Psychological operations performed by US military

Psychological operations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Merge arrow
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Psychological warfare. (Discuss)
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Germany
* 2 United Kingdom
* 3 United States
* 4 Terminology
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links

Psychological Operations (PSYOP, PSYOPS) are techniques used by military, police and religious groups to influence a target audience's value systems, belief systems, emotions, motives, reasoning, and behavior. Target audiences can be governments, organizations, groups, and individuals, and are used in order to induce confessions, or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator's objectives. These are sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics.

This concept has been used by military institutions throughout history, but it is only since the twentieth century that it has been accorded the organizational and professional status it enjoys now.

The word is commonly used by governments who do not wish to use the term propaganda or brainwashing to refer to their own work. The word propaganda has very negative connotations, and by calling it psychological operations instead, more sophisticated methods of psychological manipulation are accurately incorporated by the terminology. This euphemism for mind control is ironically an example of psychological operations -- i.e. using psychological techniques to persuade [manipulate] a large number of people to support something that they wouldn't normally support.[1]