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Greetings and peace be upon you, dear brothers.
One of the best-selling books in America is "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by 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 style to persuade American prisoners of war to cooperate with them during the Korean War. Brother Muhammad Al-Kilani translated this chapter and applied it to the reality of movements attributed to Islamic political work, which lure people 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 sabotage the project of the Islamic state. We will start by presenting what happened with the American prisoners to understand the style of commitment and consistency through it.
Our story begins with the American prisoners returning from detention camps in communist China after the Korean War, in which two countries participated in the 1950s. The American military leadership was surprised by the worrying success of the Chinese interrogators in manipulating American soldiers and extracting information from them without using brutal methods or torture.
The prisoners were cooperative to the extreme in reporting escape attempts by their colleagues, and they provided this information without coercion, as soon as a reward of little value, such as a bag of rice, was offered to them.
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 of war to understand the Chinese methods of winning their cooperation 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 consequences and acknowledges them until he finds himself changing his psychology to become consistent with his new position. His concessions then escalate until he ultimately becomes an agent without realizing it. This is the essence of the style of commitment and consistency.
Let us follow the details of this story to understand this style in depth.
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 in the communist state." However, 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 and closer to the enemy's demands.
For example, the prisoner who agreed with the Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect was asked to write a list of these problems in America that make it imperfect. He was then asked to sign his name on the list. After some time, he was asked to read this list in a discussion group with the other prisoners. He might then be asked to write an article expanding on the points he wrote in his list and explaining the aspects of those problems.
Throughout this process, he was told: "Isn't this what you believe yourself without anyone forcing you? We are not asking you for more than to state your belief. If you are confident in your belief, you are ready to commit to it, aren't you?" This is what we mean by commitment. He made a simple statement but committed to its consequences.
The Chinese would also hold competitions among the American prisoners for the best article comparing America to communism. Sometimes, an article would win that generally praises the United States but softens towards the Chinese communist viewpoint in one or two places. The important thing is to extract any concession, no matter how small.
Then, the Chinese would broadcast the American prisoner's article with his name on the radio directed at the fighting American forces, as well as in all the detention camps, so that the prisoner himself would hear it. Suddenly, the American prisoner would find himself having made statements that serve the enemy, meaning that he has, in one way or another, cooperated with the enemy.
The most important thing in this matter is that the prisoner realizes deep down that he has done what he has done and written his article and taken his positions voluntarily without severe threats or coercion. If the matter had been done under coercion, the prisoner would have found an excuse for his positions, and the people around him would have shared this view, leading to his rejection of the positions he took and his internal absolution from them. However, in reality, he did what he did without coercion, ending with the prisoner changing his view of himself until he becomes consistent and in harmony with the action he took and with the new definition of himself as a collaborator with the enemy.
It started with seemingly trivial and valueless statements, but the prisoner committed to these statements and was lured into other steps that changed his psychology. This change, in turn, allowed him to make greater concessions, and so on, on the principle of the "vicious cycle" until he wrote an expanded article criticizing the system of the state he was fighting for, even cooperating with its enemy.
This is the essence of the style of commitment and consistency. The psychological team noted four very important factors to ensure the effectiveness of this style in changing the prisoner's position and conviction.
The first factor: the necessity for the American prisoner to document his position or statement, as this 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.
Therefore, the Chinese were keen to extract a documented position consistent with their desires to the extent that if the prisoner refused to write the mentioned phrases such as "America is not perfect" or "no unemployment in communism," he was asked to copy a pre-written question and answer containing these meanings. This handwriting is a tangible evidence that lures the prisoner to psychological change, however small it may seem.
The Chinese also showed these to the other prisoners to change their view of their colleague. The strange thing is that even if the others knew that the writer did not choose to write those lines out of his own motivation, they would still feel that those writings represent the prisoner's true belief and feeling as long as the formulation does not indicate that he wrote them under coercion. This is the conclusion of a study by psychologists Edward Jones and James Harris.
It is not far from our minds the retractions published attributed to some theorists of the jihadist current and the influence of people on them despite their knowledge that these theorists wrote them in captivity and are still in captivity. The change in others' view of you ultimately makes you change your view of yourself.
The second factor to ensure the success of the gradual commitment and compliance is public commitment, public commitment. The one who takes a public stance is more committed to it and defends it more than those who do not declare their stance publicly. Therefore, the Chinese in the mentioned competitions would bring an article that softens, even if slightly, towards communism amidst much praise for the American system, and they would hang this article in the detention camps and broadcast it on the radio.
Thus, the author of the article finds himself driven to maintain the stance he took, justifying the statement he made to appear as a person with a fixed principle, as a person in harmony with himself and in agreement with his actions. And here lies the crux of the matter, for the person who acts in contradictory ways appears to people as fickle, unsure, scattered in thought, untrustworthy. And all these characteristics are despised by society and by the person himself. While the consistent person, steadfast in his actions, appears confident and sound in judgment. Therefore, you find people always strive to be consistent in their actions and avoid anything that can be considered a conflict in their positions.
The third factor is the additional effort expended, as this leads to higher commitment. In 1959, researchers Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills conducted a study that showed that a person who undergoes great pain and hardship to obtain something gives that thing much greater importance than someone who obtains the same thing with less effort. In the case of American prisoners, writing an extensive article in an effort to win the competition was not an easy task.
The fourth and final factor for the success of luring the prisoner through the style of compliance and commitment is self-choice, self-choice, which is the most important factor. In the experiment of the American prisoners, it might occur to one that in order to motivate the prisoner to win a competition by writing an article that softens towards communism, the rewards for that should be of high value. But we find that the rewards were of little value, from some cigarettes to a little fresh fruit, and not a big prize like warm clothes in the bitter cold or facilitating contact with the outside world.
The goal of hiding the big rewards was for the prisoner to feel that his writings are his own and stem from himself, without looking at himself as having written what he wrote out of greed for a big prize. The intention of all this is for the prisoner to take responsibility before himself for what he wrote. The goal of these incentives is to motivate the prisoners to participate in the competition, and to limit their value so that they do not feel that they changed their principles for them, as the required is for the prisoners to accept the internal self-responsibility for their work and writings and feel that they are committed to them and forced to defend them.
This was a summary of the experience of American prisoners who made concessions that seemed consequence-free at first, but eventually 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? And the deviations of the fighting factions in Syria? 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 follow it.
Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.