Rainer Mausfeld

Rainer Mausfeld (born 22 December 1949 in Iserlohn) is a retired German professor of psychology at Kiel University. He did research on the psychology of perception, cognitive science, and the history of psychology. His publications since 2015, about manipulation in media and politics and the transformation of representative democracy to neoliberal elite democracy, have gained considerable attention.

Academic career

From 1969 to 1979, Mausfeld studied psychology, mathematics, and philosophy at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and mathematical psychology at the University of Nijmegen. Subsequently, he was a consultant at the Institute for Test and Talent Research of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes in Bonn until 1981. In 1984, Mausfeld received his doctorate from the University of Bonn with a thesis about Fechner-Scaling. The thesis focuses on the principles of the construction of psychophysical discrimination scales. In 1987, he became Visiting Research Professor at the University of California. In 1990, Mausfeld was resident, or habilitated, in Bonn with research work mainly on perceptual psychology, and in 1992, he accepted a professorship in general psychology at the University of Mannheim. In 1993, he moved to the University of Kiel. Among other projects, Mausfeld was head of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) project Farbkonstanz and, from 1995 to 1996, head of an international research group at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) in Bielefeld. Since 2004, he has been a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in its Psychology and Cognitive Science Section. Since 2009, Mausfeld has also published on topics outside psychophysics and perceptual psychology, such as white torture.[1]

Research topics

Mausfeld's research focused on perceptual psychology. He also worked on the theoretical foundations of experimental psychology and the psychology of understanding. He also deals with the rivalry between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience in cognitive science. Another area of interest is the history of ideas in the natural sciences. In contrast to attempts to explain psychological functions on a biological basis, he adopts an antireductionist stance.[2]

Color perception

Mausfeld argues that, contrary to naïve realism, color perception and other aspects of visual perception do not simply reflect an objective, mind-independent external physical world.[3][4] Color is a subjective product of an organism's visual system, not an objective property of the physical world.[5] The "measuring instrument" conception of perception—according to which the perceptual system is a kind of measuring device that informs the organism about the physical input—is misguided.[5]

Mausfeld also criticizes the "atomistic" conception of perception, the idea that the perceptual system builds up perceptions—as things referring to the external world—from elementary perceptual variables (like sensations of brightness and color) that are tied to elementary physical variables (like intensity and wavelength of light).[5]

Studying color perception adequately requires studying more than "pure" color (e.g., hue, saturation, and brightness). Fully understanding color perception also requires studying texture, regularities governing the interaction of light with different types of surfaces, the ways in which perceivers internally represent regions of space, and many other factors.[4] The overall context of visual perception is crucial for color perception. Sensation is, according to Mausfeld, always shaped by perception. The senses are part of a complex structure in the mind.[6]

Nature and spirit

Mausfeld points out that knowledge of neural circuitry and activity is not enough to explain consciousness and thought processes. Not even the behavior of nematodes can be deduced from the activity of their 302 neurons. According to Mausfeld's view, the relationship between nature and mind must be below the neural level in the sphere of physics. Evidence is given by the fact that nature is actually more enigmatic to us than our consciousness in itself. In modern physics, it has become clear that the physical does not have the properties of matter ascribed to it. Mausfeld sees the special aspect of consciousness in the simplicity and wholeness of the subjective experience, which, however, reveals itself to the psychologist as a complex interaction of unconscious factors. The intrinsic multiperspectivity of thinking, which first opens up the possibilities for thought and action alternatives to humans after Mausfeld results from the complex interplay of the most varied of factors.[7]

White torture and responsibility of science

In his work, Mausfeld illustrates the role of psychologists in the development, application, and justification of modern white torture methods. His work states that the goals of these methods are not, as claimed, the extraction of information, but rather breaking the will, disciplining, humiliating, and shaming the victims. Mausfeld uses the example of torture research to define ethical and legal principles and limits of scientific work. He regards the observance of human rights as fully binding.[1][8][9]

Features and framework of manipulation techniques

The most important feature of manipulative techniques, according to Mausfeld, is that they are invisible. To be effective, they must occur below the threshold of our awareness and take advantage of the "weak points" of our mind. This "opinion management," as Mausfeld puts it, which equals propaganda in the sense of Edward Bernays, is the means the formal democratic order adopts to exercise domination without visible force by creating voluntary consent in the minds of citizens. The techniques aim to make invisible not only facts, but also possibilities of thinking and thus alternative actions (domination of perception). Mausfeld puts his criticism of manipulation techniques within the framework of a fundamental critique of the capitalist economic and social order. Neoliberalism, in his view, has limited and narrowed the understanding of freedom to the choice of one's identity from an "identity basket" (i.e., to the "choice" of a given media-mediated lifestyle).

Affective techniques
  • Among the techniques to manipulate people's emotional lives, Mausfeld counts fear mongering, that is, the generation of fears. Thus, due to the natural inclination of people to the status quo, the fear of change is fueled. To assess the significance of this instrument, Mausfeld refers to the US political scientist John J. Mearsheimer.
  • Furthermore, he mentions the creation of the feeling of powerlessness in the population, the feeling of not having control.

Cognitive techniques

According to Mausfeld, cognitive techniques are more important than affective techniques, because opinions are more stable than emotions. Mausfeld examines the following methods:

  • Representation of facts as opinion
  • Fragmenting coherent facts so that the context, such as the historical context, is lost
  • Decontextualization of facts: The context of the facts is removed, so that the facts become incomprehensible isolated individual cases, which have no general relevance
  • Misleading recontextualization: Information is embedded in a foreign context, so that they take on a different character and, for example, no longer lead to outrage in human rights violations.
  • Repetition supports the "perceived truth"
  • Designing the range of opinions so that the desired seems to be in the middle, which most people strive for, if they are unfamiliar, because they then keep to the middle, seeing it as "neutral and balanced"
  • Making facts invisible through media selection, distraction and attention control
  • "Meta-propaganda": It is part of every propaganda to claim that the news of the enemy is wrong because it is propaganda

Why do lambs remain silent?

In his 2015 publication (3rd edition 2018) Warum schweigen die Lämmer? (in English: Why do lambs remain silent? How elitist democracy and neo-liberalism are destroying our society and the basis of our lives.), Mausfeld argues that the original definitions of democracy and freedom have been falsified in language and in the organization of power reminiscent of George Orwell's dystopia. In its present form, representative democracy is seen as merely an "oligarchical electoral democracy", and freedom is seen as merely the power of the economically successful.[10] In his critique of democracy, he draws on the work of Ingeborg Maus and Alex Carey, among others. Securing power by the new elite, which is seen as primarily a financial elite, takes place in new forms of transforming power and manipulating consciousness to make power "invisible."[11] In his opinion, the media play a decisive role, spreading the neo-liberal ideology.[12] Neo-liberalism, according to Mausfeld, is an emerging ideology that has succeeded in secretly establishing itself as the unique framing narrative and asserting itself as a seemingly unquestionable interpretation of reality "without any alternative".[13][14]

Phenomena of a 'deep state' as manifestations of authoritarian capitalism (2017)

This is an essay Mausfeld authorized to be part of the anthology Facade Democracy and Deep State. On the way to an authoritarian age,[15] edited by Ulrich Mies and Jens Wernicke, argues that representative democracy was invented for the express purpose of giving people an illusion of power. The proper centers of power, however, are largely invisible to the population and not affected by elections. They are not subject to public accountability and are organized in an authoritarian manner. Mausfeld answers the question of how state rule is organized in a strictly empirical way: the actual centers of political power have been thoroughly investigated,[16] their power is far beyond any democratic control and can, at the same time, dictate virtually all important political decisions. Using a criterion given by the Federal Agency for Civic Education for the question of whether a form of rule should be described as democracy, Mausfeld maintains that "Western capitalist democracies are a novel form of totalitarian rule." Yet, he dismisses the conception of a "deep state" as presented by Mike Lofgren. Mausfeld sees this concept as too simple. In his view, this term attributes causes in too concrete a manner to decisions of individual agents, thereby overlooking the subtler real mechanisms of social control.

Private life

Mausfeld lives in Danish-Nienhof and is married to the psychologist and psychoanalyst Gisela Bergmann-Mausfeld.

Bibliography
  • Mausfeld, Rainer (1985). Grundzüge der Fechner-Skalierung: Prinzipien der Konstruktion psychophysikalischer Diskriminationsskalen [Features of Fechner Scaling: Principles of the Construction of Psychophysical Discrimination Scales] (in German). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-8204-5240-2.
  • Mausfeld, Rainer; Niederée, Reinhard (1993). "An Inquiry into Relational Concepts of Colour, Based on Incremental Principles of Colour Coding for Minimal Relational Stimuli". Perception. 22 (4): 427–462. doi:10.1068/p220427. ISSN 0301-0066. PMID 8378133.
  • Erdfelder, Edgar; Mausfeld, Rainer; Meiser, Thorsten; Rudinger, Georg (1996). Handbuch Quantitative Methoden [Handbook of Quantitative Methods] (in German). Weinheim: Beltz, Psychologie-Verl.-Union. ISBN 978-3-621-27280-3.
  • Heyer, Dieter; Mausfeld, Rainer, eds. (2002). Perception and the Physical World: Psychological and Philosophical Issues in Perception. New York: Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-49149-1.
  • Mausfeld, R. (2002). The physicalistic trap in perception theory. In D. Heyer & R. Mausfeld (Eds.), Perception and the physical world (pp. 75–112). Chichester: Wiley.
  • Mausfeld, Rainer; Heyer, Dieter, eds. (2003). Colour Perception: Mind and the Physical World. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850500-6.
  • Mausfeld, R. (2003). ‘Colour’ as part of the format of different perceptual primitives: The dual coding of colour: In: R. Mausfeld & D. Heyer (Eds.), Colour perception: Mind and the physical world (pp. 381–429). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Mausfeld, Rainer (2005). "Über die Bedingungen der Möglichkeit von Lernen" [On the Conditions for the Possibility of Learning]. In Käsermann, Marie-Louise; Altorfer, Andreas; Foppa, Klaus (eds.). Über Lernen: ein Gedankenaustausch ; zum 75. Geburtstag von Klaus Foppa [About Learning: An Exchange of Ideas; on the Occasion of the 75th Birthday of Klaus Foppa] (in German). Bern: EditionSolo. pp. 218–236. ISBN 978-3-9522759-5-5.
  • Mausfeld, Rainer (2006). "Wahrnehmungspsychologie: Geschichte und Ansätze" [Perception Psychology: History and Approaches] (PDF). In Funke, Joachim; Frensch, Peter A. (eds.). Handbuch der Allgemeinen Psychologie - Kognition [Handbook of General Psychology - Cognition] (in German). Göttingen: Hogrefe. pp. 97–107. ISBN 978-3-8017-1846-6. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  • Mausfeld, R., & Wendt, G. (2006). Material appearances under minimal stimulus conditions: Lustrous and glassy qualities. Perception, 35(Suppl.), 213. doi:10.1068/v060173
  • Wendt, G., Faul, F., & Mausfeld, R. (2008). Highlight disparity contributes to the authenticity and strength of perceived glossiness. Journal of Vision, 8, 1–10. doi:10.1167/8.1.14
  • Mausfeld, Rainer (2009). "Psychologie, weiße Folter' und die Verantwortlichkeit von Wissenschaftlern" (PDF). Psychologische Rundschau (in German). 60 (4): 229–240. doi:10.1026/0033-3042.60.4.229. Retrieved 21 August 2019. Translated as "Psychology, 'White Torture' and the Responsibility of Scientists" (PDF). Translated by Ekrol, Vebjörn. Retrieved 21 August 2019. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Weiße Folter. Psychologie im Krieg gegen den Terror. In: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik Band 54, 2009, S. 90–100.
  • Foltern ohne Spuren. Psychologie im Dienste des »Kampfes gegen den Terrorismus«. (Volltext). In: Wissenschaft und Frieden Heft 1 (Thema Intellektuelle und Krieg), 2010, S. 16–19.
  • Mausfeld, R. (2010a). The perception of material qualities and the internal semantics of the perceptual system. In L. Albertazzi, G. van Tonder, & D. Vishwanath (Eds.), Perception beyond inference. The information content of visual processes (pp. 159–200). Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Mausfeld, R. (2010b). Colour within an internalist framework: The role of ‘colour’ in the structure of the perceptual system. In J. Cohen & M. Matthen (Eds.), Color ontology and color science (pp. 123–148). Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Mausfeld, R. (2011). Intrinsic multiperspectivity. Conceptual forms and the functional architecture of the perceptual system. In W. Welsch, W. J. Singer, & A. Wunder (Eds.), Interdiciplinary anthropology: Continuing evolution of man (pp. 19–54). Berlin: Springer.
  • Mausfeld, R. (2012). On some unwarranted tacit assumptions in cognitive neuroscience. Frontiers in Cognition, 3(67), 1–13. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00067
  • Mausfeld, R. (2013). The attribute of realness and the internal organization of perceptual reality. In L. Albertazzi (Ed.), Handbook of experimental phenomenology. Visual perception of shape, space and appearance (pp. 91–118). Chichester: Wiley.
  • Mausfeld, Rainer (2015). "Notions such as "Truth" or "Correspondence to the Objective World" Play no Role in Explanatory Accounts of Perception". Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 22 (6): 1535–1540. doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0763-6. ISSN 1531-5320. PMID 26384991.
  • Massenmediale Ideologieproduktion. In: Jens Wernicke: Lügen die Medien? Propaganda, Rudeljournalismus und der Kampf um die öffentliche Meinung. Westend, Frankfurt am Main 2017, S. 134–153.
  • Warum schweigen die Lämmer? Wie Elitendemokratie und Neoliberalismus unsere Gesellschaft und unsere Lebensgrundlagen zerstören. (2015) 3. Auflage, Westend, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 3-86489-225-2 (Volltext online)

References
  1. Mausfeld, Rainer (2009). "Psychologie, weiße Folter' und die Verantwortlichkeit von Wissenschaftlern" (PDF). Psychologische Rundschau (in German). 60 (4): 229–240. doi:10.1026/0033-3042.60.4.229. Retrieved 21 August 2019. Translated as "Psychology, 'White Torture' and the Responsibility of Scientists" (PDF). Translated by Ekrol, Vebjörn. Retrieved 21 August 2019. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. "Wissenschaft im Zwiespalt – Interview mit Professor Mausfeld und Professor Güntürkün" [Science in Conflict – Interview with Professor Mausfeld and Professor Güntürkün]. Gehirn & Geist [Brain & Mind] (in German) (7–8). 2005. pp. 62–66. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  3. Mausfeld, Rainer (2015). "Notions such as "Truth" or "Correspondence to the Objective World" Play no Role in Explanatory Accounts of Perception". Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 22 (6): 1535–1540. doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0763-6. ISSN 1531-5320. PMID 26384991.
  4. Mausfeld, Rainer; Wendt, Gunnar; Golz, Jürgen (2014). "Lustrous Material Appearances: Internal and External Constraints on Triggering Conditions for Binocular Lustre". I-Perception. 5 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1068/i0603. ISSN 2041-6695.
  5. Mausfeld, Rainer (1998). "Color Perception: From Grassman Codes to a Dual Code for Object and Illumination Colors". In Backhaus, Werner G. K.; Kliegl, Reinhold; Werner, John Simon (eds.). Color Vision: Perspectives from Different Disciplines. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-016100-7.
  6. Mausfeld, Rainer (2006). "Wahrnehmungspsychologie: Geschichte und Ansätze" [Perception Psychology: History and Approaches] (PDF). In Funke, Joachim; Frensch, Peter A. (eds.). Handbuch der Allgemeinen Psychologie - Kognition [Handbook of General Psychology - Cognition] (in German). Göttingen: Hogrefe. pp. 97–107. ISBN 978-3-8017-1846-6. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  7. Psychology, Biology, Cognitive Neurosciences The current dominance of neuro-reductionist positions and their tacit basic assumptions, Psychologische Rundschau, 61 (4), 180-190 © Hogrefe Verlag Göttingen 2010
  8. Mausfeld, Rainer (15 July 2009). "Anti-Terrorkampf: Wissenschaftler profilieren sich als Folterknechte" [Anti-terrorist Struggle: Scientists Emerge as Torturers]. Die Zeit (in German). Hamburg. ISSN 0044-2070. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  9. Hauschild, Jana (12 December 2014). "Wie US-Forscher der CIA halfen: Die Folter-Psychologen" [How US Researchers Helped the CIA: The Torture Psychologists]. Spiegel Online (in German). Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  10. Rainer Mausfeld: "Why are the lambs silent? How elitist democracy and neoliberalism are destroying our society and our livelihoods." Westend, Frankfurt am Main 2018, p. 8
  11. Rainer Mausfeld: Why are they silent? Lambs? How elitist democracy and neo-liberalism are destroying our society and our livelihoods. Westend, Frankfurt am Main 2018, p. 16.
  12. Rainer Mausfeld: Why are they silent? Lambs? How elitist democracy and neoliberalism are destroying our society and our livelihoods. Westend, Frankfurt am Main 2018, pp. 153 ff.
  13. Rainer Mausfeld: Why are the lambs silent? How elitist democracy and neoliberalism are destroying our society and our livelihoods. Westend, Frankfurt am Main 2018, p. 115 ff.
  14. Rainer Mausfeld : Why are the lambs silent? How elitist democracy and neo-liberalism are destroying our society and our livelihoods , Westend, Frankfurt am Main 2018, p. 32 ff., 39-42.
  15. Rainert Mausfeld: Phenomena of a Deep State as manifestations of authoritarian capitalism. In: Ullrich Mies, Jens Wernicke (ed.): Facade democracy and the deep state. On the way to an authoritarian age. Promedia Verlagsgesellschaft (Vienna) 2017. 240 pages. ISBN 978-3-85371-425-6, p. 47ff.
  16. https://scholar.princeton .edu / sites / default / files / mgilens / files / gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
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