Polarization Research Project: End the Dark Days, page 1

The ScepticOverlord spoke, saying:

Why not consider gathering up a few senior members for an ongoing research project to collect materials that demonstrate the strategies in play to create and perpetuate the fanatical divide.

The project might also look back into history and pinpoint when it appears the strategy began (I tend to think it started in earnest after the Nixon presidency).

From: Dark Days. (The black band on ATS)
Related: Ending the Dark Days


...So all who see the urgency of this quest, gather here, post your thoughts, sign your names, crank up your search engines.


Here are a few links and sources to get the ball rolling.

Arguing: logical fallacies to avoid
Fallacies

Brainwashing

Coercive persuasion and thought reform are alternate names for programs of social influence capable of producing substantial behavior and attitude change through the use of coercive tactics, persuasion, and/or interpersonal and group-based influence manipulations (Schein 1961; Lifton 1961). Such programs have also been labeled "brainwashing" (Hunter 1951), a term more often used in the media than in scientific literature. However identified, these programs are distinguishable from other elaborate attempts to influence behavior and attitudes, to socialize, and to accomplish social control. Their distinguishing features are their totalistic qualities (Lifton 1961), the types of influence procedures they employ, and the organization of these procedures into three distinctive subphases of the overall process (Schein 1961; Ofshe and Singer 1986). The key factors that distinguish coercive persuasion from other training and socialization schemes are:

1. The reliance on intense interpersonal and psychological attack to destabilize an individual's sense of self to promote compliance

2. The use of an organized peer group

3. Applying interpersonal pressure to promote conformity

4. The manipulation of the totality of the person's social environment to stabilize behavior once modified

Thought-reform programs have been employed in attempts to control and indoctrinate individuals, societal groups (e.g., intellectuals), and even entire populations. Systems intended to accomplish these goals can vary considerably in their construction.

From: Coercive Persuasion and Attitude Change
Encyclopedia of Sociology Volume 1, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York
By Richard J. Ofshe, Ph.D.

.

[edit on 17-3-2005 by soficrow]

Hmmm, I thought all research projects belonged here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...
and ADVISOR would be the one to okay the project?

[edit on 18-3-2005 by DontTreadOnMe]

"The project might also look back into history and pinpoint when it appears the strategy began (I tend to think it started in earnest after the Nixon presidency). "


I think you will find that it goes back much farther than that.....

"As early as 151 BCE there were clearly different political parties of Jews in Judea. Under the rule of the Hasmoneans, these groups vied for power. Most of the documentary materials describing these different political forces were written by the winning political group, the Pharisees, so their descriptions of their political adversaries are suspect.

The first of these groups was the Sadducees. They came primarily from large land-owning aristocratic families and priestly families. Many were involved in the sacrificial cult of the Second Temple. For most of the Hasmonean period, and probably until the year 70 CE, they were politically powerful. However, they did not write anything for posterity, so we know about them only from their opponents, the Pharisees.

The Sadducees recognized the authority of the written Torah and viewed the sacrificial cult as the primary form of worship. They viewed the priests as the only authoritative representatives of Jewish law. They did not believe in the immortality of the soul, and denied that there was a divine reward/punishment system in a life after this life.

The Pharisees represented a new stream of Jewish thought. They maintained that, in addition to the written Torah, God had handed down an Oral Tradition at Mount Sinai. The Pharisees claimed divine authority for this Oral Tradition. They challenged the priests and maintained that the priests didn't know the correct laws because they didn't study the Oral Tradition. The Pharisees believed that the soul was immortal; there was a divine reward/punishment system which began at a person's death. All actions in this world affected the person's future in the World to Come. This tension between Pharisees and Sadducees may have started as early as 444 BCE.

It was the Pharisees who were involved with the people in the synagogues, teaching and encouraging study and prayer as Jewish forms of worship. So long as the Temple stood, the Pharisees never denied the importance of the sacrificial cult, but they accused the priests of performing the sacrifices incorrectly because the priests ignored the Oral Torah."

www.jewishgates.com...


sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it???

I think it goes farther than that though, and well, probably began within our own beings....a division within us.




[edit on 18-3-2005 by dawnstar]

For anybody interested in the meaning of polarization this is an overview.

Group polarization
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Group polarization effects have been demonstrated to exaggerate the inclinations of group members after a discussion. A military term for group polarization is "incestuous amplification".

Study of this effect shown that after participating in a discussion group, members tend to advocate more extreme positions and call for riskier courses of action than individuals whom did not participate in any such discussion. This phenomenon was originally coined risky shift but in recent years certain experimental conditions have been found that lead group discussion to inhibit risk; many now use choice shift as a replacement term for both effects.

In addition, attitudes such as racial and sexual prejudice tend to be reduced (for already low-prejudice individuals) and inflated (for already high-prejudice individuals) after group discussion.

Some studies have linked group polarization effects to the behaviors of trial juries. In different studies, mock jury members after deliberating favored either stronger or more lenient sentences than any individuals had held before discussion.

See also: Groupthink, group-serving bias, list of cognitive biases.

en.wikipedia.org...

How is this affecting ATS and what we can do to stop the spread.

And a bit more for the pot:


TECHNIQUES

Innoculation Theory

"If we want to strengthen existing attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, inoculation theory suggests that we should present a weak attack on those attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Again, the key word here is, "weak." If the attack is too strong, it will cause the attitude, belief, or behavior to get weaker or even move to the opposite position. The attack has to be strong enough to challenge the defenses of the receiver without overwhelming them.

Here are the steps of effective inoculation:

1) Warn the receiver of the impending attack.
2) Make a weak attack.
3) Get the receiver to actively defend the attitude."
The attack must be strong enough to force the receivers to defend. It must not be so strong as to overcome the defense.

................

In brainwashing - The following states are created systematically within the individual. These may vary in order, but all are necessary to the brainwashing process:

1. A feeling of helplessness in attempting to deal with the impersonal machinery of control.
2. An initial reaction of "surprise."
3. A feeling of uncertainty about what is required of him.
4. A developing feeling of dependence upon the interrogator .
5. A sense of doubt and loss of objectivity.
6. Feelings of guilt.
7. A questioning attitude toward his own value-system.
8. A feeling of potential "breakdown," i.e.,that he might go crazy.
9. A need to defend his acquired principles.
10. A final sense of "belonging" (identification).

www.rickross.com...

.........................

"To gain a wider historical perspective, and a needed reiteration of some American's culpability in many of the twentieth century's disgraces, Anton Chaitkin exposes British psychiatry: from eugenics to assassination."
www.econcrisis.homestead.com...

"Experiments in coercive interrogation and brainwashing would be conducted at Allen Institute under the auspices of the Canadian military, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Dr. Cameron's "terminal'' use of electric shock as a brain-burning torture, psychosurgery, and brainwashing with drugs and hypnosis would make the Canadian program the most famous apsect of the CIA's MK- Ultra."

.............................

also see
Neuro-Marketing: Straight to the Brain


.

This sounds interesting, yet vauge. I'll be glad to join. This would also allow me to read up on much needed sociological and evolutionary pyschology works.

Well, this is what I came up with so far.





Deep

A Social Psychologist's Search for Purple America.

HOW PEOPLE ARE INFLUENCED BY THE ACTUAL, IMAGINED, OR IMPLIED PRESENCE OF OTHERES (ALLPORT).

ARTICLES ON POLITICAL POLARIZATION

An interesting set of notes in regards to religious movements in early and subqequent America.

EXITING FROM THE TERRORISM-STATE TERRORISM VICIOUS CYCLE:



[edit on 18-3-2005 by ZeroDeep]

I'd like to be a part of this project as well.

I think that ServoHahn (sorry, I shouldn't be referring to you in the third person) serves (no pun intended) as a good example of the polarized nature of our politics. I'll admit to having had the ABB mentality as well. I think that John Kerry is a shining example of groupthink on the part of the Democrats. He wasn't chosen because he strongly represented the party's core ideals, but rather because everyone thought he was moderate enough to steal votes away from Bush. I think the party learnt the hard lesson that that is a horrible way of thinking. Most people in the party would rather have put Howard Dean up, but he was too strong of a Democrat, and that scared some people.

Anyway, I think I have a partial explanation for some groupthink. Bear with me here as some of this information is simply to give you a small background as to where my explanation is coming from.

As I've learnt from my Problems and Statistics course, statisticians don't like to claim that they've proven anything. It's actually a rather pessimistic field, and a statistician is supposed to say they've disproven one particular hypothesis. They are never supposed to say they've proven anything. In fact, my professor would tell us that if we had not found a counterexample to a hypothesis, then our sample size was too small. That's something quite unique in Probs and Stats as far as mathematics goes. To get back to the topic at hand, I think that groupthink comes from particular individuals with more extreme views on a matter, and their ideas become memes. I can't exactly explain why or how that happens except to say that the individuals within the group already have a predisposition to listen and consider the idea than those outside the group. Of course, not listening to the idea is more fallacious.

Something that I'd like to research would be the history of Japan leading into World War II. If I remember my Japanese history correctly, there are some eery similarities between those events and some things happening here in the US right now. What lead Japan into WWII was more of a slow rise to boiling point.

Okay guys - just start posting stuff here, or on RANT's thread at www.abovetopsecret.com... - and write ScepticOverlord too. ...He wants to do something specific with this project - so remind him.

sofi

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