The CIA reinterpreted Chinese brainwashing as Skinnerian operant conditioning on unpredictable reinforcement schedules.

Evidence

Their research concluded that “mind control” was better understood as a complex system of conditioning based on unpredictable schedules of reinforcement, consistent with B. F. Skinner’s important discoveries on operant conditioning. According to Harvard historian Rebecca Lemov, the “mind control” researchers had a powerful effect on the CIA and other branches of the military. The notion that “human material was changeable”—that one’s personality, identity, awareness, and capacity for self-determining behavior could be crushed, eliminated, and replaced by external control—incited a new sense of panic and vulnerability: “If indeed the world was rife with threats to the inner as much as the outer man, then experts in these realms were needed more than ever. Many good and well-meaning professors—self-described or de facto human engineers—participated in the CIA’s programs to bring about slow or rapid change in the minds and behavior of people.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1009

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘mind control’ was reframed by researchers as conditioning through unpredictable schedules of reinforcement — a technical redefinition of a loaded term.
• XREF: The premise that ‘human material was changeable’ via environmental conditioning anticipates the core surveillance-capital premise that behavior can be shaped and more importantly predicted and modified. — connects to: Cold war panic over communist brainwashing drove CIA investment in mind control research. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1006; Mao’s thought-control targeted minds rather than bodies of opponents — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 39; The CIA treated foreign nations as laboratories for experimentation. — Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Secrets in the…, 349 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Coercive behavior modification on prisoners constitutes a form of state power over mind #expands (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1017
• Mao’s thought-control targeted minds rather than bodies of opponents #corroborates (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 39
• The CIA treated foreign nations as laboratories for experimentation. #expands (0.72) — Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Secrets in the…, 349
• Fear conditioning generalizes broadly rather than isolating the punished behavior #complicates (0.72) — , The Rod and the Child, 6123