Recent scientific research into how our beliefs are formed may throw some interesting insights into how politicians constant reiteration of untruths and the creation of a climate of fear work as a form of brainwashing…..
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This manipulation of belief happens every day. Politics is a fertile arena, especially in times of anxiety.
The stress of the terror attacks on the US in 2001 changed the way many Americans viewed the world, and … left the population open to tricks of belief manipulation. A recent survey, for example, found that more than half of Americans thought Iraqis were involved in the attacks, despite the fact that nobody had come out and said it.
This method of association uses the brain against itself. If an event stimulates two sets of neurons, then the links between them get stronger. If one of them activates, it is more likely that the second set will also fire. In the real world, those two memories may have little to do with each other, but in the brain, they get associated.
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