quote:
Well, if the stimulus consisted of anticipation of a reward, and if ringing a bell produced as much stimulus as getting fed, would a sermon about eternal life elicit a dopamine response in a parishoner akin to actually getting raptured?
As it happens, I know something of the further adventures of Pavlovs dogs, as discussed in a book on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As a I recall, the most inteersting bit was the ditching of learned systems under catastrophic stress.
Pavlovs lab became flooded and the dogs nearly died in their cages, and would have had they not been rescued by lab assistants (as I recall this was due to the shelling of Stalingrad). The rescued dogs showed none of the inggrained response patterns that were seen before the flooding experience.
The book went on to argue that this developement served as the basis for techniques that were later deployed on Gary Powers. These constitute creating massive amounts of stress and dehumanisation of the subject, leading eventually to the "dumping" of a whole belief system. The speculation was that if the brain searches and searches and fails to find anything useful in its current world-model to handle the crisis, it simply erases the whole thing. This is then replaced by whatever other world-model may be available.
Its not hard to generalise this to the flame-n-brimstone preachers who are always telling us we are going to hell for this and that. What they are doing is building up guilt, stress, until the only available world-model is the preachers own. Further, with the emphasis on "humility" and "obedience" in most religions, and ceretainly in christianity, there is already a whole system of dehumanisation.
I think religious conversion as practiced by bible-thumpers is essentially a form of brainwashing, or at least severe psychological intervention.
After a little research, the book was "The Battle for the Mind" by William Sargant, reprinted 1997 by Malor books, ISBN 1 883536 06 5.
...and not the similarly titled "the battle for your mind" by some conspiracy theorist calle Sutphen.
This message has been edited by contracycle, 01-04-2005 10:59 AM