Rebuilding Minds: Mass Manipulation

In this article, I will discuss whether we can hypnotize a large group of people and make them do what we want, based on the TV series I watched a few months ago called Hometown. For those who do not know the series, let me briefly talk about why the series made me want to research this subject. I would like to start with the element that caught my attention directly in the series, leaving the general script flow aside. Cassettes… Not cassettes like albums or ceremonies. Video and audio tapes in which repeating vague sentences and sounds, and meaningless images irregularly appear on the screen… Well, what happens to those who watch these tapes? People's characters change. They embrace a certain thought to the point of sacrificing their lives without blinking. Some have hallucinations, and others find themselves among the attackers in a terrorist attack they can't remember later. The character who prepared the tapes is already a mystery in himself. It would be a lie if I said that while watching the series, I didn't worry for a moment that I would be hypnotized by just listening to him talk.

In short, after watching the series, I questioned it. Ok, hypnosis is possible and used… How possible is it to hypnotize hundreds of people with a single video like this?

What is Hypnosis?

While watching television, surfing social media, or reading a book in our daily lives, almost everyone is isolated from their surroundings and goes into a kind of trance state. Although we have not completely closed our awareness of our environment, our brain reduces the severity of incoming stimuli. Hypnosis can be thought of as a meditative state in which this deep trance state is intentionally created. By trained specialist hypnotherapists, the person can be brought into this state of deep focus for therapeutic purposes. It is said that the referrals made at this stage can be used as an auxiliary tool in improving the health of the person. Even if it is not directly for physiological treatments, it is mentioned that it can be used in situations such as the management of psychological problems and alleviation of pain.

During hypnosis, activity has been shown to increase in the prefrontal cortex, parietal networks, and anterior cingulate cortex, which are responsible for brain functions such as emotion processing, learning, perception, and memory. In addition, a calming effect has emerged in brain regions that control autonomic functions such as breathing and heartbeat. These findings, which emerged as a result of brain imaging, provide us with evidence that suggestions given during hypnosis can cause changes in emotions, behaviors, and memory.

Hypnosis in the Operating Room

A fine example of the power of the mind-body relationship and the effect of hypnosis on that relationship is Beverly Levinson, a patient who was hypnotized during surgery. Levinson was a 64-year-old cancer-fighting patient. She suffered from severe jaw pain due to previous surgeries. An interesting proposal was presented to Levinson for another surgery. Instead of general anesthesia, only local anesthesia would be applied to the operation area and Levinson would be sedated with hypnosis. The anesthesiologist would be on standby to switch to general anesthesia when necessary, constantly checking vital signs.

Levinson met Rosalinda Engle, the specialist who would administer hypnosis a week before the surgery. On the day of surgery, Engle would sit next to Levinson throughout the surgery, helping her maintain the trance state. Levinson later said that she felt as much pressure as getting a filling at the dentist while describing her experience. In less than an hour after surgery, Levinson was out of bed, dressed, and walking around. Besides getting rid of the side effects of general anesthesia, she recovered faster and did not need painkillers after surgery. This example is a good proof of the potency of hypnosis.

Self Hypnosis

With the help of hypnotists, it is possible to relieve pain, treat mental illness, and recover from past traumas. Well, as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, if there are trance-like states that we spontaneously enter while watching TV or reading a book, is it possible for us to hypnotize ourselves? Many techniques such as brain resetting, subliminal suggestions, and visualization can now be found easily on the internet or in books. We can group these methods under the name of “self-hypnosis” by which you can relax and direct your thoughts individually without the help of a therapist.

So, how is it possible to reach the level of self-hypnosis and reprogram the mind? If you have researched this subject before, you must have heard of alpha-theta waves. Even if you haven't heard, let me summarize the brain waves in general as follows. Depending on the activity state of our brain, the rhythmic electrical transmission of each nerve cell to another nerve cell creates a wave-like pattern. The frequencies of these emitted waves are measured in Hertz and represent different levels of consciousness. Beta waves awake consciousness; alpha waves mental relaxation and meditative state; theta waves REM dream state and hypnotic state; delta waves a state of very deep transcendental meditation in which awareness is completely cut off; and finally, gamma waves are known to represent insight. Based on this information, we can say that the most suitable brain wave for mind programming is the alpha-theta range. For this, you can find music suitable for the frequency you want from many places and reprogram your mind by relaxing without breaking away from reality.

Mass Hypnosis

We mentioned that hypnosis can play an auxiliary role in physiological and psychological treatments. Now let's look at the darker manipulative side. The benefits of hypnosis are in directing our thoughts. As such, manipulating the thoughts and wishes of others for one's benefit is also a form of hypnosis. We should be feeling this especially prominently in advertisements. Sometimes, no matter how full we are, a snack in the advertisement can make our mouths water. We can buy a new dress even though we don't need it. When we see the latest model phone, the phone that is still in good condition may lose its charm. In other words, the marketing world is putting millions of people under mass hypnosis by designing advertisements to stimulate our desire to buy. We can say that many charismatic leaders also have hypnotic effects on large groups. By presenting their wishes to their followers as promises, they can convince them to follow him on the path he chooses.

There can be many different ways to mobilize a large group, but the first thing that came to my mind was to create false memories. False memories are not something that can only be created with hypnosis. Every person creates false memories at certain times in their life, reconstructs their memories in different ways, and rewrites the details of their memories. People will inevitably be misled by taking advantage of this deficit of human memory and making people believe what does not happen as if it has happened.

Let's explore the false memories a little more. What is it? Why does it happen? How is it formed? False memories, as the name suggests, are a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a memory is remembered as if it happened. Over time, our memories begin to fade, and gaps form. As a result of misinformation and guidance, false memories can be formed by filling these gaps in the memory with the most plausible scenario. Thus, an event is either misremembered or takes a place in our brain as a completely rewritten memory. These memories become so strong and vivid over time that we may not even realize they are wrong. This is why memories are often unreliable, even in normal situations. Even if it is a purely humanitarian situation, the consequences can be very serious in critical situations that require testimony.

When we say false memories, one of the first terms that comes to our mind will of course be the Mandela Effect. The Mandela Effect has been defined as a group of people's misremembering of an event or person. It first began when the investigative writer, Fiona Broome, spoke to other people at a conference about the death of South African President Nelson Mandela in prison in the 1980s. In fact, Mandela was president of South Africa from 1994-1999 and died in 2013. Oddly enough, everyone Broome spoke to was sure that Mandela died in the 1980s, but also remembered international news, even speeches by Mandela's wife. Interestingly, a large group can misremember an event in such detail. Unfortunately, it is not yet known exactly how this situation occurs, as there is not enough research on the subject. Before expressing my comment on the subject, I would like to talk about subliminal messages.

Subliminal Message

The subconscious is more powerful than the conscious at processing information. Another important feature is that it works on autopilot. Subliminal literally means sub-threshold, and subliminal messages can be defined as signals that escape the conscious mind's attention below the sub-threshold level. Therefore, subliminal messages that speak to our subconscious can trigger some reactions without us noticing, and we can't notice these messages consciously.

In a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology to observe the effects of subliminal messages, the words "Coca-Cola" and "thirst" were placed between the frames in an episode of the TV show The Simpsons. Participants reported that they felt more thirsty after watching the episode than the control group. In other words, the aim has been achieved and the expected effect has been left on the audience. However, this does not mean that the effect is strong enough.

In another study published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, it was shown that these effects created by subliminal messages last for a maximum of 25 minutes. In other words, it is said that it does not create lasting effects and does not have a strong enough effect to force a person to act suddenly and do something he does not want.

It may seem that subliminal messages do not restructure our minds, but I think that the fact that they can infiltrate our minds should not be ignored. As a result, constant exposure to such subliminal messages in self-hypnosis methods such as formatting the mind brings about some changes.

Let's go back to the Mandela effect. Although it is not fully explained that many people misremember an event with similar details, it is possible that some visual and auditory subliminal messages may have triggered the formation of false memories. Of course, I'm not saying that someone did this on purpose. However, the order of the news on television, the combination of the series and other broadcasts after the news, may have triggered the brain to write a different scenario by blending these memories. It makes me think that this is due to mixed information leaking into the subconscious, like a kind of subliminal message, since it doesn't happen consciously and we don't focus on everything on television. So by combining these two phenomena, it seems possible to manipulate and control a large group.

I will say that, although it is not possible to make people watching television act like a commanded computer game character or like soulless zombies or puppets, people's brains can be formatted over time by instilling a strong sense of belief in a certain thought. Similar methods are already used in self-hypnosis, and any information carefully processed in the mind subliminally can affect a large community. The hardest part of the job is to create a group that will follow a certain principle. The only move left after that is to tell them what to do. This stage will not be different from a psychiatrist's guidance of a patient he has hypnotized.

So, Can Anyone Be Hypnotized?

Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine examined functional and structural MRI scans of the brains of 12 easily hypnotizable adults and 12 non-hypnotizable adults. It has been observed that individuals who can be easily hypnotized have more functional connections in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is the executive-control region of the brain, and in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which plays a role in focusing, compared to individuals who cannot be hypnotized.

In other words, even if everyone is hypnotized in the sci-fi scenario we are talking about, there will be a few people who will try to understand what is going on and watch with full of confusion, like those characters we often encounter in movies and TV series. Of course, I hope such a scenario will never happen, or even if it does, let's say that the number of people who will not be affected will be much more.

What do you think about this subject? Is it possible to manipulate a large group? If possible, in what situations?