Science of Social Influence Supports Parental Alienation Theory
What does this mean for Parental Alienation?
a) False memories can be implanted,
b) suggestion and questions can lead to the corruption of memory and perception,
c) the cues of others shape our own perception,
d) and this is true of infants, children, teens and even adults.
The mechanisms of Influence include: Social Pressure, Visualization, Suggestive questioning, Repetition, Compliance, Patternicity & Confirmation bias
The Mouse Trap Study
When you interview a child and you ask them the same question multiple times, you're likely to get a different response because, at some point, they think you want them to answer in a certain way. Also, children want to be helpful.
At Cornell University, renowned psychologist Stephen Ceci studies the accuracy of children's courtroom testimony, particularly in cases alleging physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. "Truth and Consequence" is a short independent documentary that focuses on Professor Ceci's research and three court cases in which he testified as an expert witness.
The Possible Role of Source Misattributions in the Creation of False Beliefs Among Preschoolers STUDY
Toddlers regulate their behavior to avoid making adults angry
Toddlers who overhear adults disagreeing can use that emotional information to guide their own behaviour, according to the research study from the Institute of Learning & Brain Sciences. Read more...
Can Babies Tell Right From Wrong?
Babies at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center respond to "naughty" and "nice" puppets.
An Experiment by Joseph Campos: The Visual Cliff
This study demonstrates the role of non-verbal communications in determining the child's behaviour in an uncertain context. When associating this with parental alienation, parents use encouraging or discouraging non-verbal communications that can influence the child's behaviour towards their other parent. Common behaviours seen when the child speaks about the other parent, or before and after the time the child interacts or spends time with the other parent. The child quickly learns what doesn't appease the alienating parent and what does.
Still Face Experiment (with Mother)
Non-verbal communications such as facial expressions play a big part in alienating tactics in parental alienation. When babies are born, they learn to read their parent's facial expressions for emotional responses and cues. The child will pick up on facial expressions, especially ones like anger, sadness, shock, disappointment, when the subject of the targeted parent is discussed by an alienating parent or brought up by the child.
"Ed Tronick, director of UMass Boston's Infant-Parent Mental Health Program and Distinguished Professor of Psychology, discusses the cognitive abilities of infants to read and react to their social surroundings."
Still Face Experiment (with Father)
Project ABC builds on Ed Tronick's Still Face Experiment by exploring the relationship between dads and their babies.
Classical Conditioning
The Little Albert Experiment was a controlled experiment showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. The study also provides an example of stimulus generalisation.
If a child can be taught to fear Santa Claus, then a child can be taught to fear a parent.
How reliable is your memory?
"Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. More precisely, she studies false memories, when people either remember things that didn't happen or remember them differently from the way they really were. It's more common than you might think, and Loftus shares some startling stories and statistics, and raises some important ethical questions we should all remember to consider."
Is Your Memory Just an Illusion?
"How can you be sure that any particular memory is true? Julia Shaw takes you on an adventure into the weird world of memory hacking. She shows that through a combination of perceptual flaws, brain biases, and social influences, your memories can be easily influenced. Armed with science, she explores how even some of your most cherished and emotional memories might be nothing but fiction. By the end she’ll have you wondering whether you actually are who you think you are, or whether your autobiography is just a compelling illusion."
Separating children from their parents
"From a scientific perspective, the forcible separation of children from their parents is like setting a house on fire. Prolonging that separation is like preventing the first responders from doing their job." - Jack P Shonkoff, MD
Childhood Trauma
"How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime. Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Paediatrician, Dr Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on."
What is a Cult and How Does it Work?
"By Margaret Thaler Singer, PhD, a clinical psychologist and emeritus adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who counselled and interviewed more than 3,000 current and former cult members, relatives and friends."
Plus: Singer's Six Conditions of Mind Control from the book "Cults in the Midst."
The Danger of a SINGLE STORY
It is unrealistic to live life with a single story. Now reflect on how life would be for a child who grows up with one parent and only hears their version of events or perspectives (through a single story) and how thinking this way defines them.
Show a child one thing, and only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.
Folie à Deux
If folie à deux can pass on delusions in adulthood, imagine what happens when a delusional parent passes on their false beliefs and cognitive distortions to the child. The impact on the child's mental health, development and relationships can be devastating.
Folie à Deux is also known as shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder (SDD).
"A 1952 Film, Demonstrates the symptoms in one of the less common forms of mental disease, folie à deux or induced insanity. Presents two patients, mother and daughter, explaining that the psychosis developed first in the daughter and was then communicated to the mother. The daughter expresses a number of grandiose delusions and delusions of persecution, which ideas the mother accepts as reality."
Children see Children Do
NAPCANs Children See Children Do video. Parents need to make their influence positive. Children learn behaviours with limited knowledge and often without understanding the consequences.
#monkeyseemonkeydo
The Stressed Brain
How stress can affect the brain of an adult and child. When the behaviours of a parent are having an impact (emotionally, psychologically and biologically) on the child, there needs to be a managed intervention, removal of the child or a change of care to the other parent (as long as safe to do so). A protective order needs to put in place to stop the alienating parent from having contact with the child to allow the child to heal, put things into perspective, reunify and rekindle their relationship with the target parent.
PARENTAL ALIENATION STUDY GROUP
Videos about Parental Alienation, written by members of the Parental Alienation Study Group, and produced by The Law Center.
MORE VIDEOS To Come
This website is being updated on a regular basis. Be sure to check back.
Copyright © 2024 Amanda Sillars - All Rights Reserved.
EMMM Petition
Parental Alienating Behaviours are Child Abuse & Family Violence
This serious form of abuse and family violence can no longer be ignored. Parental alienating behaviours must be acknowledged in Australia as it is in other parts of the world. We need legislation that not only acknowledges its existence but firmly and clearly legislates against it.