Introduction

For as long as conflict has existed, people have had some basic understanding of the importance of psychological operations (PSYOPS), as even during ancient times each side attempted to instil fear in their opponents and break their will to fight using a variety of available creative means. Some of these methods were eventually formalized in writing in the fifth century BC by Sun Tzu in his book The Art of War, which focuses significantly on emotional and behavioral influences both on the opposition and on one’s own forces. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century AD, however, that we began to develop an understanding of the mechanisms by which our minds worked and could be influenced, as pioneers such as Wilhelm Wundt and William James specialized in the workings of the mind and laid the foundations for modern psychology This brought psychology to the world as a study in its own right, rather than being seen as disconnected anomalies of other fields such as military strategy or as a set of curious and untreatable illnesses. It did not take long for the innovations in this field to draw the attention of the military forces around the world, and in the early twentieth century, during WWI, an explosion of new methods were being explored by newly formed psychological operations units.