Using Mirror Neurons to Manipulate Our Behavior

Monkey see, Monkey do!

Scientist Giacomo Rizzolatti noticed that when a graduate student decided on ice cream for lunch one day, and ate it in full view of the monkey who had electrodes attached to its premotor cortex, which involves initiation of movements, there were clear signals of activity even though the monkey was not active. He was learning to lick the ice cream by watching; the firing cells matched what would be firing if he was doing the act himself. (scientific American, 20009).

Mirror neurons are one of the most important discoveries in the last decade of neuroscience. These are a variety of visuospatial neurons which indicate fundamentally about human social interaction. Essentially, mirror neurons respond to actions that we observe in others.”  (J Nat Sci Biol Med. 2012).

Research has shown that mirror neurons are widely spread throughout the brain, and mimic another’s actions, emotions and even predict a likely outcome of behaviour to come next. Theoretically when you watch another person lift their fork to eat, you are, in your brain, lifting that fork; similar brain activity occurs whether or not you hold the fork or watch.

Later research has shown correlations with not only watching but also hearing and perceiving the touch and emotion responses in other people .We feel what they feel.  (American Psychological association, 2005).

The Hebbian theory (The Organization of Behaviour, 1949) is put simply, ‘cells that fire together, wire together’. We learn through association; we adapt. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory used what he called ‘modelling’ when discussing mimicking behaviours (Bandura, SLT, 1977).

If what many neuroscientists believe about mirror neurons is correct, these special cells might be behind the reason why we love watching sports so much.  Because any action that we watch may be mirrored, and in some sense acted out, inside of our own brains.” (AXON sports).

But we do not just watch sports.

What are you watching?

The first film to be watched on cinema showed people diving out of the seats to hide from a car they thought would hit them (Goleman,  social Intelligence, 2011). At that point in time they could not separate the screen from themselves. Of course not, it was brand new technology. The point being however is, it was very real to them, but now we know the object difference, so we do not move. But is it still very real? People often say the phrase ‘it moved me’.

Do movies, television programmes, so-called reality television, and porn make you feel excited or emotional? Yes!

If you want to research this, as many have, it becomes apparent the link they want to make primarily involves the effect on our children, their bad attitudes and aggressive tendencies (Television Violence, Kelly, 1999). In 1969 there was a National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, which stated television and media influenced, desensitised and normalised viewers to violence and caused copycat behaviours.

Aggression is a concern, but widely covered and highlighted in the mainstream. The concern I have is the behaviours we do not take notice of, not the ones we acknowledge, as we can often take control and stop them from changing us. The behaviours we do not notice are different because they can creep into our own behaviours unknown to us. This is behaviour modification through socially engineering our attitudes, morals, beliefs, likes, dislikes, wants, needs, desires, and acceptable behaviours.

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Controlling our overall mood is also a big part of television; it is mostly depressing stuff, filled with hatred. Then comes the new’s which is today staged nonsense to make us believe anything that progresses an agenda.

Peer pressure is a box sitting in your room, telling you how to act, how to feel and what to think about how you feel and act.

The theory of planned behaviour (the Theory of Reasoned Action)

This is when you collect data on current thought patterns, and then you go about changing them (Ajzen, 1980). I will take anti-immigration as an example. A person/team of people would do a research project through questionnaires, finding out how people feel about immigration populations in their area. They find out most people feel hostile about this change, so they place incentives and rewards for changing this opinion. For example, council budget increases to help with the costs, improve local schools who have X (whatever the amount) of children who have migrated. They use ‘message framing’ to inflict guilt and shame for your beliefs and start generating images and phrases into your area that puts the future into the now, visually. for example this may be mixed-race families on health service leaflets and people of different cultures on posters in government buildings, like hospitals, tax revenue buildings  and social security offices. If they were doing this nationally, they would use television, media, newspapers, soap operas, billboards, foods and government health and social care, to normalise the increase in migrant populous. They would also scare you by associating resistance with things you do not want to be linked with, like calling you a racist or prejudice if you highlight double standards in health policies. For instance, A health visitor I know personally was warned of not being culturally aware (i.e. politically incorrect) after noting at work that a white British mother and a Muslim coloured mother both pierced their babies ears, but the white British baby had no infection and was carried out at licensed hygienic premises,  while the Muslim mother’s baby did have an infection and was carried out in their home living room with a needle. The white British mum was recorded for negligence and the coloured Muslim mother was not recorded for negligence because of her cultural and traditional beliefs. Whether or not you believe piercing to be correct or incorrect, the highlighting of this is only to show inconsistency. These measures of control are no less than the behaviourism we use on children: rewards and consequences. The health visitor was aware of this control mechanism, being reprimanded for diversity and ethnicity awareness concerns, and was very mad about it, and this may stop her and other practitioners from speaking up because employment loss, and as I said. being labeled. Other controls, like subtle posters of British families being replaced with Muslim families are barely noticed. A holistic understanding of ‘the theory of planned behaviour’ shows each and every step of manipulation and control on a mass level and how an agenda is pushed at you, and then you begin to push the agenda yourself.

I stupidly watched a little bit of UK /US “Celebrity Big Brother” last year, only about ten minutes before I spotted the ‘agenda hit’ and switched off. A UK girl called Gail Porter said something like, ‘What, there are no mental health checks to get a gun, anyone can have one?’ and went on to be shocked and appalled. I believe that gun control is about mental health screenings, at the moment at least, and not banning guns, then screening for other things like driving, owning machinery and tools, being able to vote, holding positions of authority and eventually having children. This is one of the reasons ‘labeling’, in my opinion, is so heavily encouraged. Again, as like with children, we start off heavy-handed then compromise to settle the unrest. If you see our leaders as extremely bad, cold parents (and that is being polite) using simple mind trickery (again, polite) on their children, you see patterns everywhere.

In my last year at university, people would ask me what I was learning, and I would tell them, “how to brainwash you into doing what the government wants”, they would laugh, I would tell them I wasn’t joking, they would laugh again, slightly nervous. I learned about changing people’s attitudes so they will access the health services that the government required. For example when changing the ideas of the populous on autism and vaccinations, teaching consists of ‘loss-framed’  messaging, for example ‘you are a negligent parent if your over-protectiveness causes your child and other children in your area to become ill if you do not ensure their safety by taking the vaccinations required and provided for you’. ‘Gain-framed’ messaging would say ‘thank you for being a responsible parent and providing safety within your local area for your family and the families close to you’.

Pharmacists and other health care providers often use persuasive messages to promote health behavior change… as their names suggest, gain-frame messages promote the benefits of actions, while loss-frame messages emphasize the consequences of failing to take certain actions.” (American Pharmacists Association, 2012)

I am linking this with mimicry in human behaviour as there are clearly agendas they want you to follow and ways they want it to happen. On screen is one of the best ways to use our mirror neurons to control us, and although we should be concerned about what our children watch, we should also be extremely cautious of what we watch in that lovely hypnotised relaxed state, the state in which auto suggestion eases itself into your subconscious as easily as drinking a cup of tea.

Beware of the television’s abilities to hypnotize, alter moods, and even cause depression.” (Amazing discoveries, 2011).

Breaking up the bonds in families

I am concerned about how relationships are portrayed in media, in so-called reality television as well as soaps. We are all aware of the Cinderella effect and how men are not our expected knights in shining armour. Men on television are portrayed as weak and unfaithful, women are portrayed as strong for being the longest lasting victims of men, who are forever getting it wrong. In real life I have few friends I actually meet up with; I love them, but a lunch date with them is a scrutiny of men: why their man is causing everything that is bad in the world, that they are hopeless and have no control, and that he is to blame for it all. Television belittles men and puts women on a false pedestal. Television accepts female violence towards men, and constant verbal degradation, and unless a plot-line is about the female being a victim of the man, it is not shown the other way around. As my partner so cleverly puts it, as he does with many things, ‘just flip it around to see if it really is sexist, racist, unequal, prejudice or just stupid, imagine the scenario as the man hitting the girl and throwing her phone then losing his temper, screaming in her face, it then becomes abusive behaviour, when the woman did it, it was desperation and emotional upheaval’. His bad behaviour is because of him; her bad behaviour is because of the circumstances which have led to her demise, normally he is to blame.

I really dislike the way women are being shown. It is really the opposite of strength. Now men are becoming weaker and unable to show their real strength out of fear of being some sexist cave man, if they stand up to their woman.

I am sure when you look at your television you see portrayals that really annoy you, like how the relationship one annoys me. I could dissect bad behaviours for hours, and subtle social engineering being used against us to control our perceptions, using our mirror neurons to teach us how they want us to behave, persuading our opinions and actions. But that would just get boring, so I took a small example of relationships because it worries me that our traditional family is being torn apart. You have your own concerns about what you have seen, and these portrayals we are viewing are shaping the present and future behaviours of us all.

As we turn on the television, who are we turning into?

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