Managing the national state in the contemporary world through psychological policies is one of the most controversial modern methods in political science, government, and public administration. With the development of behavioral influence tools and the growing knowledge of collective perception mechanisms, some governments have become inclined to employ psychology in formulating their public policies, not only to regulate social relations or improve institutional performance, but to direct citizens’ awareness and behavior in various indirect ways.

In short, this approach is based on the assumption that humans are influenced by symbols, emotions, and subconscious motives more than by logical arguments or rational discourse, and from here arose the idea of ​​controlling collective perception as a means of managing societies without resorting to coercion or direct coercion!

Despite the efficiency these policies may achieve in managing internal crises and challenges or controlling public opinion on a temporary basis, they entail fundamental risks that affect the essence of the national state and the concept of conscious citizenship. When the state turns into an actor that uses psychological tools to secretly influence people’s behavior, it exceeds the moral limits of public authority and enters the space of cognitive dominance, where the citizen is not persuaded by reason and argument, but rather is led by emotion and emotional framing. With time accumulation, this pattern leads to weakening the critical awareness of individuals and turning them into a passive audience that is content to receive official messages without questioning or thinking. Here the political process loses its true meaning, because it is not based on free conviction but rather on a pre-designed psychological response.

The danger of psychological politics in the nation-state becomes more apparent when the collective consciousness is alert and stimulated. Societies that possess a high degree of political, cultural, and social awareness quickly discover this pattern of hidden management, which leads to dangerous adverse results. Instead of enhancing confidence in institutions, a general feeling of suspicion and betrayal is generated, as citizens feel that their state does not address them frankly, but rather manipulates their perception. This cognitive shock may lead to the collapse of confidence in political reality and the growth of protest tendencies and movements, because the conscious citizen does not accept to be treated as a being whose feelings can be directed or whose positions can be engineered through psychological tools. In such cases, society becomes more inclined to doubt, and the relationship between the state and its citizens turns into a relationship of defense and apprehension, which weakens national cohesion and opens the door to sharp divisions and interpretations.

In addition, the state’s reliance on psychological methods in managing the public sphere gradually transforms it into a controlling paternal authority, interfering in shaping opinion and behavior even in matters that should remain a domain of individual, personal or social freedom. With the passage of time, the public sphere is reshaped on the basis of emotion rather than dialogue, and political institutions become mere tools for emotional influence rather than arenas for rational debate. This type of administration threatens the principle of citizenship, as awareness of participation is replaced by emotional loyalty, and national belonging is reduced to emotional symbols without real political content.

Moreover, these practices raise a fundamental question on the ethical level about the limits of power to influence people’s consciousness? A state that uses psychological tools to guide its citizens without their knowledge is practicing a form of manipulation of the collective mind, which contradicts the principles of transparency and moral responsibility on which the modern state is supposed to be based. In societies that have gone beyond the stage of emotional dominance to the stage of critical awareness, such policies turn into a heavy burden, because they are interpreted as an attempt to control thought rather than develop it, and the government loses its moral respect in front of its conscious public.

In addition, many national states throughout history have known various types of psychological policies in managing society and the state. For example, but not limited to, in Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Political Propaganda in Hitler’s government, used the tools of collective psychology to produce a collective consciousness based on fear and national emotion, which led to the disruption of critical thinking and the transformation of the masses into a submissive mass. In the Soviet Union during the era of Stalin, psychological propaganda was widely practiced to build the image of an eternal and wise leader and link national loyalty to fear of the internal enemy, which created a society subject to self-surveillance. In the United States during the Cold War, the government used the tools of “psychological operations” to build a collective fear of “communism” and to direct public opinion towards supporting defensive policies under the slogan of protecting freedom. In Maoist China, emanating from the teachings of Mao Zedong, the concept of “reshaping consciousness” was applied through mass culture, to raise an ideologically obedient citizen, an idea that continues today in a softer form within the “Social Credit” system, which is a huge data system to monitor and shape the behavior of companies and citizens in China. The Arab nationalist regimes in the fifties and sixties also knew a form of mobilizing psychological politics, as the national discourse relied on arousing public emotion and linking political loyalty to the personality of the leader more than Institutions, as happened in the “Nasserist” experiment, which used symbolic rhetoric and patriotic music to unify Arab consciousness, but weakened the institutions after the absence of the leader.

In the modern era, more sophisticated forms of psychological policies continue in democratic countries through what is known as “behavioral engineering,” which is the use of psychological tools to direct public behavior without imposing a legal obligation, as happened during the “Corona pandemic in 2020” when governments used psychological messages to urge citizens to adhere to health instructions. However, these policies have sparked widespread debate about the legitimacy of influencing collective behavior without individuals being fully aware of it.

All of these historical experiences reveal that managing the state through psychological policies may seem to be an effective tool in the short term, but it sows the seeds of a long-term silent crisis in the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. When the citizen is managed by emotion instead of dialogue, and when his awareness is addressed with emotion instead of reason, the state loses its ability to build a true social contract based on trust and mutual respect. The national state that respects the awareness of its citizens builds its legitimacy on truth, not on manipulation of the mind, and on conscious participation, not on collective emotion. Therefore, moral and political responsibility remains required to use psychology to serve stability and awareness, not to control awareness itself.

The bottom line is when psychological policies turn from a means to serve stability into a tool for hegemony or control according to the interests of those with power in society at the expense of the interests of the vast majority, the state loses its moral, social, and political balance. In cases of collective awareness or advanced public awareness, as in modern societies, this method turns against the state itself, because the conscious citizen refuses to be managed by means of psychological manipulation, so persuasion turns into doubt, and trust turns into implicit rejection or silent reservation! Which means that the continuity of this dynamic limits the state’s ability to build a cohesive and stable society politically and socially, and makes any media messages or government policies vulnerable to suspicion and constant skepticism, which limits its ability to have the desired effect!