Psychopathy in the workplace

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplace 

The presence of psychopathy in the workplace—although psychopaths typically represent a relatively small fraction of workplace staff—can do enormous damage when in senior management roles. Psychopaths are usually most common at higher levels of corporate organizations, and their actions often cause a ripple effect throughout an organization, setting the tone for an entire corporate culture. Examples of detrimental effects are increased bullying, conflict, stress, staff turnover and absenteeism; reduction in productivity and in social responsibility. Ethical standards of entire organisations can be badly damaged if a corporate psychopath is in charge. A 2017 UK study found that companies with leaders who show "psychopathic characteristics" destroy shareholder value, tending to have poor future returns on equity.

Academics refer to psychopaths in the workplace individually variously as workplace psychopaths, executive psychopaths, corporate psychopaths, business psychopaths, successful psychopaths, office psychopaths, white-collar psychopaths, industrial psychopaths, organizational psychopaths or occupational psychopaths. Criminal psychologist Robert D. Hare coined the term "snakes in suits" as a synonym for workplace psychopaths.

General

Oliver James identifies psychopathy as one of the dark triadic personality traits in the workplace, the others being narcissism and Machiavellianism.

Workplace psychopaths are often charming to staff above their level in the workplace hierarchy but abusive to staff below their level. They maintain multiple personas throughout the office, presenting each colleague with a different version of themselves.

Hare considers newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell to have been a strong candidate as a corporate psychopath.

Incidence

Hare reports that about 1 percent of the general population meets the clinical criteria for psychopathy. Hare further claims that the prevalence of psychopaths is higher in the business world than in the general population. Figures of around 3–4% have been cited for more senior positions in business. A 2011 study of Australian white-collar managers found that 5.76 percent could be classed as psychopathic and another 10.42 percent dysfunctional with psychopathic characteristics.

The organizational psychopath

Organizational psychopaths crave a god-like feeling of power and control over other people. They prefer to work at the very highest levels of their organizations, allowing them to control the greatest number of people. Psychopaths who are political leaders, managers, and CEOs fall into this category.

Organizational psychopaths generally appear to be intelligent, sincere, powerful, charming, witty, and entertaining communicators. They quickly assess what people want to hear and then create stories that fit those expectations. They will con people into doing their work for them, take credit for other people's work and even assign their work to junior staff members. They have low patience when dealing with others, display shallow emotions, are unpredictable, undependable and fail to take responsibility if something goes wrong that is their fault.

According to a study from the University of Notre Dame published in the Journal of Business Ethics, psychopaths have a natural advantage in workplaces overrun by abusive supervision, and are more likely to thrive under abusive bosses, being more resistant to stress, including interpersonal abuse, and having less of a need for positive relationships than others.

Careers with highest proportion of psychopaths

According to Kevin Dutton, the ten careers with the highest proportion of psychopaths are:

1. CEO
2. Lawyer
3. Media (TV/radio)
4. Salesperson
5. Surgeon
6. Journalist
7. Police officer
8. Clergy
9. Chef
10. Civil servant

Workplace psychopaths may show a high number of the following behavior patterns. The individual behaviors are not exclusive to the workplace psychopath, though the higher the number of patterns exhibited, the more likely they conform to the psychopath profile:

• Public humiliation of others (high propensity of having temper tantrums or ridiculing work performance)
• Malicious spreading of lies (intentionally deceitful)
• Remorseless, devoid of guilt
• Frequently lie to push one's own point
• Produce exaggerated bodily expressions (yawning, sneezing, etc.) as a means of gaining attention
• Rapidly shift between emotions – used to manipulate people or cause high anxiety
• Intentionally isolate persons from organizational resources
• Quick to blame others for mistakes or for incomplete work even though they are guilty
• Encourage co-workers to torment, alienate, harass, and/or humiliate other peers
• Take credit for others' accomplishments
• Steal and/or sabotages other persons' work
• Refuse to take responsibility for misjudgements and/or errors
• Respond inappropriately to stimuli, such as with a high-pitched and forced laugh
• Threaten any perceived enemy with discipline and/or job loss in order to taint employee file
• Set unrealistic and unachievable job expectations to set employees up for failure
• Refuse or are reluctant to attend meetings with more than one person
• Refuse to provide adequate training and/or instructions to singled-out victim
• Invade personal privacy of others
• Have multiple sexual encounters with other employees
• Develop new ideas without real follow-through
• Very self-centered and extremely egotistical (often conversation revolves around them – great deal of self-importance)
• Often "borrow" money and/or other material objects without any intentions of giving it back
• Will do whatever it takes to close the deal (no regard for ethics or legality)

How a typical workplace psychopath climbs to and maintains power

The authors of the book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work describe a five-phase model of how a typical workplace psychopath tries to climb and maintains power:

1. Entry – psychopaths may use highly developed social skills and charm to obtain employment into an organization. At this stage it could be difficult to spot anything indicative of psychopathic behaviour, and as a new employee, the psychopath might be perceives by people to be helpful and even benevolent.
2. Assessment – psychopaths categorize people according to personal usefulness, and people could be recognized as either a pawn (who has some informal influence and will be easily manipulated) or a patron (who has formal position and can be used by the psychopath to protect against attacks).
3. Manipulation – psychopaths try to create a scenario of “psychopathic fiction” where positive information about themselves and negative disinformation or gossip about others, where people's role as a part of a network of pawns or patrons could be utilized and could be groomed into accepting the psychopath's agenda.
4. Confrontation – the psychopath can use techniques of character assassination to maintain their agenda, and people will be either discarded as a pawn or used as a patron.
5. Ascension – the role of the subject as a patron in the psychopath’s quest for power will be discarded, and the psychopath will take for himself/herself a position of power and prestige from anyone who once supported them.

Why psychopaths are readily hired

Leading commentators on psychopathy have said that companies inadvertently attract employees who are psychopaths because of the wording of their job advertisements and their desire to engage people who are prepared to do whatever it takes to be successful in business. However, in one case at least, an advert explicitly asked for a sales executive with psychopathic tendencies. The advert title read "Psychopathic New Business Media Sales Executive Superstar! £50k - £110k".

Corporate psychopaths are readily recruited into organizations because they make a distinctly positive impression at interviews. They appear to be alert, friendly and easy to get along with and talk to. They look like they are of good ability, emotionally well adjusted and reasonable, and these traits make them attractive to those in charge of hiring staff within organizations. Unlike narcissists, psychopaths are better able to create long-lasting favorable first impressions, though people may still eventually see through their facades. Psychopaths’ undesirable personality traits may be easily misperceived by even skilled interviewers. Skilled interviewers can easily discern psychopathic qualities by including extremely skeptical high performing loyal employees throughout the entire interview of each interview while maintaining emotional balance. For instance, skilled interviewers can understand that sometimes irresponsibility may be misconstrued by employers as risk-taking or entrepreneurial spirit and are encouraged to deeply query and understand if being employed is specific to building responsibility and a career or its the other. Their thrill-seeking tendencies may be conveyed as high energy and enthusiasm for the job or work and skilled interviewers must strive to unravel the misconstrued to know and understand specific to the interviewees intentions. Their superficial charm may be misinterpreted by interviewers as charisma and yet obvious to skeptics and high performers. It is worth noting that psychopaths are not only accomplished liars, they are also more likely to lie in interviews. For instance, psychopaths may create fictitious work experiences or resumes and skeptical high performers can easily discern such fiction. They may also fabricate credentials such as diplomas, certifications, or awards and due diligence and skeptics and high performers easily discern such fabrications. Thus, in addition to seeming competent and likable in interviews, psychopaths are also more likely to outright make-up information during interviews than non-psychopaths and thus the necessity of including extremely skeptical high performing loyal employees throughout the entire interview and review of each interview.

Why psychopaths are readily promoted

Corporate psychopaths within organizations may be singled out for rapid promotion because of their polish, charm, and cool decisiveness and yet can also be singled out for rapid firing and removal. They are also helped by their manipulative and bullying skills. They create confusion around them (divide and rule etc.) using instrumental bullying to promote their own agenda.

Psychopaths are able to maintain calm when others are reacting to normal stress and dangerous situations. Psychopaths are well versed in impression management and ingratiation, both skills that can be used to impress people in positions of power and are also obvious indications of psychopathic traits easily discerned.

Bad consequences

Boddy identifies the following bad consequences of workplace psychopathy (with additional cites in some cases):

• Workplace bullying of employees
• Employees lose their jobs
• Legal liabilities
• Shareholders lose their investments
• Wasted employee time
• Suboptimal employee performance
• Increased workload
• Difficult working conditions
• Poor levels of job satisfaction
• Lower perceived levels of corporate social responsibility
• Raised staff turnover
• Absenteeism
• Heightened level of workplace conflict – arguments, yelling, rudeness, divide and conquer
• Counterproductive work behavior

Counterproductive work behavior

Main article: Counterproductive work behavior

Boddy suggests that because of abusive supervision by corporate psychopaths, large amounts of anti-company feeling will be generated among the employees of the organisations that corporate psychopaths work in. This should result in high levels of counterproductive behaviour as employees give vent to their anger with the corporation, which they perceive to be acting through its corporate psychopathic managers in a way that is eminently unfair to them.

According to a 2017 UK study, a high ranking corporate psychopath could trigger lower ranked staff to become workplace bullies as a manifestation of counterproductive work behavior.

Corporate psychopath theory of the global financial crisis

Main article: Financial crisis of 2007–08

Boddy makes the case that corporate psychopaths were instrumental in causing the 2007–08 global financial crisis. He claims that the same corporate psychopaths who probably caused the crisis by greed and avarice are now advising government on how to get out of the crisis.

Psychologist Oliver James has described the credit crunch as a “mass outbreak of corporate psychopathy which resulted in something that very nearly crashed the whole world economy.”

For example, during this financial crisis, the behaviour of some key people at the top of the world's largest banks came under scrutiny. At the time of its collapse in 2008 the Royal Bank of Scotland was the world's fifth largest bank by market capitalisation. CEO Fred "the Shred" Goodwin was known for taking excessive risks and showing little concern for his mismanagement, which led to the bank's collapse. Goodwin's demeanour toward colleagues was unpredictable and he is said to have lived a luxury lifestyle while fostering a culture of fear.

Renowned psychotherapist Professor Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries singled out Goodwin and former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond as exhibiting psychopathic behaviours in his working paper on the SOB, "seductive operational bully - or psychopath lite".

Screening

From an organizational perspective, organizations can insulate themselves from the organizational psychopath by taking the following steps when recruiting:

• conduct behavioral type interview
• verify information contained in the curriculum vitae
• conduct reference checks
• obtain work samples
• carry out criminal reference checks

The following tests could be used to screen psychopaths:

• Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL: SV)
• Psychopathy Measure – Management Research Version (PM-MRV)
• Business-Scan (B-SCAN) test

There have been anecdotal reports that at least one UK bank was using a psychopathy measure to actively recruit psychopaths.

Research findings based on the PM-MRV may have little relevance to medical psychopathy.

Workplace bullying overlap

Main article: Workplace bullying

Narcissism, lack of self-regulation, lack of remorse, and lack of conscience have been identified as traits displayed by bullies. These traits are shared with psychopaths, indicating that there is some theoretical cross-over between bullies and psychopaths. Bullying is used by corporate psychopaths as a tactic to humiliate subordinates. Bullying is also used as a tactic to scare, confuse and disorient those who may be a threat to the activities of the corporate psychopath. Using meta data analysis on hundreds of UK research papers, Boddy concluded that 36% of bullying incidents were caused by the presence of corporate psychopaths. According to Boddy, there are two types of bullying:

• Predatory bullying – the bully just enjoys bullying and tormenting vulnerable people for the sake of it.
• Instrumental bullying – the bullying is for a purpose, helping the bully achieve his or her goals.

A corporate psychopath uses instrumental bullying to further his goals of promotion and power as the result of causing confusion and divide and rule.

People with high scores on a psychopathy rating scale are more likely to engage in bullying, crime, and drug use than other people. Hare and Babiak noted that about 29 per cent of corporate psychopaths are also bullies. Other research has also shown that people with high scores on a psychopathy rating scale were more likely to engage in bullying, again indicating that psychopaths tend to be bullies in the workplace.

A workplace bully or abuser will often have issues with social functioning. These types of people often have psychopathic traits that are difficult to identify in the hiring and promotion process. These individuals often lack anger management skills and have a distorted sense of reality. Consequently, when confronted with the accusation of abuse, the abuser is not aware that any harm was done. Team ethics and values prevent, detect, and correct bullying and mobbing in the workplace.

Psychological warfare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare 

An example of a World War II era leaflet meant to be dropped from an American B-17 over a German city (see the file description page for a translation)

Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Minds", and propaganda. The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people".

Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target audience's value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior. It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator's objectives, and are sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics. It is also used to destroy the morale of enemies through tactics that aim to depress troops' psychological states.

Target audiences can be governments, organizations, groups, and individuals, and is not just limited to soldiers. Civilians of foreign territories can also be targeted by technology and media so as to cause an effect in the government of their country.

There is evidence of psychological warfare throughout written history. In modern times, psychological warfare efforts have been used extensively. Mass communication allows for direct communication with an enemy populace, and therefore has been used in many efforts. Social media channels and the internet allow for campaigns of disinformation and misinformation performed by agents anywhere in the world.

History

Early

Mosaic of Alexander the Great on his campaign against the Persian Empire.

Since prehistoric times, warlords and chiefs have recognized the importance of weakening the morale of opponents. In the Battle of Pelusium (525 BC) between the Persian Empire and ancient Egypt, the Persian forces used cats and other animals as a psychological tactic against the Egyptians, who avoided harming cats due to religious belief and spells.

Currying favor with supporters was the other side of psychological warfare, and an early practitioner of this was Alexander the Great, who successfully conquered large parts of Europe and the Middle East and held on to his territorial gains by co-opting local elites into the Greek administration and culture. Alexander left some of his men behind in each conquered city to introduce Greek culture and oppress dissident views. His soldiers were paid dowries to marry locals in an effort to encourage assimilation.

Genghis Khan, leader of the Mongolian Empire in the 13th century AD employed less subtle techniques. Defeating the will of the enemy before having to attack and reaching a consented settlement was preferable to facing his wrath. The Mongol generals demanded submission to the Khan and threatened the initially captured villages with complete destruction if they refused to surrender. If they had to fight to take the settlement, the Mongol generals fulfilled their threats and massacred the survivors. Tales of the encroaching horde spread to the next villages and created an aura of insecurity that undermined the possibility of future resistance.

Genghis Khan also employed tactics that made his numbers seem greater than they actually were. During night operations he ordered each soldier to light three torches at dusk to give the illusion of an overwhelming army and deceive and intimidate enemy scouts. He also sometimes had objects tied to the tails of his horses, so that riding on open and dry fields raised a cloud of dust that gave the enemy the impression of great numbers. His soldiers used arrows specially notched to whistle as they flew through the air, creating a terrifying noise.

Another tactic favored by the Mongols was catapulting severed human heads over city walls to frighten the inhabitants and spread disease in the besieged city's closed confines. This was especially used by the later Turko-Mongol chieftain.

The Muslim caliph Omar, in his battles against the Byzantine Empire, sent small reinforcements in the form of a continuous stream, giving the impression that a large force would accumulate eventually if not swiftly dealt with.

During the early Qin dynasty and late Eastern Zhou dynasty in 1st century AD China, the Empty Fort Strategy was used to trick the enemy into believing that an empty location was an ambush, in order to prevent them from attacking it using reverse psychology. This tactic also relied on luck, should the enemy believe that the location is a threat to them.

In the 6th century BCE Greek Bias of Priene successfully resisted the Lydian king Alyattes by fattening up a pair of mules and driving them out of the besieged city. When Alyattes' envoy was then sent to Priene, Bias had piles of sand covered with wheat to give the impression of plentiful resources.

This ruse appears to have been well known in medieval Europe: defenders in castles or towns under siege would throw food from the walls to show besiegers that provisions were plentiful. A famous example occurs in the 8th-century legend of Lady Carcas, who supposedly persuaded the Franks to abandon a five-year siege by this means and gave her name to Carcassonne as a result.

During the Attack on Marstrand, Peter Tordenskjold carried out military deception against the Swedes. Although probably apocryphal, he apparently succeeded in making his small force appear larger and feed disinformation to his opponents, similar to the Operations Fortitude and Titanic in World War II.

Modern

World War I

Lord Bryce led the commission of 1915 to document German atrocities committed against Belgian civilians.

The start of modern psychological operations in war is generally dated to World War I. By that point, Western societies were increasingly educated and urbanized, and mass media was available in the form of large circulation newspapers and posters. It was also possible to transmit propaganda to the enemy via the use of airborne leaflets or through explosive delivery systems like modified artillery or mortar rounds.

At the start of the war, the belligerents, especially the British and Germans, began distributing propaganda, both domestically and on the Western front. The British had several advantages that allowed them to succeed in the battle for world opinion; they had one of the world's most reputable news systems, with much experience in international and cross-cultural communication, and they controlled much of the undersea communications cable system then in operation. These capabilities were easily transitioned to the task of warfare.

The British also had a diplomatic service that maintained good relations with many nations around the world, in contrast to the reputation of the German services. While German attempts to foment revolution in parts of the British Empire, such as Ireland and India, were ineffective, extensive experience in the Middle East allowed the British to successfully induce the Arabs to revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

In August 1914, David Lloyd George appointed a Member of Parliament (MP), Charles Masterman, to head a Propaganda Agency at Wellington House. A distinguished body of literary talent was enlisted for the task, with its members including Arthur Conan Doyle, Ford Madox Ford, G. K. Chesterton, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling and H. G. Wells. Over 1,160 pamphlets were published during the war and distributed to neutral countries, and eventually, to Germany. One of the first significant publications, the Report on Alleged German Outrages of 1915, had a great effect on general opinion across the world. The pamphlet documented atrocities, both actual and alleged, committed by the German army against Belgian civilians. A Dutch illustrator, Louis Raemaekers, provided the highly emotional drawings which appeared in the pamphlet.

In 1917, the bureau was subsumed into the new Department of Information and branched out into telegraph communications, radio, newspapers, magazines and the cinema. In 1918, Viscount Northcliffe was appointed Director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries. The department was split between propaganda against Germany organized by H.G Wells, and propaganda against the Austro-Hungarian Empire supervised by Wickham Steed and Robert William Seton-Watson; the attempts of the latter focused on the lack of ethnic cohesion in the Empire and stoked the grievances of minorities such as the Croats and Slovenes. It had a significant effect on the final collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Army at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.

Aerial leaflets were dropped over German trenches containing postcards from prisoners of war detailing their humane conditions, surrender notices and general propaganda against the Kaiser and the German generals. By the end of the war, MI7b had distributed almost 26 million leaflets. The Germans began shooting the leaflet-dropping pilots, prompting the British to develop unmanned leaflet balloons that drifted across no-man's land. At least one in seven of these leaflets were not handed in by the soldiers to their superiors, despite severe penalties for that offence. Even General Hindenburg admitted that "Unsuspectingly, many thousands consumed the poison", and POWs admitted to being disillusioned by the propaganda leaflets that depicted the use of German troops as mere cannon fodder. In 1915, the British began airdropping a regular leaflet newspaper Le Courrier de l'Air for civilians in German-occupied France and Belgium.

At the start of the war, the French government took control of the media to suppress negative coverage. Only in 1916, with the establishment of the Maison de la Presse, did they begin to use similar tactics for the purpose of psychological warfare. One of its sections was the "Service de la Propagande aérienne" (Aerial Propaganda Service), headed by Professor Tonnelat and Jean-Jacques Waltz, an Alsatian artist code-named "Hansi". The French tended to distribute leaflets of images only, although the full publication of US President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, which had been heavily edited in the German newspapers, was distributed via airborne leaflets by the French.

The Central Powers were slow to use these techniques; however, at the start of the war the Germans succeeded in inducing the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to declare 'holy war', or Jihad, against the Western infidels. They also attempted to foment rebellion against the British Empire in places as far afield as Ireland, Afghanistan, and India. The Germans' greatest success was in giving the Russian revolutionary, Lenin, free transit on a sealed train from Switzerland to Finland after the overthrow of the Tsar. This soon paid off when the Bolshevik Revolution took Russia out of the war.

World War II

Adolf Hitler was greatly influenced by the psychological tactics of warfare the British had employed during World War I, and attributed the defeat of Germany to the effects this propaganda had on the soldiers. He became committed to the use of mass propaganda to influence the minds of the German population in the decades to come. By calling his movement The Third Reich, he was able to convince many civilians that his cause was not just a fad, but the way of their future. Joseph Goebbels was appointed as Propaganda Minister when Hitler came to power in 1933, and he portrayed Hitler as a messianic figure for the redemption of Germany. Hitler also coupled this with the resonating projections of his orations for effect.

Germany's Fall Grün plan of invasion of Czechoslovakia had a large part dealing with psychological warfare aimed both at the Czechoslovak civilians and government as well as, crucially, at Czechoslovak allies. It became successful to the point that Germany gained support of UK and France through appeasement to occupy Czechoslovakia without having to fight an all-out war, sustaining only minimum losses in covert war before the Munich Agreement.

At the start of the Second World War, the British set up the Political Warfare Executive to produce and distribute propaganda. Through the use of powerful transmitters, broadcasts could be made across Europe. Sefton Delmer managed a successful black propaganda campaign through several radio stations which were designed to be popular with German troops while at the same time introducing news material that would weaken their morale under a veneer of authenticity. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made use of radio broadcasts for propaganda against the Germans.

Map depicting the targets of all the subordinate plans of Operation Bodyguard.

During World War II, the British made extensive use of deception – developing many new techniques and theories. The main protagonists at this time were 'A' Force, set up in 1940 under Dudley Clarke, and the London Controlling Section, chartered in 1942 under the control of John Bevan. Clarke pioneered many of the strategies of military deception. His ideas for combining fictional orders of battle, visual deception and double agents helped define Allied deception strategy during the war, for which he has been referred to as "the greatest British deceiver of WW2".

During the lead up to the Allied invasion of Normandy, many new tactics in psychological warfare were devised. The plan for Operation Bodyguard set out a general strategy to mislead German high command as to the exact date and location of the invasion. Planning began in 1943 under the auspices of the London Controlling Section (LCS). A draft strategy, referred to as Plan Jael, was presented to Allied high command at the Tehran Conference. Operation Fortitude was intended to convince the Germans of a greater Allied military strength than existed, through fictional field armies, faked operations to prepare the ground for invasion and leaked information about the Allied order of battle and war plans.

Elaborate naval deceptions (Operations Glimmer, Taxable and Big Drum) were undertaken in the English Channel. Small ships and aircraft simulated invasion fleets lying off Pas de Calais, Cap d'Antifer and the western flank of the real invasion force. At the same time Operation Titanic involved the RAF dropping fake paratroopers to the east and west of the Normandy landings.

A dummy Sherman tank, used to deceive the Germans.

The deceptions were implemented with the use of double agents, radio traffic and visual deception. The British "Double Cross" anti-espionage operation had proven very successful from the outset of the war, and the LCS was able to use double agents to send back misleading information about Allied invasion plans. The use of visual deception, including mock tanks and other military hardware had been developed during the North Africa campaign. Mock hardware was created for Bodyguard; in particular, dummy landing craft were stockpiled to give the impression that the invasion would take place near Calais.

The Operation was a strategic success and the Normandy landings caught German defences unawares. Subsequent deception led Hitler into delaying reinforcement from the Calais region for nearly seven weeks.

Vietnam War

"Viet Cong, beware!" – South Vietnam leaflets urging the defection of Viet Cong.

The United States ran an extensive program of psychological warfare during the Vietnam War. The Phoenix Program had the dual aim of assassinating National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong) personnel and terrorizing any potential sympathizers or passive supporters. During the Phoenix Program, over 19,000 NLF supporters were killed. The United States also used tapes of distorted human sounds and played them during the night making the Vietnamese soldiers think that the dead were back for revenge.

Recent operations

An American PSYOP leaflet disseminated during the Iraq War. It shows a caricature of Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi caught in a rat trap. The caption reads "This is your future, Zarqawi".

The CIA made extensive use of Contra soldiers to destabilize the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The CIA used psychological warfare techniques against the Panamanians by delivering unlicensed TV broadcasts. The United States government has used propaganda broadcasts against the Cuban government through TV Marti, based in Miami, Florida. However, the Cuban government has been successful at jamming the signal of TV Marti.

In the Iraq War, the United States used the shock and awe campaign to psychologically maim and break the will of the Iraqi Army to fight.

In cyberspace, social media has enabled the use of disinformation on a wide scale. Analysts have found evidence of doctored or misleading photographs spread by social media in the Syrian Civil War and 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, possibly with state involvement. Military and governments have engaged in psychological operations (PSYOP) and informational warfare (IO) on social networking platforms to regulate foreign propaganda, which includes countries like the US, Russia, and China. Internet Observatory found that over five years people associated with the U.S. military, who tried to conceal their identities, created fake accounts on social media systems including Balatarin, Facebook, Instagram, Odnoklassniki, Telegram, Twitter, VKontakte and YouTube in an influence operation in Central Asia and the Middle East. Their posts, primarily in Arabic, Farsi and Russian, criticized Iran, China and Russia and gave pro-Western narratives. Data suggested the activity was a series of covert campaigns rather than a single operation.

In operations in the South and East China Seas, both the United States and China have been engaged in "Cognitive Warfare", which involves both displays of force, staged photographs and sharing of disinformation.

Methods

Most modern uses of the term psychological warfare refer to the following military methods:

• Demoralization:
  • Distributing pamphlets that encourage desertion or supply instructions on how to surrender
  • Shock and awe military strategy
  • Projecting repetitive and disturbing noises and music for long periods at high volume towards groups under siege like during Operation Nifty Package
  • Tolerance indoctrination, so that the totems and culture of a defeated enemy can be removed or replaced without conflict.
• Propaganda radio stations, such as Lord Haw-Haw in World War II on the "Germany calling" station
• Renaming cities and other places when captured, such as the renaming of Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City after Communist victory in the Vietnam War
• False flag events
• Use of loudspeaker systems to communicate with enemy soldiers
• Terrorism
• The threat of chemical weapons
• Information warfare

Most of these techniques were developed during World War II or earlier, and have been used to some degree in every conflict since. Daniel Lerner was in the OSS (the predecessor to the American CIA) and in his book, attempts to analyze how effective the various strategies were. He concludes that there is little evidence that any of them were dramatically successful, except perhaps surrender instructions over loudspeakers when victory was imminent. Measuring the success or failure of psychological warfare is very hard, as the conditions are very far from being a controlled experiment.

Lerner also divides psychological warfare operations into three categories:

• White propaganda (Omissions and Emphasis): Truthful and not strongly biased, where the source of information is acknowledged.
• Grey propaganda (Omissions, Emphasis and Racial/Ethnic/Religious Bias): Largely truthful, containing no information that can be proven wrong; the source is not identified.
• Black propaganda (Commissions of falsification): Inherently deceitful, information given in the product is attributed to a source that was not responsible for its creation.

Lerner says grey and black operations ultimately have a heavy cost, in that the target population sooner or later recognizes them as propaganda and discredits the source. He writes, "This is one of the few dogmas advanced by Sykewarriors that is likely to endure as an axiom of propaganda: Credibility is a condition of persuasion. Before you can make a man do as you say, you must make him believe what you say." Consistent with this idea, the Allied strategy in World War II was predominantly one of truth (with certain exceptions).

In Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Jacques Ellul discusses psychological warfare as a common peace policy practice between nations as a form of indirect aggression. This type of propaganda drains the public opinion of an opposing regime by stripping away its power on public opinion. This form of aggression is hard to defend against because no international court of justice is capable of protecting against psychological aggression since it cannot be legally adjudicated.

"Here the propagandists is [sic] dealing with a foreign adversary whose morale he seeks to destroy by psychological means so that the opponent begins to doubt the validity of his beliefs and actions."

By country

China

According to U.S. military analysts, attacking the enemy's mind is an important element of the People's Republic of China's military strategy. This type of warfare is rooted in the Chinese Stratagems outlined by Sun Tzu in The Art of War and Thirty-Six Stratagems. In its dealings with its rivals, China is expected to utilize Marxism to mobilize communist loyalists, as well as flex its economic and military muscle to persuade other nations to act in the Chinese government's interests. The Chinese government also tries to control the media to keep a tight hold on propaganda efforts for its people.

France

The Centre interarmées des actions sur l'environnement is an organization made up of 300 soldiers whose mission is to assure to the four service arm of the French Armed Forces psychological warfare capacities. Deployed in particular to Mali and Afghanistan, its missions « consist in better explaining and accepting the action of French forces in operation with local actors and thus gaining their trust: direct aid to the populations, management of reconstruction sites, actions of communication of influence with the population, elites and local elected officials ». The center has capacities for analysis, influence, expertise and instruction.

Germany

In the German Bundeswehr, the Zentrum Operative Kommunikation is responsible PSYOP efforts. The center is subordinate to the Cyber and Information Domain Service branch alongside multiple IT and Electronic Warfare battalions and consists of around 1000 soldiers. One project of the German PSYOP forces is the radio station Stimme der Freiheit (Sada-e Azadi, Voice of Freedom), heard by thousands of Afghans. Another is the publication of various newspapers and magazines in Kosovo and Afghanistan, where German soldiers serve with NATO.

Iran

The Iranian government had an operation program to use the 2022 FIFA World Cup as a psyop against concurrent people's protests.

Israel

The Israeli government and its military make use of psychological warfare. In 2021, Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that "Abu Ali Express", a popular news page on Telegram and Twitter purportedly dedicated to "Arab affairs", was actually run by a Jewish Israeli paid consultant to the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF's psyops account had been the source of a number of noteworthy reports that were afterwards cited by the Israeli and international media. Abu Ali Express was, for example, the source for the report that Qatari funds were entering the Gaza Strip in suitcases.

Russia

See also: Active measures and New generation warfare

Soviet Union

Main article: Russian military deception

See also: Active measures

United Kingdom

The British were one of the first major military powers to use psychological warfare in the First and Second World Wars. In the current British Armed Forces, PsyOps are handled by the tri-service 15 Psychological Operations Group. (See also MI5 and Secret Intelligence Service). The Psychological Operations Group comprises over 150 personnel, approximately 75 from the regular Armed Services and 75 from the Reserves. The Group supports deployed commanders in the provision of psychological operations in operational and tactical environments.

The Group was established immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, has since grown significantly in size to meet operational requirements, and from 2015 it will be one of the sub-units of the 77th Brigade, formerly called the Security Assistance Group.

In June 2015, NSA files published by Glenn Greenwald revealed details of the JTRIG group at British intelligence agency GCHQ covertly manipulating online communities. This is in line with JTRIG's goal: to "destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt" enemies by "discrediting" them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications.

In March 2019, it emerged that the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) of the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) is tendering to arms companies and universities for £70M worth of assistance under a project to develop new methods of psychological warfare. The project is known as the human and social sciences research capability (HSSRC).

United States

See also: Psychological operations (United States)

 

U.S. Army soldier hands out a newspaper to a local in Mosul, Iraq.

 

U.S. Army loudspeaker team in action in Korea

The term psychological warfare is believed to have migrated from Germany to the United States in 1941. During World War II, the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff defined psychological warfare broadly, stating "Psychological warfare employs any weapon to influence the mind of the enemy. The weapons are psychological only in the effect they produce and not because of the weapons themselves." The U.S. Department of Defense currently defines psychological warfare as:

"The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives."

This definition indicates that a critical element of the U.S. psychological operations capabilities includes propaganda and by extension counterpropaganda. Joint Publication 3–53 establishes specific policy to use public affairs mediums to counter propaganda from foreign origins.

The purpose of United States psychological operations is to induce or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to US objectives. The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service, responsible for Covert Action and "Special Activities". These special activities include covert political influence (which includes psychological operations) and paramilitary operations. SAC's political influence group is the only US unit allowed to conduct these operations covertly and is considered the primary unit in this area.

Dedicated psychological operations units exist in the United States Army and United States Marine Corps. The United States Navy and the 193rd Special Operations Wing of the United States Air Force also plans and executes limited PSYOP missions. United States PSYOP units and soldiers of all branches of the military are prohibited by law from targeting U.S. citizens with PSYOP within the borders of the United States (Executive Order S-1233, DOD Directive S-3321.1, and National Security Decision Directive 130). While United States Army PSYOP units may offer non-PSYOP support to domestic military missions, they can only target foreign audiences.

A U.S. Army field manual released in January 2013 states that "Inform and Influence Activities" are critical for describing, directing, and leading military operations. Several Army Division leadership staff are assigned to “planning, integration and synchronization of designated information-related capabilities."

In September 2022, an audit of covert information warfare took place after social media companies identified a suspected U.S. military operation.

Demoralization (warfare)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoralization_(warfare) 

 

Front of leaflet

 

Back of leaflet

 

A Nazi German propaganda leaflet used during World War II in 1945 to demoralize US troops.

Demoralization is, in a context of warfare, national security, and law enforcement, a process in psychological warfare with the objective to erode morale among enemy combatants and/or noncombatants. That can encourage them to retreat, surrender, or defect rather than defeating them in combat.

Demoralization methods are military tactics such as hit-and-run attacks, such as snipers disturbing the enemy with less-lethal weapons and incapacitating agents, and intimidation such as display of force concentration. Some methods on the strategic scale are commerce raiding, strategic bombing, static operations such as sieges and naval blockades, and propaganda.

Importance of morale

Morale is often perceived as a necessary precursor to success in international relations. Success most often goes to those who believe in their cause, as they more easily maintain a positive outlook that helps them work harder for it. High morale can directly contribute to "an economy of food, textiles, fuel, and other commodities, and to stimulate recruiting, employment in war industries, service in relief work, and the purchase of bonds". Writing in 1965, French philosopher and sociologist Jacques Ellul described the importance of morale in modern society by saying:

The modern citizen is asked to participate in wars such as have never been seen before. All men must prepare for war, and for a dreadful type of war at that – dreadful because of its duration, the immensity of its operations, its tremendous losses, and the atrocity of the means employed. Moreover, participation in war is no longer limited to the duration of the war itself; there is the period of preparation for war, which becomes more and more intense and costly. Then there is the period in which to repair the ravages of war. People really live in a permanent atmosphere of war, and a superhuman war in every respect. Nowadays everybody is affected by war; everybody lives under its threat…The more demanded of man, the more powerful must be those motivations.

Though variations are possible, the most common indicators of high morale are determination, enthusiasm, self-confidence, and a relative absence of criticism or complaint.^[2]: 8 While contributors to the level of morale are essentially endless, common examples consist of the level to which individuals identify with a nation or cause; have their basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter met; have confidence in the justness of their cause; have confidence in the ability of their cause to overcome obstacles; the means through which authorities instill discipline; and a sense of unity with other supporters of the cause.

Psychological warfare

Main article: Psychological warfare

 

American Revolutionary War leaflet attempting to demoralize the British enemy by showing distinctions in the quality of life between the fighting forces.

In an environment in which two belligerents compete, the chances of success greatly diminish if those whose actions are necessary lack faith in the justness of the cause or its chance for success or are discouraged, morally defeated, disconsolate, antagonistic, sullen, inattentive, or lazy. Demoralization can be used to lessen the chances of success for an opponent by fostering these attitudes, and it can generally be done in one of two ways: demoralization through objective conditions or demoralization through perception.

Demoralization through objective conditions most commonly takes the form of a military defeat on the battlefield that has tangible consequences directly resulting in the indicators of a demoralized party, but it can also result from an adverse physical environment where basic needs go unmet.

Demoralization through perception, however, is the most commonly referred to means of demoralization even though its operation and results like political warfare and psychological warfare in general, are the most difficult to gauge. That is the form of demoralization that is referred to as a tool of psychological warfare, and it is most commonly implemented through various forms of propaganda. Propaganda as a tool of demoralization refers to influencing opinion through significant symbols, through means such as rumors, stories, pictures, reports, and other means of social communication. Other means of political and psychological warfare, such as deception, disinformation, agents of influence, or forgeries, may also be used to destroy morale through psychological means so that belligerents start questioning the validity of their beliefs and actions.

Means used

While demoralization may use propaganda, deception, disinformation, agents of influence, forgeries, or any other political warfare tool in isolation to accomplish its ends, a strategic demoralization effort will use more than one of these means as determined by its target and will not limit itself to the strict limits of attacking another belligerent's morale. A strategic demoralization campaign will navigate what Harold D. Lasswell describes as roughly three avenues of implementation: divert the hatred normally directed towards the enemy, thereby denying a unified outlet of frustration; sow seeds of self-doubt (classic demoralization); and provide a new focus of hatred and frustration.

A strategic demoralization campaign should tailor its strategy to the specific target and situation.

Denial of an enemy image

Front of leaflet

 

Back of leaflet

 

Front of a Nazi leaflet attempting to demoralize black US soldiers by stressing how they were ill-treated both at home and in war and missed by their family.

An important precursor to successful demoralization is an effort to deny the target the ability to project frustrations and hatred upon a common enemy. Such efforts will affect the tendency of the target's citizenry to project their discontent towards a common enemy identified by their government. As a result, frustrations will build until it is necessary to divert them elsewhere, and seeds of doubt are then sown in the minds of the citizenry who now question the capability of their leadership in identifying the most ominous threat.

The operations of the German Gazette des Ardennes, published in occupied areas of France during World War I, are an example of this aspect of strategic demoralization. The Gazette des Ardennes regularly published propaganda articles that sought to deny the French of a German enemy image. Articles would carry such themes as: the Kaiser has always been known and respected for promoting peace, even among the British and French intellectual elite; the Kaiser is a kind and gentle family man; "all the stories about the German barbarities are poisonous lies"; German occupying soldiers are kind to and loved by French children; and Germans have an irrepressible love of music, religion, and morality that permeates wherever they are. The themes are illustrative of "defense by denial".

Also possible to use is "defense by admission accompanied by justification". The technique would make the Gazette des Ardennes admit that a German atrocity occurred but then publish accounts that the event was exaggerated in earlier reports, that such events occurred in every army, and occurred least often in the German army.

Articles that attempted to justify German unrestricted submarine warfare as an unavoidable consequence of the Allied blockade of Germany are also examples of defense by admission and justification.

Sowing seeds of doubt and anxiety

Causing self-doubt or doubt in a cause is the simple definition most commonly ascribed to demoralization. It is one aspect of a successful strategic demoralization campaign but is the most pronounced and essential part. Lasswell stated, "the keynote in the preliminary spade work is the unceasing refrain: Your cause is hopeless. Your blood is spilt in vain." Propaganda can be an indispensable tool in fostering an environment of doubt and anxiety.

Propaganda may be used to ensure the antagonist is the most feared party, give a feeling of nonworth to the target, exploit internal fissures inherent within the target group or use the element of surprise to show a target population that their leadership and cause are unable to protect them from the impending enemy threat.

Many studies have been conducted that indicate fear is one of the most widespread psychological traits, and that trait can be manipulated for the purposes of demoralization if it can be expanded into anxiety. For anxiety to demoralize, it must result in a distancing of individuals or groups from their cause or leadership because they no longer believe them capable of offering a solution to the source of their anxiety. Real and conscious threats that normally inspire disquiet and fear can be made to cause anxiety and borderline neurosis through the use of such propaganda tools as fables and rumors.

Using multiple tools of political warfare, such as deception, disinformation, agents of influence, or forgeries, can expedite the onset of anxiety by overwhelming the target with a constant onslaught of information that the current cause or leadership is incapable of relieving the anxiety now felt. That anxiety cannot be calmed through a rational explanation of facts and is exacerbated by such an approach. The newly-onset anxiety places mass groups of individuals on the border of neurosis and can make them feel conflicts inherent within society or their past.

As a result of contradictions and threats, "man feels accused, guilty". The target will then begin their search for a cause that will provide a sense of righteousness. The pivotal moment of a successful demoralization campaign is when the target is doubt-ridden and anxious, the point at which individual members of a citizenry or group are detached from their current loyalty to their state or cause, and they are then able to be focused in another direction more suitable to the antagonist's needs.

If not executed properly, the manufactured sense of anxiety can both backfire on antagonists and cause the subject to cling more closely to their original cause or government.

Diverting frustrations and hatred to a new target

The most powerful strategy of demoralization is diversion, but it a very difficult and multifaceted operation. Lasswell says, "To undermine the active hatred of the enemy for its present antagonist, his anger must be distracted to a new and independent object, beside which his present antagonist ceases to matter."

Because it is such a distinct change, the diversion of hatred towards a new target is necessarily predicated upon the antagonist both diverting hatred away from themselves and fostering a level of anxiety that cannot be mitigated by their existing cause or leadership. Once antagonists meet the two precursors of demoralization, it is possible to "concentrate upon the particular object of animosity about which it is hoped to polarize the sentiment of the enemy". The diversion of hatred can be towards an ally, towards the enemy's government or governing class, or towards antistate sentiment to foster secession of minority nationalities if they exist.

The attempt to exacerbate relations between allies is one method of diverting hatred from an enemy and was attempted by both the Allied and Central Powers in World War I. The Germans made efforts to dig up historical animosity between the French and British, using such themes as the British were just letting the French bleed for them and the British intended to stay on French soil, and they offered a German-French alliance against the British and to expand French colonial domain at the expense of the British Empire.

The Allies tried to exacerbate the relationship between Austria-Hungary and Germany, using such themes as separate peace talks were being held with Austria-Hungary, Austria-Hungary had a plethora of food while Germans starved, Germans thought of Austrians as slaves, and the familiar promise of territorial expansion if Austria-Hungary abandoned their German alliance.

The antagonist can also attempt to divert hatred and frustration upon the target's government or ruling class, the most widely attempted method. One technique of diverting such frustration is to convince a target that their government or leadership is committing unjust and immoral acts, which is especially effective if the antagonist can convince their target that their leadership has forced them to commit equally unjust and immoral acts out of trickery or desperation.

If successfully implemented, the leadership of a cause can be made sufficiently troublesome to inspire revolution when there will be insufficient capacity to exercise active hatred towards the external enemy. Diverting frustration to one's own leadership is often the method most commonly seen in wartime propaganda, as the photographs below attest. With the implementation of modern warfare in World War I and all its associated stresses, "every belligerent took a hand in the perilous business of fomenting dissension and revolution abroad, reckless of the possible repercussions of a successful revolt".

Examples from World War I included German forces providing revolutionary literature to Russian prisoners of war that were expected to return through exchange or release, French use of propaganda leaflets to demonstrate how unaffected by war the Kaiser and his family were, technical encouragement and amplification of national dissent, Wilsonian propaganda stressing peaceful settlement terms, British planting of stories attesting to underground German resistance movements and their subsequent oppression by the German government, propaganda deflecting war guilt, propaganda exposing or exaggerating the desired postwar peace terms, and the promotion of the belief that infidelity was rampant among soldiers and their families back home.

The antagonist can attempt to divert frustration towards the growth of secessionist causes, which is possible in heterogeneous nations. Attempts are made to fan the flames of discontent one segment of the nation feels towards another. An example was the Congress of Oppressed Habsburg Nationalities in Rome in April 1918, all delegates signing a Declaration of Independence. Or actions were widely reported in US and European circles. Another successful example of this was the encouragement of Zionism as a means of securing Jewish support for World War I via the Balfour Declaration. The Central Powers likewise tried to encourage Ukrainian, Irish, Egyptian, North African, and Indian secessionist movements, but all efforts ultimately failed.

Tactics

There are many tactics of pursuing a strategy of demoralization, the nature of the target and the environment at the time determining the best method to employ. Examples include:

• Insertions into neutral press
• Direct transmission (through publications or radio)
• Books and pamphlets (such as J’accuse)
• Forgeries, whether forged letters from home inspiring homesickness or forged government documents
• Tactical delivery systems (airplane or balloon drops, "trench mortars") Smuggling (use of printed propaganda for packing materials, camouflaging propaganda to appear as currency so it may be carried about freely)
• Deception
• Disinformation
• Agents of influence

Defense

Morale can be difficult to maintain, in large part by the diffuse nature of demoralization attacks, but a strong leadership can largely mitigate any such attacks against their group's morale. Morale will quickly deteriorate if members of the group perceive themselves as victims of injustice or indifference on part of their leadership, or they perceive their leadership as being acting ineptly, ignorantly, or for personal ambition.

As noted by Angello Codevilla, the clearest indicators that morale can withstand a demoralization campaign are also hallmarks of a well-led organization, and can be explained through five main questions:

• Do the constituent parts of the group fear their own leadership more than the enemy? That can be either an authoritarian type of fear or a more democratic type of fear in which the members of a group fear contributing to the failure of their cause.
• Do the constituent parts of the group feel appreciated by their leadership? No human will work to their full potential if they do not feel appreciated, but those who feel appreciated will contribute remarkable amounts, including sacrifice of life.
• Do the constituent parts of the group feel their contributions are important, and others depend on their continued effort towards the cause? That is dependent on leadership engendering a hope of success if all members does their part, but excess attempts to inspire can invite cynicism.
• Do the constituent parts of the group have habits of loyalty and camaraderie? If so, high morale can be maintained in the most difficult circumstances out of a desire to avoid disappointing or endangering others.
• Do the constituent parts of the group have faith in their leaders and the chances of success? As Codevilla notes, "If the two disappear, soldiers tend to believe they have been sold out and throw away their weapons." Credibility is the bedrock of defense against demoralization, but unwelcome surprise is the greatest threat to morale.

Examples

• Chieu Hoi, a South Vietnamese campaign for defection from the Viet Cong.
• Operation Nifty Package, where the American military used loud music to encourage General Manuel Noriega to surrender.
• Tokyo Rose, a Japanese broadcaster who used a radio show to demoralize American soldiers in the Pacific.