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psychological warfare
Sign in to saveAlso known as PSYWAR, psychological operations, PsyOp
military information operations aimed at promoting behaviour to assist military objectives
Psychological warfare refers to military operations designed to influence how people think and behave in ways that support military goals. It matters because understanding these tactics helps people recognize when they're being targeted by coordinated messaging campaigns intended to shape their perceptions and actions.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Research
3,120 papers- Psychological counterterrorism.International journal of emergency mental health · 2003Everly GS Jr
- Psychological effects of biological warfare.ReviewMilitary medicine · 2001Norwood AE, Holloway HC, Ursano RJ
- Psychological resilience in trench warfare: Leveraging mental health frameworks for Ukrainian soldiers.Neuroscience applied · 2025Frankova I, Klochkov V, Pyvovarenko M et al.DOI: 10.1016/j.nsa.2025.105528
- Mental Fitness: Psychological Warfare from Battlefield to Playground.Psychological studies · 2023Idaya Rani C, Subbu Lakshmi MDOI: 10.1007/s12646-022-00686-3
- PSYOPS: psychological operations.ReviewMedGenMed : Medscape general medicine · 2003Stangler RS
- [Psychological warfare].Revista portuguesa de medicina militar · 1960GARCAO PM
- Hostage retrieval.ReviewJournal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 1997Turnbull GDOI: 10.1177/014107689709000904
- The Scammers' Psychological Warfare: A Call to Arms.Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society · 2025Hanoch Y, Wood S, DeLiema M et al.DOI: 10.1177/15291006261431553
via PubMed
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- subversion
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- Commons category
- Psychological warfare
- topic's main category
- Category:Psychological warfare
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
- target
- government
- facet of
- war
- partially coincident with
- cognitive warfare
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Encyclopedic overview
A leaflet by NATO during the bombing of Yugoslavia
Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PSYOPs), has been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), political warfare, "winning hearts and minds", and propaganda. The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people".
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “psychological warfare” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.