Steering minds: remarkable experiments reveal how human behavior is shaped

How does the media affect minds? Why do some people deny conclusive evidence? When and how do people’s opinions change? Why do children rebel after they were obedient? Why are rewards and punishment no longer effective in changing their behavior and convictions? How do we deal with adults and children when they fail? When do marriages last and when do they fail? Who are we and how do we see ourselves? How do we get out of cycles of failure? When can we be happy? Questions like these are raised by computational humanities researcher Dr. Karim Darwish in a series of episodes that he publishes periodically on his Twitter page, through which he presents an initiative that reviews amazing experiments that reveal how the human soul is led, shedding light in a more focused way on what is related to the work of the media on viewers, and what we can extract from those experiences in understanding hidden media messages. A more important matter that the initiative takes up is related to raising children, focusing on the psychological changes with which this generation was born that grew up in the overwhelming digital era, the impact of parental behaviors in shaping children’s awareness, and the most appropriate means of punishment that went beyond traditional discipline of beating and violence to more educational and hopeful forms.

Introduction to the researcher

Dr. Karim Darwish is a researcher in the fields of computational linguistics and computational humanities. His scientific specialization combines computer science, language, sociology, and psychology. He has published dozens of scientific papers in international conferences and peer-reviewed scientific journals, and has participated in writing many specialized scientific books. His published research has included topics such as: military intervention in politics, hostility against Muslims in the West, the impact of the Arab Spring on extremist groups, and the role of targeted propaganda on social media. Dr. Karim Darwish worked at the University of Maryland in the United States, Cairo University, and the German University in Cairo. He worked as a researcher at Microsoft and IBM, and currently holds the position of senior researcher at the Qatar Computing Research Institute of the Qatar Foundation.

Guiding Minds Initiative

The initiative relies on reviewing dozens of scientific experiments and theories, and clarifying them through real stories and life situations, while linking them to legal concepts as revealed in Qur’anic verses and Prophetic hadiths, in an interesting and enjoyable manner.

This is how the media affects you