The psychology of political contagion: Suggestion, imitation, and the spread of military coups

“ The moment he comes in contact with the stern and stubborn realities which frown on his entrance into practical life, he will find that power is the soul of knowledge, and character the condition of intelligence. He will discover that intellectual success depends primarily on qualities which are not strictly intellectual, but personal and constitutional. The test of success is influence,--that is, the power of shaping events by informing, guiding, animating, controlling other minds. ”

“ Let the genius of American Literature, as she wings her slow flight upwards, give the answer.
This political spirit, contagious and diffusive in its nature, has spread itself throughout the entire frame of our government. All classes of society, from the proudest to the humblest spheres of life, have imbibed it, feel it, and act under its influence. It composes the chief interests, and engages the active feelings, of almost every community. Who can be insensible to the fact, that our universal mind has already assumed a political character? ”

“ With children, by far the larger part of their education consists of sheer imitation, nor do adults ever develop beyond its influence. Suggestion is a factor that is more operative in youth and maturity than in early childhood, and is exhibited in a thousand and one subtle and unexpected ways. Both these forces are essential to an orderly, and to a progressive, social life; but they may just as easily become the cause of movements that are retrogressive, and even anti-social in character. An epidemic of suicide or of murder is as easily initiated as an epidemic of philanthropy. ”

“ We are reminded of how many of these phenomena of dependence are part of the normal constitution of human society, of how little originality and personal courage are to~be found in it, of how much every individual is ruled by those attitudes of the group mind which exhibit themselves in such forms as racial characteristics, class prejudices, public opinion, etc. The influence of suggestion becomes a greater riddle for us when we admit that it is not exercised only by the leader, but by every individual upon every other individual ”

“ It is clear that rational factors (such as the intimidation of the individual which has already been mentioned, that is, the action of his instinct of self-preservation) do not cover the observable phenomena. Beyond this what we are offered as an explanation by authorities upon Sociology and Group Psychology is always the same, even though it is given various names, and that is—the magic word 'suggestion'. Tarde calls it 'imitation'; but we cannot help agreeing with a writer who protests that imitation comes under the concept of suggestion, and is in fact one of its results. ”

“ All of us know the great force of suggestion; but there are very few people who so use words, tones, and movements as to make the most of their power of suggesting ideas in preference to stating them. Probably no tool of salesmanship will be of more help in assuring your success than fully developed ability in suggestion, which is the skillful process of getting your ideas into the minds of others unawares. ”

“ The suggestive influence of environment plays an enormous part in all spiritual education. But the word “suggestion,” having acquired official status, is unfortunately already beginning to play in many quarters the part of a wet blanket upon investigation, being used to fend off all inquiry into the varying susceptibilities of individual cases. “Suggestion” is only another name for the power of ideas, so far as they prove efficacious over belief and conduct. Ideas efficacious over some people prove inefficacious over others. ”

“ We hear much of many wonders of combination and concentration of industrial power which railway and telegraph have wrought. But nothing is said about what seems to me the greatest wonder of them all—how these forces have resulted in the concentration of the political power of upwards of twelve millions of our fifteen million voters; how the few can impose their ideas and their will upon widening circles, out and out, until all are included. The people are scattered; the powers confer, man to man, day by day. ”

“ France in 1960. Repeated military coups during the 1970s and 1980s
were followed by multiparty elections in the early 1990s. Current
President Blaise COMPAORE came to power in a 1987 military coup and
has won every election since then. Burkina Faso's high population
density and limited natural resources result in poor economic
prospects for the majority of its citizens. Recent unrest in Cote
d'Ivoire and northern Ghana has hindered the ability of several
hundred thousand seasonal Burkinabe farm workers to find employment
in neighboring countries. ”

“ Military regimes favoring Islamic-oriented governments have dominated national politics since independence from the UK in 1956. Sudan has been embroiled in a civil war for all but 10 years of this period (1972-82) . The wars are rooted in northern economic, political, and social domination of non-Muslim, non-Arab southern Sudanese. Since 1983, the war and war- and famine-related effects have led to more than 2 million deaths and over 4 million people displaced. The ruling regime is a mixture of military elite and an Islamist party that came to power in a 1989 coup. ”

“ Fiji became independent in 1970, after nearly a century as a British colony. Democratic rule was interrupted by two military coups in 1987, caused by concern over a government perceived as dominated by the Indian community (descendants of contract laborers brought to the islands by the British in the 19th century) . The coups and a 1990 constitution that cemented native Melanesian control of Fiji, led to heavy Indian emigration; the population loss resulted in economic difficulties, but ensured that Melanesians became the majority. ”

“ Had we not the inborn impulse to imitate movements which sweep through a mob, great occasions would never find us ready with great actions. The magic power of mass suggestion is the indispensable complement of the social leader’s talents, and consequently is closely related to our familiar voluntary subordination. Tarde even regards obedience as a special case of imitation, and to strengthen his position reminds us that command begins with example. ”

“ Suggestion is especially effective in producing desire; because an idea that is merely suggested, and not stated, is unlikely to provoke antagonism or resistance. A suggestion is given ready access to the mind of the other man. Usually it gets in without his realizing that a strange thought has entered his head from outside. When he becomes conscious of the presence in his mind of an idea that has been only suggested to him, he is apt to treat it as one of his own family of ideas and not as an intruder. ”

“ Second, suggestion is effective in persuasion and in arousing desire because suggested ideas which include no comparisons or criticisms very seldom arouse contradictory attitudes of mind. The suggested idea enters the mind of the other man quietly, unaccompanied by a blare of the trumpet "I Tell You." Opposing ideas are not aware of its presence until it has supplanted them. Suggest to a chosen employer that he means to be up-to-date, and he agrees. ”

“ Political leaders and advertising experts, no less than poets, have recognized the importance of the suggestive power of words. Half the power of propaganda lies in its arousing of emotions through suggestion, rather than in its effectiveness as an instrument of intellectual conversion. ”

“ Become a popular truth the idea returns, as it were, to its source and exerts an influence on the upper classes of a nation. In the long run it is intelligence that shapes the destiny of the world, but very indirectly. The philosophers who evolve ideas have long since returned to dust, when, as the result of the process I have just described, the fruit of their reflection ends by triumphing.
3. PRESTIGE Great power is given to ideas propagated by affirmation, repetition, and contagion by the circumstance that they acquire in time that mysterious force known as prestige. ”

“ Authority is a factor in suggestion. We generally accept as truth, and without criticism, the words of an authority. When he speaks, contradictory ideas rarely arise in the mind to inhibit the action he suggests. A judge of the Supreme Court has the power of his words multiplied by the virtue of his position. The ideas of the U.S. Commissioner of Immigration on his subject are much more effective and powerful than those of a soap manufacturer, though the latter may be an able economist. ”

“ Our men of science, our pathologists and physicians have of late years been studying to some purpose the mysterious power of “Suggestion”—and if we have sufficient intelligence to understand the discovered facts which have rewarded their researches we shall acknowledge that ideas, started and persistently fostered in the minds of the million by constant reiteration, frequently develop into actions. ”

“ For, when a belief is propagated by collective suggestion through the large mass of men, each falls under the suggestive sway of the whole mass; and under these conditions the operation of suggestion is further aided by the universal tendency of mankind to imitation and sympathy, the tendency to imitate the actions of, and to experience the emotions expressed by, those about one. ”

“ Every increase of suggestibility facilitates imitation. In any emotional excitement of a group every member submits to the suggestion of the others, but the suggestion is taken from the actual movements. A crowd in a panic or a mob in a riot shows an increased suggestibility by which each individual automatically repeats what his neighbors are doing. Even an army in battle may become, either through enthusiasm or through fear, a group in which all individuality is lost and everyone is forced by imitative impulses to fight or escape. ”

“ Crowds of different nationalities would differ both in degree of suggestibility and in the kinds of suggestive stimuli to which they would respond. Imitation is due to suggestibility. Even suicide is rendered epidemic by suggestion and imitation.37 In a crisis, like a shipwreck, when no one knows what to do, one, by acting, may lead them all 22through imitative suggestibility. People who are very suggestible can be led into states of mind which preclude criticism or reflection. ”

“ Nothing is a better indication of the impulse of imitation." In other words, with the increase of mental disaggregation in a crowd of (subconscious) mediocrities individuality and the critical self are at a minimum, the subconscious self is left unprotected, a target to the arrows of suggestion. Social suggestibility is at its maximum, and the body­politic is thrown into hysterical convulsions of mob-frenzies, into maniacal, nationalistic excitement with fixed paranoidal delusions of national grandeur, demoniacal obsessions of world-dominion, resulting in homicidal and suicidal world-wars. ”

“ Easily, however, as the crowd is to excite to the highest degrees of activity, as quickly—indeed, much more quickly—does it allow itself, as we have already seen, to be dispersed by a panic. Here too the panic rests entirely on suggestion, contra-suggestion, and the instinct of imitation, not on logic and conviction. Automatism, not intelligence, is the moving factor therein. ”

“ When great political convulsions agitate a State, already seething with general vice and luxury, the moral scum seems, by a law of nature, to float invariably to the surface—the characters most destitute of principle, the readiest to obey the instincts of self-aggrandisement and expediency, achieve a kind of spurious fame, a doubtful and temporary success. ”

“ Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith? One has but to bear in mind the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the political aspirant can achieve success. ”

“ An army thus disposed, and victorious too, was sure to leave nothing to the conquered: for success unhinges the minds even of wise men; how then should they who were so depraved use their victory with moderation?
XII When riches began to be held in high esteeem, and attended with glory, honour, and power, virtue languished, poverty was deemed a reproach, and innocence passed for ill-nature. And thus luxury, avarice, and pride, all springing from riches, enslaved the Roman youth; they wantoned in rapine and prodigality; undervalued their own, and coveted what belonged to others ”

“ But, because a powerful prince had expressed his SATISFACTION at the treatment she received, it was deemed impertinent, if not treasonable, for any other individual to express a wish for further inquiry! Yet such is the effect of political artifice, under the management of court sycophants, that the middle ranks of people are taught to believe, that they ought not to trouble themselves with matters that occur in palaces; that a certain set of men come into the world like demigods, possessed of right, power, and intellectual abilities, to rule the earth without controul ”

“ Hence, political exposures in themselves serve as a powerful instrument for disintegrating the system we oppose, the means for diverting from the enemy his casual or temporary allies, the means for spreading enmity and distrust among those who permanently share power with the autocracy. ”

“ This imagination of our power and worth, may be an assured and certain experience of our own actions, and then is that glorying just and well grounded, and begetteth an opinion of increasing the same by other actions to follow; in which consisteth the appetite which we call ASPIRING, or proceeding from one degree of power to another. The same passion may proceed not from any conscience of our own actions, but from fame and trust of others, whereby one may think well of himself, and yet be deceived; and this is FALSE GLORY, and the aspiring consequent thereto procureth ill-success. ”