Did Edison Hack Your Brain? The Shocking Psychology Behind the Electric Chair

I always thought of Thomas Edison as the genius who lit up the world. But after digging deeper, it looks like Edison didn’t just light the light bulbs. But he also lit something else...

Shocking

Yes, Edison wasn't only about the light bulbs and current. But he was also the one who staged demonstrations and films of electrocutions to promote his new invention and to crush his rivals, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse in the infamous War of Currents.

And to do so he turned motion pictures, at that time a brand‑new technology into a propaganda machine.   

What was the War of Currents?

Let’s go back a century. A time when electricity wasn’t in every home. No TV, computers, none of the devices we now can’t imagine our life without. And then came a few brilliant minds: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse with the goal to bring artificial light into our rooms, powered by flowing current.

Tesla championed alternating current (AC), which could deliver electricity across long distances. While Edison was desperate to protect his empire built on direct current (DC). And also, to promote his new invention needed to do something to make the public to believe AC was dangerous.

“What if I could use emerging technology to shape public perception? To make people fear AC and also introduce my electric chair?”

Boom.   Motion pictures, a brand-new invention, were the perfect tool.

“Let’s use film to show how deadly AC is.”

And so began the battles not just of technology, but of perception.

So, he staged spectacles to make sure that whenever people thought of alternating current (AC), they thought of death:

To do so Executions were filmed. Electrocutions were staged. Even an elephant, Topsy, brought before the camera which blurred fact and fiction.

Because the chair ran on AC, every “ordinary” execution reinforced a simple equation: AC = death.

The more people saw it, the more they believed it. The more they believed it, the less they questioned.

Basically, Edison created a psychological cocktail by using film to associate the fear of death in people’s minds with AC, making audiences believe that AC was the villain.

Although on screen: a quick, clean death was shown using the chair. While in reality electrocutions were gruesome, with convulsions, burns, and prolonged agony.

Edison didn’t just make alternating current look terrifying but by sanitizing the spectacle, he also normalized the electric chair itself, presenting it as a legitimate tool of justice.

And it worked. By 1913, fifteen states had adopted the electric chair as their primary method of execution. Edison’s “clean” version of death helped normalize the barbaric practices in justice.

And if you think this was only about electricity, you’re missing the bigger picture. Because what Edison really uncovered was the secret to controlling perception itself…

The Psychology of Perception Control:

The formula hasn’t changed:

1. Normalize— make it look safe, justice, efficient, inevitable.

2. Amplify the fear — highlight the dangers of alternatives or rivals.

3. Lock the association — wire the perception so deeply into the brain that it feels like truth.

This still works because of psychology.  

People trust what they see. The brain recoils from fear, yet it cannot help but build associations. Most people don’t pause to fact‑check; they accept the image in front of them as truth. And once that belief takes root, it becomes stubborn, almost impossible to undo.

That is the genius, and the danger of propaganda is that it doesn’t simply inform; it manipulates. It repeats until shock fades, until horror feels ordinary, until the extraordinary becomes routine.

What begins as spectacle turns into perception. What begins as perception hardens into reality.

The formula is timeless: find a tool, hack the human brain, and control the associations people carry in their minds.

Do that, and you don’t just shape opinion you shape entire industries, societies, culture and futures.