This work made researchers recognize the need to guard against the Clever Hans effect by hiding certain aspects of a study from both the participants and experimenters. ‘Blind’ methods are now the gold standard of good science. And all because of a mathematical horse.
Both Bishop and Clever Hans appeared to be able to read people’s thoughts. In reality, both were simply responding to the involuntary signals given out by those around them. Other mind wizards have focused more on trying to control those thoughts and so persuade people to behave in certain ways. But is it really possible to take over someone’s mind and manipulate them like a puppet? Over the years several novelists and filmmakers have suggested it is, but what is the fact behind the fiction? Can someone be hypnotized to act against their will?
The Svengali Effect
In 1894 George du Maurier published his classic novel Trilby. The plot features a rogue hypnotist named Svengali, who places heroine Trilby O’Ferrall into a deep trance and then exploits her for his own benefit. In addition to being the second-bestselling novel of its day (outperformed only by Bram Stoker’s Dracula), and giving rise to the Trilby hat, du Maurier’s novel encouraged the public to believe that some people have the power to make others act against their will. But is this really the case?
Around the turn of the last century several researchers tackled the issue by placing people in trance states and asking them to carry out various questionable acts, such as committing a mock murder or throwing a glass of ‘acid’ (actually water) in the face of the experimenter.6 Although many of the participants did stab others with rubber daggers and soak researchers, the work was not carried out under well controlled conditions and so generated more questions than answers. In the mid-1960s, University of Pennsylvania psychologists Martin Orne and Fredrick Evans decided to take a more rigorous look at the issue.7
Orne found some highly suggestible students and tested them one at a time. Each was put into a trance and then asked to sit before an open-fronted box. A researcher placed a harmless green tree snake in the box and the participants were told that they had an irresistible urge to pick up the snake. All of them went along with the suggestion and removed the snake. Next, the experimenters put on a pair of long thick gloves and brought forth a genuinely dangerous red-bellied black snake. They explained that this was one of the most venomous snakes in the world and could kill a human with a single bite. The snake was placed into the box and all of the participants were told that they had an irresistible urge to pick it up. Amazingly, all of them tried to carry out the action, and it was only as they placed their hands into the box that they discovered the researchers had secretly slid a glass plate in front of the snake.
On the face of it, Orne and Evans appeared to have persuaded the hypnotized students to act against their best interests. However, a second stage of the study was cleverly designed to discover if that was really true. The experimenters found a group of six highly non-suggestible students, didn’t bother trying to put them into a trance, and instead simply asked them to pretend to be hypnotized. Surprisingly, all of them were also willing to try to pick up both the harmless snake and its highly venomous counterpart. It was clear that the results obtained in the first stage of the study were not due to hypnosis. To discover why the students were willing to risk their lives during the experiment, the researchers then asked their non-suggestible participants what they were thinking when they reached for the poisonous snake. Nearly all of them explained that they knew they were taking part in a study and so were convinced that the experimenter wouldn’t let them come to any harm. These findings suggested that it isn’t possible for researchers to properly evaluate whether people can be made to act against their will when hypnotized. University ethics committees wouldn’t allow participants to be put into a situation that was genuinely risky and, even if they did, participants might carry out a dangerous act simply because they believed that they were safe.
However, when researchers took a careful look back at older investigations into the alleged Svengali effect they discovered one demonstration that overcame this problem. Around the turn of the last century, hypnotist and researcher Jules Liegeois conducted a rather unusual demonstration during a conference held at the Salpêtriére School in Paris. Liegeois placed a young woman into a trance, handed her a rubber knife, said that it was a genuine knife, and asked her to stab someone in the audience. The woman promptly obliged. Unfortunately, Liegeois didn’t think to ask someone who wasn’t hypnotized to carry out the same test, and so incorrectly concluded that the demonstration showed that those in hypnotic trances could be made to behave in a way that was not in their best interests. However, once most of the conference-goers had left the room, a group of mischievous medical students told the still-hypnotized woman that she should remove her clothing. The woman would have realized that whereas stabbing someone with a rubber dagger was all good fun, complying with this suggestion was going to be genuinely embarrassing. She didn’t strip off. In fact, she stood up and ran out of the room. Interestingly, there has been only one attempt to replicate this fascinating, but unethical, study. In the 1960s a University researcher randomly selected a young female volunteer, sat her in front of a group and suggested that she remove her clothes. The professor was horrified to discover his volunteer rapidly starting to unbutton her clothing and quickly called a halt to the demonstration. It was only later that he discovered that he happened to have chosen a professional stripper as his subject.
HOW TO HYPNOTIZE A CHICKEN
Ormond McGill was a talented stage hypnotist. Born in 1913, he worked under the stage name of 'Dr Zomb', and pioneered many of the techniques used by modern-day performers. McGill's 1947 book, The Encyclopedia Of Genuine Stage Hypnotism, describes how chickens can be positioned to ensure that they become motionless and appear hypnotized. According to McGill, all you need to do is carefully catch the bird by its neck, place it on its front on a table, and rest its head horizontally. Finally, draw a two-foot-long chalk line on the table, directly out from its beak. The chicken will then lie motionless on the table (see photograph).
While hypnotized, the chicken can be made to eat an onion, wear X-ray glasses, and perform a striptease. Just kidding. Actually, rather than being hypnotized, the lack of movement is due to tonic immobility, wherein the chicken is engaging in a defensive mechanism intended to put off potential predators by feigning death. To appear to awaken the animal from the deep trance, simply push the chicken's head away from the chalk line.
Despite the mass of films and books suggesting otherwise, the scientific evidence suggests that it is not possible to make people act against their will by hypnotizing them. However, work into other forms of mind control has yielded far more positive and worrying results. To find out more we have to explore the dark and murky world of cults.
From Monkey Salesman to Charismatic Preacher
Born in 1931, Jim Jones grew up in a rural Indiana community.8 Later described by some of his neighbours as a ‘really weird kid’, Jones spent much of his childhood exploring religion, torturing animals, and discussing death. He also exhibited an early interest in preaching, with one childhood friend recalling how Jones once draped an old sheet over his shoulders, formed a group of other children into a makeshift congregation, and promptly gave a sermon pretending to be the Devil. In his teens he enrolled as a student pastor in a local Methodist Church, but left when the church leaders banned him from preaching to a racially mixed congregation. In 1955, aged just 24, Jones rounded up a small flock of faithful followers and founded his own church, the Peoples Temple. Rather bizarrely, he funded this ambitious venture by going door-to-door selling pet monkeys. When he wasn’t engaged in monkey business he spent time honing his public speaking skills and soon built a considerable reputation as a highly charismatic preacher.
Jones’ initial message was one of equality and racial integration. Practising what he preached, he encouraged his followers to help provide food and employment for the poor. W
ord of his good deeds soon spread, resulting in almost a thousand people flocking to his church. Jones continued to use his influence to help enrich the community, opening both a soup kitchen and a nursing home. In 1965 he claimed to have had a vision that the Midwest of America would soon be the target for a nuclear strike, and persuaded about a hundred members of his congregation to follow him to Redwood Valley in California. He still focused on supporting those most in need, helping drug addicts, alcoholics and the poor.
By the early 1970s storm clouds were gathering. He was asking for a greater level of commitment from his followers, urging them to spend holidays with other Temple members rather than their families, and give their money and material possessions to the church. In addition, Jones had developed a serious drug habit and had become increasingly paranoid about the idea of the American government trying to destroy his church. Local journalists eventually started to take an interest in the stories of unhealthy levels of commitment emerging from the Peoples Temple, causing Jones to attempt to escape unwanted scrutiny by shifting his headquarters to San Francisco. Here his preaching again proved highly successful, and within a few years the Temple congregation had doubled in size. However, before long journalists again started to write articles that criticized him, prompting him to decide to leave America and build his own ‘utopian’ community abroad.
He carefully considered several countries before deciding to set up his self-supporting commune in Guyana on the northern coast of South America. From Jones’ perspective it was a wise choice, in part, because Guyanese officials could be easily bribed, allowing him to receive illegal shipments of firearms and drugs. In 1974 he negotiated a lease on almost 4,000 acres of remote jungle in the north-west of the country. Modestly naming the plot ‘Jonestown’, the charismatic preacher and several hundred of his followers packed their bags and moved to Guyana. It was a harsh existence. Jonestown was isolated, suffered from poor quality soil, and the nearest water supply could be reached only after a seven-mile hike along muddy roads. Severe diarrhoea and high fevers were common. In addition to working 11-hour days, Temple members were also expected to attend long evening sermons and classes in socialism. A variety of punishments were administered to those who neglected their duties, including imprisonment in a small coffin-shaped wooden box, and being forced to spend hours at the bottom of a disused well.
On the 17 November 1978, US Congressman Leo Ryan travelled to Guyana to investigate rumours of people being held at Jonestown against their will. When he arrived, Ryan initially heard nothing but praise for the new community. However, towards the end of the first day of his visit a small number of families secretly informed Ryan that they were far from happy and eager to leave. Early the following morning 11 Temple members sensed a growing feeling of danger and desperation in Jonestown, and secretly made their escape by walking 30 miles through the surrounding dense jungle. Later that day Ryan and a small number of defectors headed to a nearby airstrip and attempted to board planes to return to America. Armed members of the Temple’s ‘Red Brigade’ security squad opened fire, killing Ryan and several members of his group. Ryan became the only Congressman in the history of the US to be murdered in the line of duty.
Sensing his world crumbling around him, Jones gathered together the residents of Jonestown, told them that Ryan and his party had been killed, explained that the American government would now seek revenge on the community, and urged everyone to participate in a mass act of ‘revolutionary suicide’. Large drums of grape-flavoured juice laced with cyanide were brought out, and Jones ordered everyone to drink the liquid. Parents were urged to first administer the poison to their children and then drink it themselves. An audiotape made at the time shows that whenever followers were reluctant to participate, Jones urged them to join in, proclaiming ‘I don’t care how many screams you hear, I don’t care how many anguished cries, death is a million times preferable to this life. If you knew what was ahead of you, you’d be glad to be stepping over tonight.’ Over 900 people died during the ritual, including around 270 children. Although several armed Temple guards had surrounded the group, it appears that the majority of the followers willingly killed themselves, with one woman writing ‘Jim Jones is the only one’ on her arm during the episode. Up until 11 September 2001 the deaths represented the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster.
For over 30 years psychologists have speculated as to how Jim Jones persuaded so many people to take their own lives, and parents to murder their children. Some have pointed out that the majority of the Temple congregation were psychologically vulnerable individuals desperate to believe Jones’ message of equality and racial harmony. Jones referred to Jonestown as the ‘promised land’ and described it as a place where parents could raise their children away from the racial abuse that had scarred their own lives. His mission was also attractive because it provided people with a strong sense of purpose, a relief from feelings of worthlessness, and made them part of a large family of caring and like-minded individuals. As one survivor memorably put it, ‘Nobody joins a cult . . . you join a religious organization or a political movement, and you join with people you really like.’ Although these factors clearly played a part in the Jonestown tragedy, they are far from the full picture. People are often attracted to religious and political organizations because they offer a sense of purpose and extended family, but most would be unwilling to lay down their lives for the cause. Instead, psychologists believe that Jones’ influence relied on four key factors.
First, Jones was skilled at getting his foot in the door.
Getting a Foot in the Door
In a now classic study carried out by Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser of Stanford University, researchers posed as volunteer workers and went from door-to-door explaining that there was a high level of traffic accidents in the area and asking people if they would mind placing a sign saying ‘DRIVE CAREFULLY’ in their gardens.9 This was a significant request because the sign was very big and so would ruin the appearance of the person’s house and garden. Perhaps not surprisingly, few residents agreed to display it. In the next stage of the experiment, the researchers approached a second set of residents and asked them to place a sign saying ‘BE A SAFE DRIVER’ in their garden. This time the sign was just three inches square, and almost everyone accepted. Two weeks later, the researchers returned and now asked the second set of residents to display the much larger sign. Amazingly, over three-quarters of people agreed to place the big ugly placard. This concept, known as the ‘foot in the door’ technique, involves getting people to agree to a large request by first getting them to agree to a far more modest one.
Jones used the technique to manipulate his congregation. Followers would first be asked to donate a small amount of their income to the Temple, but over time the amount required would rise until they had given all of their property and savings to Jones. The same applied to acts of devotion. When they first joined the church, members were asked to spend just a few hours each week working for the community. As time passed, these few hours expanded little by little until members were attending long services, helping to attract others into the organization and writing letters to politicians and the media. By ratcheting up his requests slowly, Jones was using the ‘foot in the door’ technique to prepare his followers to make the ultimate sacrifice. But this technique is only successful if people do not draw a line in the sand and speak out against the increased demands. The second psychological technique employed by Jones was designed to quell this potential rebellion.
All Together Now
In the 1950s, American psychologist Solomon Asch conducted a series of experiments into the power of conformity.10 Participants were asked to arrive at Asch’s laboratory one at a time and were introduced to about six other volunteers. Unbeknownst to each participant, all of these other volunteers were actually stooges who were working for Asch. The group, made up of the participant and stooges, were sat around a table and told that they wer
e about to take part in a ‘vision test’. They were then shown two cards. The first card had a single line on it, while the second card contained three lines of very different length, one of which was the same length as the line of the first card. The group were asked to say which of the three lines on the second card matched the line on the first card. They had been seated in such a way as to ensure that the genuine participant answered last. Everyone was asked to voice their answers and each of the ‘volunteers’ always gave the same one. For the first two trials, all of the stooges gave the correct response to comparing the lines, while on the third trial the stooges all gave an incorrect answer. Asch wanted to discover what percentage of participants would conform to peer pressure and give an obviously incorrect answer in order to go along with the group. Amazingly, 75 per cent of people conformed. In a slight variation on the procedure, Asch had just one of the stooges break with the group and give a different answer. This one dissenting voice reduced the amount of conformity to around 20 per cent.
The Peoples Temple was a huge experiment in the psychology of conformity. Jones was aware that any dissent would encourage others to speak out and so tolerated no criticism. To help enforce this regime, Jones had informers befriend those thought to be harbouring doubts about the Temple, with any evidence of dissent resulting in brutal beatings or public humiliation. He also split up any groups that were likely to share their concerns with each other. Families were separated, with children first being seated away from their parents during services and later placed into the full-time care of another church member. Spouses were encouraged to participate in extramarital sexual relationships to loosen marital bonds. Similarly, the dense jungle around Jonestown ensured that the community was completely cut off from the outside world and had no way of hearing any dissenting voices from those not involved. The powerful and terrible effects of this intolerance of dissent emerged during the mass suicide. An audiotape of the tragedy revealed that at one point a woman openly declared that the babies deserved to live. Jones acted quickly to quell the criticism, stating that babies are even more deserving of peace and that ‘the best testimony we can give is to leave this goddamn world’. The crowd applaud Jones, with one man shouting ‘It’s over, sister . . . We’ve made a beautiful day’, and another adding, ‘If you tell us we have to give our lives now, we’re ready’.
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