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Dr. Eyad Qunaibi - La psychologie de la déviance 1
https://www.facebook.com/EyadQunaibi4 @EYADQUNAIBI gplus.to\eyadqunaibi al-furqan.org
https://www.facebook.com/EyadQunaibi4 @EYADQUNAIBI gplus.to\eyadqunaibi al-furqan.org
Peace be upon you and the mercy of God, dear brothers. One of the best-selling books in America is "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by the American professor Robert Cialdini.
In the third chapter of this book, he discusses the style of "Commitment and Consistency" as one of the most successful means of persuasion. The Chinese investigators used this method to persuade American prisoners of war to cooperate with them during the Korean War.
Brother Muhammad Al-Kalani translated this chapter and applied it to the reality of movements claiming to be part of the Islamic political work, which are lured into the trap of "commitment and consistency" to divert them from their path. We will see if this also applies to what is happening now in Syria, where some fighting factions are being lured to join the military council and undermine the project of the Islamic state.
We will begin by presenting what happened to the American prisoners to understand the style of commitment and consistency. Our story begins with the returning prisoners from Chinese communist detention camps after the Korean War in the 1950s.
The American military leadership was surprised by the worrying success of the Chinese interrogators in winning over American soldiers and extracting information from them without using brutal methods or torture. The prisoners were cooperative to the extreme in reporting their colleagues' escape attempts and provided this information voluntarily, and as soon as they were offered a worthless reward like a bag of rice.
As a result, the American military leadership formed a psychological and neurological assessment team led by Dr. Henry Segal, who conducted intensive interrogations of the returning prisoners to understand the Chinese methods of winning them over and changing their convictions.
It turned out that the Chinese rely on the method of: "Extract a small concession and build upon it." They extract any minor concession from the American prisoner, document this concession, and then lure the prisoner into acknowledging the implications and consequences of this concession.
The prisoner commits to these implications and acknowledges them until he finds himself changing his psychology to become consistent with his new position. Thus, his concessions escalate until he ultimately becomes an agent without realizing it. This is the essence of the commitment and consistency style.
Initially, the Chinese would ask the American prisoner to make statements that seemed very simple and without any significant consequences, such as: "The United States of America is not perfect" or "There is no unemployment problem in the communist state."
But as soon as these simple requests were met, the prisoners were asked to take another position that seemed to be an automatic result of the first statement, but represented a greater concession. For example, the prisoner who agrees that the United States is not perfect is asked to write a list of these problems, then sign it, then is asked to read it in a discussion group, and finally to write a detailed article to be broadcast on the radio.
The psychological team noted four very important factors to ensure the effectiveness of this method in changing the prisoner's position and conviction:
It is necessary for the prisoner to document his position or statement; as documentation is stronger in changing his impression of himself and the impression of his colleagues about him. The person unconsciously recalls his previous positions, especially those documented, as if they were the primary source of information about himself and determining his personality.
A person who takes a public position is more committed to it and defensive of it than someone who does not declare his position openly. The person always strives to appear before people and before himself as a person with a fixed principle, confident, and sound in judgment, and avoids anything that can be considered a conflict in his positions.
The more effort and trouble a person expends to obtain something or take a position, the more importance he gives to that thing. Writing an extensive article in an effort to win a competition was not an easy matter, which enhances commitment to the result.
This is the most important factor. The Chinese were keen that the rewards be of little value (such as cigarettes or fruit) instead of large rewards. The goal is for the prisoner to feel that he did it of his own free will and not out of greed for a large prize, which makes him bear the internal self-responsibility for his work and feel committed to defending it.
This was the summary of the experience of American prisoners who made concessions that seemed to have no consequences at first, but ultimately led to a change in their principles and cooperation with the enemy.
What is the relation of all this to the deviations of Islamists in political work, the deviations of fighting factions in Syria, and even the deviations of individuals and some preachers? This is what we will know in the next episode, God willing, which is a very important episode, so stay tuned.
Peace be upon you and the mercy of God.