Emotion manipulation: how not to do what you don’t want to do?

[Tomcat]

Everyone is great! Today I would like to continue talking about emotions.
In a given situation, we experience a variety of feelings and emotions. They can be roughly divided into groups:
1.positive (joy, interest);
2.negative (fear, anxiety, anger, grief, longing);
3.neutral (surprise, boredom).

It is impossible to constantly experience only positive emotions. In addition, it is known that it is negative feelings that lead to the fact that a person adapts to the situation, trying to overcome them. Positive emotions lead to relaxation and, conversely, to maladjustment.
Manipulation usually refers to joy, anxiety, guilt, and shame. The evocation of these emotions and feelings can force a person to do something that he did not initially plan, to lay down a certain algorithm of actions. Let's take a closer look at them.

1) Joy
We can distinguish several types of joy:

• true joy;
• pseudo-joy;
• magical joy.

What are the differences between them?

True joy
If we talk about true joy, then a person receives it only as a result of his, usually creative, activity. In other words, it is the pleasure of what you have created, invented, done. Joy does not last long and is considered an energy-consuming emotion. After it, a person usually experiences devastation. When someone is experiencing joy, he is very vulnerable. Any criticism or remark will be doubly painful for him, so you should not say something negative at this moment, even if it is deserved.
Quite often you can find a situation when a person made a large purchase, for example, bought a TV set, decided to share his joy with friends, and they began to criticize this model, manufacturer, etc. This is especially often done by those who have a hypertrophied feeling of envy. What happens to the person? His emotional background dramatically changes from positive to negative, and negative emotions are felt much more sharply.

Pseudo-joy
It cannot be stated unequivocally that pseudo-joy is a positive emotion. In order to explain what this feeling is, the following example should be given. Imagine you are on a business trip and you have to buy new shoes. Your day turned out to be quite busy, you went to meetings, conferences and other events. But closer to lunch, you realized that the shoes are very tight. For the rest of the time, you experienced severe discomfort that you couldn't do anything about. And only in the evening, after being at the hotel and taking off your shoes, you felt relief.
This is pseudo-joy. In other words, it is an emotion that arose after the elimination of any unfavorable factors. There is even an opinion that pseudo-joy is the joy of a neurotic. He creates problems for himself, solves them and experiences pleasure from it.
Imagine a situation that you cannot find your phone. You start looking for it, remembering where you could have left it and even making assumptions about whether it was stolen on the way to work or home. What do you feel? Anxiety, worry. Finally, the phone has been found, and you are happy about it. But this emotion is not real. It is just a semblance of true joy that you might experience from something else.

This emotion is very often used in manipulation.
Its main difference from true joy is that no creative process preceded its appearance. In order to make a person experience pseudo-joy, it is enough to cause in him a feeling of anxiety, discomfort, and then remove it.

This is often the case with the adoption of any laws and new projects that are initially not very popular among ordinary people.

The scheme for causing pseudo-joy can be designated as follows:
1) the manipulator uses the "pendulum effect";
2) the addressee is brought into the zone of negative emotions;
3) some of the negative emotions are removed;
4) the remaining emotions are perceived as positive.

An example is the following situation.
In one of the major cities in Russia, the mayor began to lose popularity before the elections. Residents complained about the rise in prices for public transport, utilities, etc. Instead of lowering tariffs, the official announced that it might not be possible to do without another increase. And even for some time, a higher cost of travel in transport was established. A month later, the budget "found" money to return to the old prices. The people rejoiced and thanked the mayor. In fact, nothing has changed in this situation, the prices remained the same, with which everyone was initially unhappy. But the official was able to cause a feeling of anxiety, which would be even worse, after which he reduced it, allowed him to experience relief, and, accordingly, pseudo-joy.

Magical joy
Magical joy is the emotion we feel in anticipation of future achievements. Our brains are designed in such a way that they cannot always distinguish reality from fiction. Accordingly, at the moment when a person begins to fantasize, he experiences the same emotions that arise from real achievements.

A classic example of magical joy is the story of how a married couple bought a lottery ticket and had a fight over who would drive the car and what they would do with it. Simply put, they have not yet received a prize and it is not known whether they will receive it at all, but they were able to experience all the emotions, including magical joy.
This is used in manipulations associated with pictures of the future. For example, lately one can often come across advertising slogans “Take our training, earn a million rubles and buy a Mercedes”. What happens in this case? They drew a beautiful picture in front of a person - he can buy the car of his dreams, and for this you need to do very little - just go through training. He begins to imagine himself driving a car, to experience joyful emotions from this, which his brain perceives as real. And the fact that he will go to this training is beyond doubt.
The vision of the future is very popular with marketers. A lot of advertising campaigns are built on it. Before the consumer, they draw a picture of how his life can change for the better after he buys this product or service. This image remains in the client's subconscious, and he seeks to buy what is imposed on him, without even thinking whether he really needs it.
In other words, magical joy is a picture of the future. It underlies the creation of most financial pyramids. The client is told that if he invests 10, he will receive 300 in a short time, he draws himself a rainbow picture, begins to believe in it and really brings money. Only after the effect of this technique ends, the person begins to think logically and understand that it was a deception. And as we remember, any manipulation leaves the addressee feeling empty and disappointed.
Thus, we are often faced with the fact that we are forced to do what we do not want. To do this, manipulators try to evoke various emotions and feelings, including positive ones. But is the momentary pleasure worth the energy that we spend on it? Will you be really happy with something that you absolutely do not need? The ability to think critically and reasonably approach any information will help you not to become a victim of a manipulator.

 

[Carding 4 Carders]

Vaccination against manipulation​

Even a first-grader has heard a lot about the manipulation of human consciousness today. What can we say about psychologists, one half of whom are busy compiling textbooks for professional manipulators, and the other half are giving out practical advice on how to protect yourself from them. “They just can't fool me around their fingers,” the enlightened man in the street asserts smugly, before falling on the hook of yet another “dealer in illusions”. And yet such an unenviable fate can be avoided. Logic and sober thinking in this case is the best vaccine against manipulation.
With manipulators - people trying to evoke a certain feeling in us, and, starting from this, use us for their own purposes - we have to meet almost every day. The impact - whether it be the heartfelt appeals of the newly-minted sectarian missionaries carrying the word of God to the masses, or the sweet exhortations of a network marketing worker who wandered into the office of a network marketing worker to buy the "world's most detergent "laundry detergent - takes place in a veiled form. Naturally, who would agree to have his mind raped openly! The task of such an impact is quite specific: to direct the opinions, motives and goals of a person in the direction necessary for the manipulator. In order to subsequently gain absolute control over the victim of their "exercises".

Caution: thought transplant!​

The more importance we attach to an alien idea that has settled in the brain, the more confidently and faster it takes root and develops. Imperceptibly for ourselves, we begin to think about things that yesterday were absolutely indifferent to us. Have you caught yourself thinking that you cannot sleep peacefully because of the wonderful frying pan from the commercial? That in a pharmacy you are looking for another panacea advertised on TV with your eyes, ignoring the well-known and proven remedies? And the fate of the neighbor from the 8th floor, unhappy in marriage with an alcoholic, touched you so much that you are already in a hurry to give the unfortunate, shyly begging for a loan from you, a certain amount?
The diagnosis is clear: technical manipulators managed to plant a grain of obsessive, or rather, imposed, idea in your head. The more you “think” it, “feed” it with your energy, the more this thought, initially alien, perhaps even hostile to you, changes the features of its new “master”. The latter, in turn, does what they wanted from him.
A few years ago, a friend of mine - a girl with a model appearance and a university degree - managed to get married. Precisely ugorazdilo: the spouse, who did not bother to graduate from college, brought the poor thing to tears with nagging and humiliation. And clumsy de, and mismanagement, and with mental abilities, alas, did not work out ... Despite the frail complexion and a general inferiority complex, this representative of the "strong" half of humanity, the joker-nature endowed the talent of a manipulator: a year and a half later, she remained from the clever beauty a pale, haunted shadow with the prospect of a divorce and long months of communication with a psychoanalyst ...
This everyday example confirms the main postulate of manipulative psychotechnologies: the imposed idea becomes dominant and gradually changes a person. The "author" establishes a firm control over the personality of the one into whose consciousness he "implanted" the thought. Thus, he attaches its carrier to himself, as a new source of energy. This is how zombies appear.

The slogan for the image is brother and comrade​

According to authoritative psychologists, in particular, Svetlana Solonskaya, in recent years, close attention has been paid to manipulative technologies based on the peculiarities of the human psyche. Highly effective developments in the field of psycholinguistics, neurolinguistic programming, Ericksonian hypnosis interfere with our subconsciousness. The standard set of techniques used by professional manipulators is based on the psychology of perception.
Take at least one of the most effective methods of brainwashing - the so-called "associative linking". By “mounting” an advertising or propaganda message, manipulators subtly calculate what kind of associations it should evoke in an unsuspecting consumer of information. At first glance, a single newspaper article or TV show is completely neutral, but the imperceptible details introduced in them can direct the audience's imagination in the right direction - causing certain associations. As a result, the image of a product, service or a candidate for deputy is formed at the level of the unconscious. Aerobatics in the use of "associative linking" is the skillful presentation of this kind of messages in a certain order: due to the inertia of human thinking, the impression received from the previous information block, superimposed on the next one after it. The image "overgrown" with additional details (positive or negative - does not matter) is fixed in the minds of the target audience.
Experts have long noticed that it is human nature to trust the TV screen more than his own eyes and ears. Why look out the window and go out - they will show and tell us everything anyway. Some people even learn the weather exclusively from the Internet: even if it is pouring rain outside, an advanced "user" will not take an umbrella with him for anything, if the virtual barometer shows "clearly". It is thanks to the persistent illusion of "objectivity" and "reliability" of the image presented on the screen that television has practically unlimited possibilities for manipulating the mass consciousness.
Feeling like a full-fledged participant in the events, the average TV viewer hardly knows about the nuances of using such techniques as editing, foreshortening, and plan. Skillful TV crews are able to form the desired image of any event with the help of carefully selected details.
What can we say about the notorious advertising slogans! Who among us has not repeated in our minds, like a mantra, ingrained in our memory, an obsessively absurd tongue twister? Sometimes there are true talents among creators and copywriters: their bright, often rhymed sayings improve the perception and increase the memorability of the advertising message. It does not matter that we hardly know anything about the technical characteristics and taste of the advertised product: when a successful slogan is used in its promotion to the market, not only and not so much a feature of a particular product is imprinted in the brain , but its idealized and attractive (even though run and buy) image.

Rites from the evil one​

In times of social instability, a large part of the psychologically unstable citizens who have been knocked off their pantalik fall under the influence of the so-called pseudo-religions. Offering salvation and promising the achievement of enlightenment, the now popular sects skillfully manipulate the consciousness of a potential flock. Some of them are considered very dangerous: experiencing a strong psychological dependence on sects, their adherents are isolated from the outside world - right up to leaving their families. Once joining such an organization, it is very difficult to leave it: the local gurus have a perfectly fine-tuned mechanism for spying on their fellows and returning the "lost sheep" to the intoxicated "flock." The impact of a sect on a person can be very great:
An obedient zombie is ready to follow any order "from above": for the sake of saving the community, he without hesitation will part with his convictions, property, and sometimes even his life ...
Not so much time has passed since the members of the memorable White Brotherhood, preparing for the end of the world, were going to perform the so-called rite of purification - or simply - mass suicide. Fortunately, law enforcement agencies intervened in the actions of their leaders. Subsequent research showed that young people were subjected to unknown psychological influences.
Of course, without some treatment, no mentally healthy person would sacrifice their lives for a dubious idea. By the way, the roots of blind obedience of adepts grow from hoary antiquity, when religious sacrifices had a special mystical meaning: they often pleased the rulers of the underworld and heavens with human flesh, so that they would send crops or evil demons so that they would not send pestilence and drought; and living people were walled up in the foundations of the erected houses - for strength ...
Manipulative psychotechnologies are used in different areas of our life - from network marketing to political PR. With all the variability and specificity of the techniques, the scheme of influence on the masses remains unchanged: skillfully juggling ideas, manipulators imperceptibly drop them into our consciousness - until the “unwilling recipient” takes the thought imposed from the outside as his own.

The target group includes every first ..​

Among the professional manipulators, there is an opinion: there are no unintelligible people. All without exception are subject to manipulation of consciousness - you just need to choose the right "key".
The easiest way, oddly enough, is to manipulate people who do not believe anyone or anything. Their reactions are calculated in an elementary way, therefore, they can be managed without problems: you just have to hint to the "smart and pragmatic" nihilists that a certain model of behavior will bring them some dividends.
The manipulator's task becomes many times more complicated when he meets an individual with strong convictions on his way (in psychology, this is called persistent stereotypes of behavior). However, there are no barriers for a true master. We'll have to sweat, though. Namely: apply an individual approach (and this is both troublesome and costly), or even go for outright deception. That is, to maliciously use the persistent ("hard") stereotypes that people have.
Among the "intellectuals" there is an opinion that people with little education are easily amenable to manipulation. And they themselves, they say, are chosen and refined, have a certain immunity. Alas, mundane professional manipulators have dispelled yet another myth of the intelligentsia: studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of the population does not bother to change stereotypes frequently. Inert ordinary people simply ignore new-fashioned things - the intellectual elite is always ready to accept fresh ideas ...

How to protect consciousness from "collision"​

One can argue for a long time about whether it is permissible to control a person's consciousness - for his own good, if the manipulator is, for example, a school teacher or a wise and enlightened ruler. For sure, only one thing is known: hidden manipulations deprive the individual of freedom to a much greater extent than direct coercion. A person who has fallen under the influence of a manipulator becomes a thing.
Alas, there is no well-defined mechanism of protection against these technologies. It turns out that everyone can manipulate the consciousness of their neighbor with impunity?
Alas, this is so. And yet there are a number of simple - but effective - techniques, quite simple to use, thanks to which you can repel attacks on our consciousness. Thoughtful analysis and accumulated life experience will help here. Grigory Fudim, who heads the subcommittee on the study of issues of psychotronic influence on a person at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, advises, first of all, to try to translate the relationship with a potential manipulator into the framework of logic. A person who is trying to covertly influence someone's consciousness often uses the method of “substituting a thesis”. The antidote can be logical chains, clear questions and clarifications, with the help of which a false stereotype imposed from the outside is destroyed.
The manipulator seeks as quickly as possible - on the fly - to grab your attention. Suspicious contact must be interrupted at least for a while: drink a glass of water, take 21 sips (to calm the nerves), massage the center of the back of the head - its most prominent part (where the "crystal of will" is located - in fact, the ultimate goal of the manipulations performed). You can cover the left side of the back of your head with your palm during a conversation.
The method of protection against manipulations at the level of thought-form works perfectly: imagine that on your chest in the form of a luxurious fur boa ... a cat is alive, warm and furry. At first glance, the animal is fast asleep. But as soon as the "enemy" makes a careless attack in your direction, the fluffy defender will not be slow to release her claws ...
And, of course, do not let yourself be drawn into the discussion without studying the subject thoroughly. With deep knowledge, you can discourage an intrusive interlocutor with a couple of “murderous” arguments: manipulative psychotechnologies, as a rule, work on an emotional level. Having discovered in you the signs of a true homo sapiens, the manipulator will hasten to retire.