How to understand that you are being manipulated?

[Tomcat]

It is said that in India there was once a secret sect of the Tug-Stranglers. Sometimes they are also called tags. In honor of their goddess of death, Kali, they strangled people with a silk ribbon and sacrificed to her. But it would be wrong for one thug to accidentally strangle another thug. What to do? After all, the sect is secret. How can a tug strangler recognize another tug in his victim? And they came up with various secret identification marks so as not to be mistaken and to recognize a tug brother in a potential victim. But nevertheless, the main means of struggle against such a mistake became something else for them. Just in case, all the thugs have trained their neck muscles since childhood to resist suffocation if they are suddenly attacked by some other thug!
So, if you don't want to be strangled - train your neck muscles and don't succumb to the strangulation!
If you do not want to be manipulated, train your ability to resist manipulation and do not succumb to it!
One simple question remains: how to resist manipulation if you do not know what it is? Well, let's answer it, and let's live peacefully in a world of manipulation!

Manipulation briefly
The word “manipulation” has recently been used so often in the media (mass media) that it has become something of a habit. However, familiar does not mean understandable yet!

What is manipulation?
Let's first give the broadest and most understandable definition of this word.
Manipulation is the competent management of human behavior.
Any objections to this definition? I think it is broad and obvious enough that there are no objections. And clarifications, of course, can be given! Which we will do shortly. literate
So what happens? If manipulation is good governance, then who is a manipulator? A nimble manager?
A manipulator is a person who deftly controls the behavior of other people. Yes, that's exactly it! In Russian, such a name as "puppeteer" is most suitable for him. The manipulator plays with people, as a clever puppeteer plays with dolls, forcing them to move and act at his will. At the same time, no one asks the dolls if they want to move and act like this themselves! And the dolls do not resist the puppeteer! Is that passive. Modern life has given us a new image when the puppeteer can control the doll from a distance! Have you seen radio-controlled models in the form of cars, boats or airplanes? The puppeteer-modeller stands aside and uses radio waves to control the movement of his ward model. Does this remind you of anything? For example, TV and radio control of the populace? By the way, there is also an almost literal translation of the word "manipulator" into Russian - "leader"! That is, the one who leads other people with his own hands in the direction he needs. In terms of meaning, the concept of "leader" is not much different from the concept of "puppeteer", do you agree?

Manipulation is a pretty fashionable word these days.
Nowadays it is customary to scare people with this word: “Oh! They are manipulating you! "It is fashionable for them to frighten the masses:" We are being manipulated by shameless politicians! "Or:" Voters are manipulated by the media (media)! "
But what is done for this and how is not entirely clear.
Let's take a little look at this. First, let's look at simple examples and in general terms, and then we'll start analyzing the manipulation in more detail. The concept of "use" as an analogue of manipulation
In Western films, manipulation is usually referred to as "use." Think of a few popular action films or adventure-adventure tapes, and you will surely stumble upon the use of this word. So, there often "good heroes" say to "bad heroes" with reproach and pressure in their voice: "You used me!"
This is a "terrible reproach" and a grave accusation in the mouth of a positive hero! Perhaps it would be more accurate to say in such a situation “you abused me” or “you used me”! In any case, let us think: what do you mean?

Signs of "using" a person:

• The object is a person as a thing.
• Diminishing the object of manipulation.
• Acting in the interests of the manipulator.
• Understanding after committing.
• The result is worse than expected or not at all the same.

Why does this accusation of "use" arise at all? Why did the person not mind before that and acted the way the manipulator needed, and then suddenly “saw the light” and realized that he was “used”? What makes the victim "see" and be aware of the manipulation? This happens when the victim realizes that she did not get what she hoped for, or received much less than that. At the same time, the manipulator won!
So, if you realized that you did not get what you hoped for, you can safely assume that you were used! Well, you can still spit after a manipulator leaving with a win ...

Conclusions on manipulative "use"
Let us now, in a concentrated form, figuratively summarize everything that has been said above about "use": what I was counting on. "
I think that after learning about this definition, almost any child, after thinking well, can say that this is said specifically about him and his parents! And I think he will be right! This is where the roots of manipulation and "use" grow - they go back to childhood!

What other example can you give, already from a child's life?
Well, for example, history knows cases when a messenger was instructed to deliver a report, and in order for him to gallop faster, they said that a great reward awaited him for this. He delivered the report, not knowing that there was a postscript: "Destroy the messenger!" And "as a reward" this messenger received death!
Terrible manipulation, right?

And full compliance with all the signs of "use" we have analyzed:

• The messenger is treated like a thing.
• The messenger is ranked below the rest of the participants in the action.
• They use it for their own benefit.
• They use it covertly, “into the dark,” since he does not know what exactly is contained in the report.
• He does not get what he wanted, what he hoped for, but gets something else!

Among other things, note that there is often deception in manipulation: the victim is promised one thing, but she gets something completely different!

Conclusion
We've met you with an introduction to the art of manipulation. I will not hide that this is only the very beginning of my book "Manipulation by Man" and the beginning of trainings on the topic of manipulation.
Nevertheless, even now, without any of my trainings, you can reap the pleasant fruits of your curiosity!

Just remember this passphrase:
"I am a thing that the one who puts himself above me, uses in his own interests, without informing me of these interests, and I get not what I expected."
And as soon as you suspect a possible manipulation, then immediately estimate how the current situation corresponds to this "magic phrase". And if by all criteria life coincides with the theory, then drop your suspicions. Rest assured that you are being manipulated!

What to do next?
Decide for yourself. You can throw a scandal on the manipulator, you can stop the manipulation, you can carry out your counter-manipulation, or you can ask for advice from someone who can give it to you.

 

[Tomcat]

The crowd can be manipulated​

How to resist the crowd?

Groups of people can be different - from a harmoniously marching military unit to a crowd of football fans. The rules of conduct and management of these groups differ. It is generally accepted that the most dangerous of such groups is the crowd that has lost its bearings, because its behavior cannot be predicted and controlled.

Professor of the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University, chief researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Hakob Pogosovich Nazaretyan, categorically disagrees with this statement. Managing a crowd, he believes, is much easier than a scientific institute or a military unit. Knowledge of the basic properties of the crowd and the ability to behave correctly in a critical situation is the main thing that a thinking person can oppose to a skillful provocateur, the scientist believes.

Man has always been and remains a social being. And in the course of evolution, social relations have played a decisive role in the development of our mental abilities. And in the individual development of each person, the relationship with the team is also extremely important. However, the collective is the collective difference. In general, we can say that the more complex and perfect the structure of the social environment, the more opportunities for the full development and manifestation of a person's intellectual abilities. But this pattern is a double-edged sword. And therefore, when a person finds himself in a very primitive, unorganized collective, to put it simply, in a crowd, then a significant part of his mental abilities, all this mysteriously disappears and instead of joy, some instinct appears on the surface,

What kind of system is this - the crowd?

You said that a crowd is a kind of a collective, but in principle, a crowd is not a collective, it is a set of people who are not connected with each other by a common goal and a single positional role structure, but possessing a common emotional state and a single focus of attention.

Is the goal a conscious goal? After all, the crowd can have a goal.

A common goal is such a goal, the achievement of which each of the participants in the interaction positively depends on the achievement of the same goal by each other. When a common goal appears, then people gather in a group, a group that has a structure, positions, roles, leadership. The crowd is such an entity in which there are no positions and roles; instead of communication, an emotional environment, emotional infection begins to act. There is an interaction, from the semantic, from the semantic level, there is a translation to the psychosomatic one. There is a mutual contamination of emotions. And when you find yourself in a situation of such a rather intense circular reaction, it is very difficult to maintain your individuality. How is communication different from the emotional environment? When we communicate with you, when there is a communication process, then each of us remains an independent person. When communication slides into a circular reaction, then here there is an erasure of individual differences, a person turns into an element of this very impersonal mass. Impersonality, anonymity - this is one of the characteristic features of the crowd and one of the factors of its strength, its danger.

Does he feel like he is only part of the crowd?

He begins to act the way everyone else does. Such extreme facts, when, during the French Revolution, a crowd of brutal sans-culottes pounced on the hated courtier, tore him up and ate him. This is a documented fact. In the process of the emotional environment, the so-called evolutionary regression occurs. Neurophysiologically speaking, the lower layers of the cortex are activated. That is, a person, the lower layers of the cerebral cortex, the lower layers of the psyche, and so on, come to life and begin to act uncontrollably. Moreover, most often, when they talk about a crowd, they mean an aggressive crowd. But the aggressive crowd is one of the many types of crowd. More dangerous than an aggressive crowd is a panic crowd. This panic, this fear is an unaccountable, neurotic fear that is circulating. In terms of the number of victims, the panic crowd is even worse. The possessive crowd can be even more terrifying than the aggressive crowd. But the main property of any crowd is its transformability. Once a crowd has formed, it can easily change from one species to another. And crowd manipulation is most often a technology to transform a crowd from one type to another.

We started talking about crowd manipulation techniques.

One thing to keep in mind here. Often, when there is some kind of trouble, some events on Manezhnaya Square, and so on, we now and then hear from city leaders such texts that the crowd is uncontrollable, it is unpredictable. And in the next paragraph we are told that the provocateurs brought the crowd to such a state. I have not heard that even a single journalist asked: if the crowd is uncontrollable, why do the provocateurs control it and do what they want, but you don't? This is a common excuse to write off the inability to organize, inability to prepare for a mass event. The bottom line is that crowd control is not just possible, but easy. A crowd is much easier to manage than a group. Remember how an aggressive crowd was destroyed by Ostap Bender. The technique is called deanonymization. That is, the crowd is anonymous, what is Ostap Bender doing: so who is the witness? So, comrades, give us names, addresses. This is all one of the methods of dealing with an aggressive crowd. The transformation of the crowd into ecstatic or rhythmic. The South African Republic even invented such a musical tank. This is really a tank, which instead of a cannon, machine guns - cannons with cold water and a musical system, and people begin to dance to the music. If the crowd is caught in a rhythm, they are irrational. The crowd in this sense is close to the herd. Therefore, the illusion of uncontrollability of the crowd arises when you try to try on your mundane to the crowd. If you do not know how to manage, then it is better not to do it. An excellent politician who controls the party, throw him into the kindergarten group and he will go nuts there very quickly. That is, the general idea here is this: the simpler the system, the more simple laws it obeys. This is all one of the methods of dealing with an aggressive crowd. The transformation of the crowd into ecstatic or rhythmic. The South African Republic even invented such a musical tank. This is really a tank, which instead of a cannon, machine guns - cannons with cold water and a musical system, and people begin to dance to the music. If the crowd is caught in a rhythm, they are irrational. The crowd in this sense is close to the herd. Therefore, the illusion of uncontrollability of the crowd arises when you try to try on your mundane to the crowd. If you do not know how to manage, then it is better not to do it. An excellent politician who controls the party, throw him into the kindergarten group and he will go nuts there very quickly. That is, the general idea here is this: the simpler the system, the more simple laws it obeys. This is all one of the methods of dealing with an aggressive crowd. The transformation of the crowd into ecstatic or rhythmic.

You said that there are ways to manipulate the crowd, that the crowd can be controlled.

I just mean that this is a system that can be controlled to solve very primitive problems. The crowd is a good mechanism to destroy, the crowd cannot build. The crowd can take by storm any object that is poorly defended, poorly fortified, or there is also a crowd there. And the crowd will not take a well-protected height. That is, the crowd is good for destructive actions. Or simple tasks. When we say that it is easy to control a crowd, we must bear in mind what kind of management tasks are pursued. Moreover, the degree of expression of the crowd and the group largely determines. Once Napoleon compared the strength of the Mamelukes, he said this: in battle, three French cavalrymen are equivalent to two Mamelukes. Three hundred French cavalry are equivalent to three hundred Mamelukes, and two thousand French cavalry are equivalent to three thousand Mamelukes. When the mass grows on both sides, the degree of organization plays an increasingly important role. Mameluke, of course, is not a crowd - it is also an army, but the degree of organization, the severity of the structure is different here. When we say crowd and group, there are no hard boundaries, but in principle, the more chaotic the system, the easier it is to manage, but the more difficult it is to solve complex problems. Here I give as a safe behavior in the crowd, what to do. These are the three rules for a professional. First, stay out of the crowd for free. If you are not at work, stay away from the crowd. The second rule: when entering a crowd, think about how you will get out of it. Third: if you happen to be in a crowd, imagine that you are at work. This is in order to remain a subject of control, and not to become an object as usual, here one must be able not to get into a situation of an emotional environment. Especially if you find yourself in the core of the crowd. There is such a concept as "crowd geography", that is, there is a core, there is a periphery, where the strength of the emotional environment is different.

And the biggest one in the core?

The strongest is the core, because all processes accumulate there. But I even cite an absolutely amazing case, which is typical. Turkey, Ankara, 1969, an aggressive crowd is going to beat the communists. The semi-underground communist Turkish party against the mass of intoxicated men who are walking with shouts of "Allah Akbar", going to reprisal. The communists are resisting with bottles with Molotov cocktails, that is, a real battle is underway. And at this time, four American blondes in mini-skirts appear on the periphery of the crowd, and mini-skirts then appeared in Europe, but they did not reach Turkey yet, that is, they see such a spectacle for the first time. And now the heads of the attackers turned around and the whole crowd left, leaving a core of 30-40 people, who were quickly dispersed. This shows very well how the crowd differs from the group - these are fundamentally different phenomena. When some skinheads are presented as a crowd, that they attacked the market, made a pogrom and disappeared, this is not true - according to all descriptions, this is not a crowd. You have to work there not as with a crowd.

That is, it turns out that it is quite easy to control the crowd and, probably, there are some specialists in the special services who know how to do this to prevent unpleasant incidents.

I'll tell you how they acted in Chelyabinsk. Chelyabinsk events, 1989 or 1990, the period of the anti-alcohol campaign. Not only is there no food, there is still no drink, and so on, and a wine riot spontaneously arises, people are raging for three days. Raging, breaking windows, robbing shops. Then in the morning they disperse, the next they gather again and for three days. The police and all our law enforcement agencies are in a complete stupor at this moment, because perestroika begins, legal consciousness, the events in Tbilisi recently, something else. What to do? How to do it so as not to use force. Thank God there were no human casualties. We came up with: quickly, let's find some cool super-American erotic action movie. The situation when you have to choose the lesser of evils. Because Soviet television shows pirated products.

Everybody went to watch TV?

The people have absorbed - such a sight. Remember Soviet television, the most erotic sight - figure skating. Attention is shifted and the crowd changes its emotional sign, that is, some emotions give way to others. We are now trying to work, write books, reveal the secrets of manipulation. Of course, there is a lot of irrational in us, but consciousness, will, knowledge as such, in a fairly wide range, allows us to control ourselves and resist control from the outside.

 

[Brother]

3 indicators that you are being manipulated​

Manipulation is a hidden psychological technique, the purpose of which is to make you, contrary to your interests, perform the actions the manipulator needs.

The manipulator is a person "without a face." He never betrays his true feelings - he always lies, dodges, presents himself as someone else. He can easily instill in you a false sense of guilt or, conversely, superiority, in order to then take advantage of the situation and turn the situation in his direction. You can perform the commands of the manipulator unconsciously, feeling only incomprehensible discomfort and not finding the strength to resist it.
How do you calculate the manipulator?

There are 3 main indicators that you are being manipulated:

1. You want to finish negotiations, conversation, communication as soon as possible.
Such a feeling arises when, for example, a not very close person begins to be keenly interested in your life, deliberately demonstrating openness and friendliness with the help of gestures and facial expressions. Often this demonstration of "one of the guys on the board" is far-fetched and does not coincide with the speech of the manipulator. Or, at the other extreme: the manipulator is looking for an opportunity to knock you off balance, provoking a scandal. He looks for vulnerabilities through which he directly psychologically affects you.

2. You feel that your opponent seems to be right, but in fact you completely disagree with his position, although it seems that all his arguments are logical.
In this case, your opinion is replaced by the opinion of the manipulator. He justifies the consistency and rationality of his arguments. He is eloquent and ready to provide an evidence base. The moment you agree with him, you have lost all your positions. It is very important in this situation to be able to say “no” without feeling guilty about it. You defend your point of view. And the point.

3. There is a feeling that in order to make a decision, I would like to take some time to think, but the opponent is in every possible way forcing him to make a decision right now.
The manipulator demands an immediate response, is always in a hurry, speaks quickly, almost without pauses. He always adjusts the circumstances in such a way as to increase the likelihood of agreement. For example, if you do not agree now, you will lose the discount (an opportunity, a contract, a promising job - underline what you need). If you see that you are limited in time, do not rush to make decisions. If you weigh the pros and cons, you can say no. You have the right to do so.

Remember the main thing:
The manipulator's goal is to control you with your weaknesses.
The manipulator will prevail if it realizes that you are not resisting. You don't fight back - now you are the victim. But you just have to show your resistance - and you have the most powerful tool against any manipulation in your hands.