Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 5, Number 1, Spring / Summer 2020 | Page 37

Psychology as a Warfighting Domain
from different time periods during
which the United States, US allies, and
US adversaries have all used psychology—whether
in the form of trickery
and deceit to support other operations,
messaging, or otherwise influencing
how or what people think—to gain an
advantage. After this broad overview of
psychological warfare throughout time,
the authors describe their opinions on
the current state of influence operations
and suggest a way forward.
To understand psychological
warfare, one first must understand the
terminology used to describe the various
ways that militaries have used and
continue to use psychology in war.
According to the Department of Defense
(DOD), psychological operations
(PSYOP) “convey selected information
and indicators to foreign audiences to
influence their emotions, motives, objective
reasoning, and ultimately the
behavior of foreign governments, organizations,
groups, and individuals”
(DOD 2010). In recent years, the US
Army rebranded PSYOP as Military
Information Support Operations, or
MISO—and then rebranded MISO
back as PSYOP. Perhaps the easiest way
to understand this shift is that MISO
is what PSYOP does. MISO describes
a broader range of operations, particularly
when referring to operations
involving the State Department (Myers
2017). Audiences consider MISO a
less antagonistic term than PSYOP. The
authors refer to PSYOP when discussing
historic operations to keep consistency
with the source material, but use
MISO when the source material does
as well. Military deception (MILDEC)
is another way one uses knowledge of
the adversary’s thinking to achieve effects.
MILDEC is used to “deter hostile
actions, increase the success of friendly
defensive actions, or to improve the
success of any potential friendly offensive
action” (DOD 2012). PSYOP/
MISO and MILDEC (along with operations
security, or OPSEC) fall under
the general umbrella of Information
Operations (IO). IO is defined in joint
doctrine as the “integrated employment,
during military operations, of
information related capabilities in concert
with other lines of operation to influence,
disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the
decision making of adversaries and potential
adversaries while protecting our
own” (DOD 2012). IO incorporates the
ways to use the physical and information
domains to influence the cognitive
domain, which influences the physical
and information domains in return.
Throwing Cats: Historical
and Mythological Examples
Psychological warfare is not new to
human conflict. Throughout history,
people have used deception,
disinformation, and influence over the
decision-making of adversaries in warfare.
Genghis Khan used techniques
designed to inspire fear, the Egyptians
had their cultural and religious beliefs
used against them, and the myth of the
Trojan Horse shows how powerful the
idea of deception has been throughout
human history. These three examples
demonstrate how psychological warfare
was used before “psychology” was a defined
construct.
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