Conspiracy theory-style thinking is now thoroughly mainstream, whether coming from the political left, the political right, the movies we watch or the internet guff we read (and also watch). While it's great to be questioning the status quo and powers that be, our common ideas of how society and social control work are so riddled with old myths and cliches that they can hardly be called "woke"... Hmmm Squad co-founder Thomas Morton talks about Cold War myths of mind control, outdated psychology experiments, the flawed and messy nature of social science research and why we should be much more suspicious of social media than "The MSM" (mainstream media).

1. The Illuminati have their work
cut out:
Why social control is harder than you think

4. That all powerful people are involved in secret manipulation and
conspiracy is now an all-pervasive societal trope.
This can lead to the weird feeling that people are more likely to
believe rumours and suspicion of corruption and wrong-doing
than they are actual face-value reports of wrongdoing and
corruption (fake news!)...

5. Part 1:
Classic concepts of social control
~or~
A Cold War hang-over

6. Mind control in sci-fi and thrillers
• Hypnosis – not what people think it is
• Drugs – effects unpredictable
• Subliminal Messages – no reason to act
on them

7. Classical and operant conditioning
• E.g. Pavlov’s dogs or training by punishment or reward
• These only work on a person-by-person basis, under certain
conditions – and the results are unpredictable in humans, in
the messiness of everyday life

8. “Brainwashing”
• A Cold War trope: From Maoist China and
Orwell’s 1984 to the Manchurian Candidate
and 60s/70s “new age” cults
• No accepted scientific definition
• Today more likely to talk about radicalisation
or, in relationships where power is an issue,
psychological manipulation or coercion (e.g.
In abusive relationships or human trafficking)

9. “Brainwashing”
If it does happen, it happens at an individual level.
Known techniques aim to undermine a person’s sense of
free agency and their critical thinking, including:
• Exploiting existing grievances, fears and needs
• Isolating the individual and controlling access to
information
• Creating doubt and confusion
• Repeating messages in a pressurized environment
But whether this can direct translate at a societal level is
extremely debateable

10. Milgram’s Obedience Experiment (1963)

11. Milgram #2
65 % of people would kill someone if ordered to by an authority
figure!!! A range of claims were made about this “shocking” result
BUT:
• Those who went along generally did so under incredible stress,
asking for constant reassurances
• A recent review of the original tapes found the “scientist” often did
not stick to the script, elaborating with persuasive appeals
• When the participants were simply told (ordered) that they MUST
carry on, they consistently stopped and refused – this was not
originally reported
• The Milgram experiment most likely does not show the effects of
obedience but the effects of persuasion and the power of buying
into the cause (scientific progress) and trusting a reliable authority
(Harvard University)

12. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)

13. Zimbardo #2
Again a range of claims were made about what this showed
from the effect of uniform and role to “de-individuation”
or stripping people of their personhood...
BUT:
• The experiment was never remotely scientifically controlled
and all involved very aware this was not “real life”
• Participants have since said they were simply play acting
and not taking it seriously
• It has come to light that some of the cruel behaviour was
in fact suggested and encouraged by the researchers
behind the scenes – not spontaneously dreamt up by the
guards themselves
• The findings have never been replicated

14. Persuasion
• Current thinking puts
more stock in a range of
persuasive methods than
in concepts of
“brainwashing” or blind
obedience
• But that means working
with a person’s free will
and existing attitudes,
not against them
• No guarantees on long-
term attitude change
• Social identity, in-
group/out-group
allegiances, are key

15. Part 1: Take home messages
• The kind of mind-control you see in a lot of
50s/60/70s/80s sci-fi thrillers is, frankly, B.S.
• Conditioning and “brainwashing” of a sort may
be possible individual by individual – but doesn't
follow that it could be done en masse with a
whole population against their will
• On a societal level conformity and “obedience” is
much more likely to be about persuading people
to buy in to a set of values or an ideology
because it appeals to their wants and needs and
sense of who they are

16. Part 2:
Complexity and society
~or~
Why the Illuminati have their work
cut-out for them

17. Attitude change
• Changing people’s attitudes is known to
be extremely hard, as the process is
organic and involves a plethora of factors
• Attitude formation and change has been
studied since the early 20th century (e.g.
in education, public health, civil rights and
politics) but to date no single unifying
theory or general model is agreed upon –
in fact the field is split with multiple
competing theories
• Worse, changing someone's attitude
doesn’t necessarily translate to changing
behaviour – or the behaviour change
could be different than predicted

18. Attitude change
• Recent work has focussed on the key role of unconscious and
automatic responses (including habits formed throughout a
lifetime of personal experiences) and environment (from your
relationships with the people around you, to the conditions and
situations you navigate in your everyday life)
• The above appear to have as much influence over your attitudes as
conscious reasoning and debating
• This means simply pushing a clear message (rational or emotional)
through usual media channels is hit and miss – unlikely, on its own,
to make a big impact on entrenched beliefs and behaviour...

19. Fallacies about “The Media” 1:
“The MSM” is the worst candidate for social control
• The political positions/bias of papers and news channels are
easy to familiarise yourself with and can be offset with a little
critical thought and by interrogating contrasting sources (Like
in GCSE history!)
• Social media, on the other hand, is a playground for social
influencers – there is no quality control: salacious fake news
and rumour spread faster and wider than reliable and fact-
checked sources
• Social media feels cosy and familiar, it’s interactive, it’s tied to
a person’s social image and insecurities, personal
information is on there for the targeting... and it’s always on

20. • The “If we got rid of Love Island everyone would get woke and rise
up” fallacy
• Certainly, in a capitalist society entertainment tells us who we are
supposed to be, what we should aspire to and how to spend our
money, while aiming to keep us sated in our worker’s lives (Adorno)
• But entertainment can also be informative and challenging and you
can pay attention to more than one thing – if we’re ignorant, it’s
our choice to be ignorant!
• Most people want to quietly get on with their lives in peace, blow
off some steam when they can and attend to their immediate
personal issues – and only have so much time and energy for
political, ideological, societal or global concerns
• That’s not always a bad thing – it’s actually a sign they are resistant
to “brainwashing”/radicalisation!
Fallacies about “The Media” 2:
The media keeps people distracted so they stay dumb

21. • Having democracy and free speech is not neat and nice and
full of consensus – it’s necessarily messy, chaotic and
fractious
• Politics, then, is about compromise, mediation and
pragmatism – about finding a way everyone can live together,
not about unyielding idealism – that’s actually what causes
the problems (and the attempts at social control)
• If people argue and express a range of beliefs and opinions,
that’s a sign that free speech – and the media – is working as
it should!
Fallacies about “The Media” 3:
If people “woke up” they’d all see things the same

22. The “messiness” of real life
• “Armchair conspiracy theorists have obviously never been project
managers”
• Researchers are constantly studying what happens when big bosses
put some new plan, programme or regime in place in a workplace
or community setting – and one thing is constant: people rarely
follow the programme exactly as planned

23. The “messiness” of real life
• There are as many different ways of
putting a programme into practice as
there are workplaces or communities
– things are constantly adapted,
shifted or cut
• Context, setting and the people
involved in implementing things
matter massively, with a whole host
of mechanisms at play – but these
are impossibly complex to predict, no
one can fully control this
• Workplaces, communities, society
are complex systems, like the
weather – complexity theory applies!

24. A “realist” view of society
• “Society is that which nobody wants, in the form they
encounter, for it is an unintended consequence” –
Margaret Archer, Realist Social Theory
• “At any given time, choices are conditioned by pre-
existing structures, institutions and opportunities.
Those choices, once applied, then go on to remould a
novel social structure which in turn conditions a fresh
round of choices for a slightly different cohort of
choice makers” – Ray Pawson (on Archer), The Science of Evaluation:
A Realist Manifesto
• Society is made by, but never under the control of,
human intentions – even those of the most powerful –
as it is in a permanent state of self-transformation

25. Part 2: Take home messages
• Attempts to influence what people think and do are a
normal part of the functioning of society
• But changing attitudes is hard – it’s complex,
unpredictable and poorly understood
• Society is as unknowably organic and complex as
anything else in the world, and always changing – it’s
impossible to have full knowledge of it, to fully
understand and predict it – and hence to fully control
it, no matter how much powerful people might try (or
flatter themselves that they are in control... for a while)
• Never mind the MSM – be very cautious around social
media!
• No one is being radicalised by watching Love Island

26. Thank you for listening