Mausfeld's research focused on perceptual psychology. He also worked on the theoretical foundations of experimental psychology and the psychology of understanding. He also deals with the rivalry between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience in cognitive science. Another area of interest is the history of ideas in the natural sciences. In contrast to attempts to explain psychological functions on a biological basis, he adopts an antireductionist stance.
Mausfeld argues that, contrary to naïve realism, color perception and other aspects of visual perception do not simply reflect an objective, mind-independent external physical world. Color is a subjective product of an organism's visual system, not an objective property of the physical world. The "measuring instrument" conception of perception—according to which the perceptual system is a kind of measuring device that informs the organism about the physical input—is misguided. Mausfeld also criticizes the "atomistic" conception of perception, the idea that the perceptual system builds up perceptions—as things referring to the external world—from elementary perceptual variables that are tied to elementary physical variables. Studying color perception adequately requires studying more than "pure" color. Fully understanding color perception also requires studying texture, regularities governing the interaction of light with different types of surfaces, the ways in which perceivers internally represent regions of space, and many other factors. The overall context of visual perception is crucial for color perception. Sensation is, according to Mausfeld, always shaped by perception. The senses are part of a complex structure in the mind.
Nature and spirit
Mausfeld points out that knowledge of neural circuitry and activity is not enough to explain consciousness and thought processes. Not even the behavior of nematodes can be deduced from the activity of their 302 neurons. According to Mausfeld's view, the relationship between nature and mind must be below the neural level in the sphere of physics. Evidence is given by the fact that nature is actually more enigmatic to us than our consciousness in itself. In modern physics, it has become clear that the physical does not have the properties of matter ascribed to it. Mausfeld sees the special aspect of consciousness in the simplicity and wholeness of the subjective experience, which, however, reveals itself to the psychologist as a complex interaction of unconscious factors. The intrinsic multiperspectivity of thinking, which first opens up the possibilities for thought and action alternatives to humans after Mausfeld results from the complex interplay of the most varied of factors.
White torture and responsibility of science
In his work, Mausfeld illustrates the role of psychologists in the development, application, and justification of modern white torture methods. His work states that the goals of these methods are not, as claimed, the extraction of information, but rather breaking the will, disciplining, humiliating, and shaming the victims. Mausfeld uses the example of torture research to define ethical and legal principles and limits of scientific work. He regards the observance of human rights as fully binding.
Techniques of managing opinions and emotions
Features and framework of manipulation techniques
The most important feature of manipulative techniques, according to Mausfeld, is that they are invisible. To be effective, they must occur below the threshold of our awareness and take advantage of the "weak points" of our mind. This "opinion management," as Mausfeld puts it, which equals propaganda in the sense of Edward Bernays, is the means the formal democratic order adopts to exercise domination without visible force by creating voluntary consent in the minds of citizens. The techniques aim to make invisible not only facts, but also possibilities of thinking and thus alternative actions. Mausfeld puts his criticism of manipulation techniques within the framework of a fundamental critique of the capitalist economic and social order. Neoliberalism, in his view, has limited and narrowed the understanding of freedom to the choice of one's identity from an "identity basket".
Affective techniques
Among the techniques to manipulate people's emotional lives, Mausfeld counts fear mongering, that is, the generation of fears. Thus, due to the natural inclination of people to the status quo, the fear of change is fueled. To assess the significance of this instrument, Mausfeld refers to the US political scientist John J. Mearsheimer.
Furthermore, he mentions the creation of the feeling of powerlessness in the population, the feeling of not having control.
Cognitive techniques
According to Mausfeld, cognitive techniques are more important than affective techniques, because opinions are more stable than emotions. Mausfeld examines the following methods:
Representation of facts as opinion
Fragmenting coherent facts so that the context, such as the historical context, is lost
Decontextualization of facts: The context of the facts is removed, so that the facts become incomprehensible isolated individual cases, which have no general relevance
Misleading recontextualization: Information is embedded in a foreign context, so that they take on a different character and, for example, no longer lead to outrage in human rights violations.
Repetition supports the "perceived truth"
Designing the range of opinions so that the desired seems to be in the middle, which most people strive for, if they are unfamiliar, because they then keep to the middle, seeing it as "neutral and balanced"
Making facts invisible through media selection, distraction and attention control
"Meta-propaganda": It is part of every propaganda to claim that the news of the enemy is wrong because it is propaganda
Analysis of "neoliberal postdemocracy"
Why do lambs remain silent?
In his 2015 publication Warum schweigen die Lämmer? , ''Mausfeld argues that the original definitions of democracy and freedom have been falsified in language and in the organization of power reminiscent of George Orwell'sdystopia. In its present form, representative democracy is seen as merely an "oligarchical electoral democracy", and freedom is seen as merely the power of the economically successful. In his critique of democracy, he draws on the work of Ingeborg Maus and Alex Carey, among others. Securing power by the new elite, which is seen as primarily a financial elite, takes place in new forms of transforming power and manipulating consciousness to make power "invisible." In his opinion, the media play a decisive role, spreading the neo-liberal ideology. Neo-liberalism, according to Mausfeld, is an emerging ideology that has succeeded in secretly establishing itself as the unique framing narrative and asserting itself as a seemingly unquestionable interpretation of reality "without any alternative".
This is an essay Mausfeld authorized to be part of the anthology Facade Democracy and Deep State. On the way to an authoritarian age, edited by Ulrich Mies and Jens Wernicke, argues that representative democracy was invented for the express purpose of giving people an illusion of power. The proper centers of power, however, are largely invisible to the population and not affected by elections. They are not subject to public accountability and are organized in an authoritarian manner. Mausfeld answers the question of how state rule is organized in a strictly empirical way: the actual centers of political power have been thoroughly investigated, their power is far beyond any democratic control and can, at the same time, dictate virtually all important political decisions. Using a criterion given by the Federal Agency for Civic Education for the question of whether a form of rule should be described as democracy, Mausfeld maintains that "Western capitalist democracies are a novel form of totalitarian rule." Yet, he dismisses the conception of a "deep state" as presented by Mike Lofgren. Mausfeld sees this concept as too simple. In his view, this term attributes causes in too concrete a manner to decisions of individual agents, thereby overlooking the subtler real mechanisms of social control.
Private life
Mausfeld lives in Danish-Nienhof and is married to the psychologist and psychoanalyst Gisela Bergmann-Mausfeld.
