Governments attempt to brainwash us much of the time and more often than not they succeed.
Guiding behavior is central to many organizations within and around government. To attain power, political parties must control large segments of the population. This is done by controlling the information they receive. Psychological testing is done prior to releasing information on television to ascertain the effect on behavior.
There is a good documentary produced by the BBC, called the Century of the Self, which details some of the behavioral "programming". It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud and PR consultant Edward Bernays at the start of the twentieth century. In the first episode, the filmmaker Adam Curtis summarises the project, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." You can find it here: