected." - Dr. Philip Zimbardo
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  GrandmaJones

  btt
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  brotherdan

  Here's a link to the show. I don't think it plays the whole show, but you can see some clips.

  http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/1529/
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  Snoozy

  Dr Phil has had some pretty good shows on lately. I had to go and miss that one..:>(

  Snoozy..
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  troubled mind

  I saw that show too . It was actually a Dr Phil show that got through to me and empowered me enough to stop going to meetings !

  He had a show on about cults and was interviewing these two young girls both named Fawn . (They had been in a cult in Colorado ) They were not happy in the cult because they were going to be forced to marry older men or the leader . They felt captive though because of a strong fear of being shunned by their family and also the fear of being killed at Armagedeon .I could see how their fears were so much like mine and how religion was the basis of those fears .

  In that show he had Steve Hassan on and links to his books . That is were I found a link to Freeminds and ultimately to JWD ....

  So in my world Dr Phil rocks ! haha
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  Ultimate Reality

  Anyone interested in this topic should read the Milgram study on Obedience to Authority -- it's far more comprehensive than any of the studies currently done on this issue.
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  Markfromcali

  I'm reading Coercion by Douglas Rushkoff, and he notes that 'textbooks on employee management, salesmanship, and interrogation all detail precise methods for eliciting childhood emotional states. The technique is called "induced regression," and it exploits the remnants of our natural childhood urges so that the subject "transfers" parental authority onto the practitioner.' It's good to recognize how pervasive this kind of influence is. It's easy or at least natural to refer to the JW experience, but it we only focus our attention on that context we're going to miss a lot. The author goes on to note that hundreds of healthy cognitive processes can be exploited if the person understands what they're doing. The person who only wants out of the WTS but is content to fit in to the mainstream will likely not be aware of such things, nor are they necessarily interested.
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  Scully

  Zimbardo is one of my absolute favorite social psychologists. Another is Stan Milgram.

  Zimbardo is most well known for his "prison" experiment, where a group of volunteers was randomly divided into two sub-groups: prison guards and prison inmates. They were each given costumes to enhance the experience. It didn't take long before role playing turned very very ugly and abusive.

  Milgram is known for the obedience experiment, where subjects were instructed to ask questions of other participants (who were collaborating with Milgram) and when the questions were answered incorrectly, the subject was instructed to administer a negative stimulus (an electric shock) to the individual answering the question, and increase the intensity of the shock for each incorrect answer given (no actual shocks were administered) and the collaborators responded with screams and whatever appropriate reactions you'd expect from severe electric shocks. In almost all instances (fully two-thirds of the test subjects), the subject obeyed the instructions to administer shocks. Milgram's conclusion was that people will suspend their own judgement and follow instructions from people whom they perceive to be legitimate authority figures. They defer responsibility to the authority figure, rather than accept accountability for their own actions.

  A few years back, I read the book The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, PhD - and posted about it here: Study Finds Education Enhances Personal Conscience & Diminishes Obedience. She described the Milgram experiment and then went on to discuss the participants who refused to administer the shocks:

  In Milgram's initial study, one of the minority of people who eventually refused to continue with the experiment was a thirty-two year old engineer who apparently regarded the scientist in the lab coat as, at most, his intellectual peer. This subject pushed his chair away from the shock generator and in an indignant tone said to Milgram, "I'm an electrical engineer, and I have had shocks ... I think I've gone too far already, probably." In an interview later, when Milgram asked him who was accountable for shocking the man in the other room, he did not assign responsibility to the experimenter (Milgram). Instead, he replied, "I would put it on myself entirely." He was a professional person with an advanced education, and education must be acknowledged as one of the factors that determine whether or not conscience stays alert. It would be a grave and arrogant mistake to imagine that an academic degree directly increases the strength of conscience in the human psyche. On the other hand, education can sometimes level the perceived legitimacy of an authority figure, and thereby limit unquestioning obedience. With education and knowledge, the individual may be able to hold on to the perception of him- or herself as a legitimate authority.

  Other studies have supported the idea that education causes people to accept responsibility for their own actions, rather than defer to perceived authority figures. To me, this speaks volumes on the matter of the WTS so strongly discouraging JWs from becoming better educated. They will realize that they are responsible for their choices, and much less likely to submit to the so-called authority of the Governing Body™. It will create a culture of questioning authority and bucking the system if it is found to be unjust or flawed. It will create a culture where people will allow their consciences to develop out of their own values, not out of a set of instructions that has been handed to them in a book or magazine.
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  Mad Sweeney

  Another good book is "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini.

  It leans toward the commercial uses of persuasion psychology more than the religious but if you've ever been a JW you'll see the parallels. There is little difference between commercial sales and religious sales. And the reading is easy with a lot of case studies and anecdotes.

  It's the book that gave me the idea that the Borg has individuals get baptized in front of thousands rather than privately because of the Deutsch and Gerard study finding that those who make a commitment publicly are far less likely to break it than those who make a commitment privately, for example. Lots of good stuff in there.

  Zimbardo is a leading researcher in this stuff, too. I find everything I've read from him fascinating.

  Good thread here, Dan. Thanks for the link.