How can fear be used to manipulate
Fear is being used to manipulate the public
"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."
— Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist
America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions. This plague on our nation — one that has been spreading like wildfire — is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live.
Everywhere you turn, those on both the left and the right wings are fomenting distrust and division. You can't escape it.
We're being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of Muslims, fear of extremists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government. The list goes on and on.
People are also reading…
The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.
Fear makes people stupid.
Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie the mup in knots over matters lacking in national significance.
Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.
This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail.
This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an "us" against "them" mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.
All the while, those in power — bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations — move their costly agendas forward, and "we the suckers" get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.
America has already entered a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of the content of their Facebook posts, and law-abiding Americans are having their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented and their communications monitored These threats are not to be underestimated.
Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.
An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America. However, with crime at a 40-year low, is such fear of terrorism rational?
Even in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the shootings in San Bernardino and Paris, statistics show that those living in the American police state are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist. Thus, the government's endless jabbering about terrorism amounts to little more than propaganda — the propaganda of fear — a tactic used to terrorize, cower and control the population.
So far, these tactics are working. As history makes clear, fear leads to fascistic, totalitarian regimes. It's a simple enough formula. National crises, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex, or the rational thinking part, of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.
A populace that stops thinking for itself is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled.
Modern America now possesses all of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state.
For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it's not only expedient but necessary. In times of "crisis," expediency is upheld as the central principle — that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.
Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring.
It's called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences.
For example, neuroscientists observed how quickly fear can travel through generations of mice DNA.
As The Washington Post once reported (Dec. 7, 2013):
"In the experiment, researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by associating the scent with mild foot shocks. Two weeks later, they bred with females. The resulting pups were raised to adulthood having never been exposed to the smell. Yet when the critters caught a whiff of it for the first time, they suddenly became anxious and fearful. They were even born with more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling."
Now consider the ramifications of inherited generations of fears and experiences on human beings. As the Post reported, "Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."
In other words, fear, trauma and compliance can be passed down through the generations.
Fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it now operates in our contemporary world — all of which raises fundamental questions about us as human beings and what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.
We are at a critical crossroads in American history, and we have a choice: freedom or fascism.
Let's hope the American people make the right choice while we still have the freedom to choose.
John W. Whitehead is president and founder of the Albemarle County-based Rutherford Institute, a civil-liberties organization, and author of the award-winning book "A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State."He can be reached at [email protected]. A longer version of this commentary is available at www.Rutherford.org.
Get local news delivered to your inbox!
* I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Fear-Based Manipulation: How Politicians, Marketers and the Media Create Panic to Control the Masses
BY SOFO ARCHON
“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
” ~Bertrand Russell
Fear. Without it we wouldn’t be able to survive.
Why? Because it’s the emotion that warns us about potential threats to our survival and urges us to protect ourselves from them.
Let me give you an example to illustrate what I mean.
Imagine that you’re walking outside in the dark and suddenly you see a snake jumping right in front of your feet. Immediately fear kicks in. You start sweating, your heart rate goes up, and your cortisol as well as adrenaline levels increase. The snake could be poisonous, so you immediately need to protect yourself from it.
In such a dangerous situation, your natural response is most likely going to be one of the following:
- Run away from the snake.
- Injure, kill or somehow immobilize the snake.
- Freeze in hopes that the snake will be undisturbed by your presence and leave you alone.
Fear, as the above example shows, is a protective mechanism that is part of our survival instinct, helping us to stay alive and healthy.
But here’s the problem: When that mechanism becomes overactive, and we start fearing things that don’t actually pose us any threat, it can wreak havoc not only with our well-being (due to too much stress), but also with our decision-making (because fear, as you’ll soon find out, can hinder clear thinking).
Manipulative people are very aware of the latter and try their best to control how you think and behave by using fear-based tactics. Here you’ll learn what some of those tactics are, as well as what you can do to avoid falling into their trap.
Do as They Say, Or Else…
Whether you know it or not, fear is constantly being used against you. By whom? Well, here are a few examples: politicians, marketers, and the media.
Let’s have a closer look at how they do that, starting with politicians.
The vast majority of politicians are demagogues. A demagogue is defined as “a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument.
”
Now, the emotion politicians like to appeal to the most is fear. By intentionally spreading messages that make the general public feel like it’ll be harmed or utterly destroyed if they aren’t elected in positions of power or don’t implement certain policies, politicians are able to persuade the masses to support them.
You might be wondering: How can that be possible? Don’t people base their decisions on conscious, rational thinking?
Well, they do, much of the time, but rarely when they are gripped by fear of a threat, whether real or imagined. Here’s why, according to cognitive psychologist and economist Robin M. Hogarth:
“By creating a state of emergency in our psyche, fear distracts us from the relevant facts on which we should base our conscious decisions. A fight-or-flight instinct kicks in instantaneously when we’re afraid, leaving no time for us to question its merits. The resulting knee-jerk reaction often leads to a short-term solution that only tackles the symptoms.
This act-first-think-later approach, however, doesn’t address underlying causes.”
To illustrate how fear has been used by politicians to influence the layman, let’s watch a fear-mongering ad used during Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 presidential run to persuade voters to support him instead of his warmonger Republican opponent Barry Goldwater who, according to the ad, would surely lead the US into a nuclear war if elected.
Political leaders harp on any reason they can find to make us panic: terrorism, immigrants, drugs, crime, minorities, and various others.
A master at creating panic is the ex-president of the United States, Donald Trump. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons why he was able to become the US president in the first place.
Trump’s rhetoric went like this: Illegal immigrants are pouring drugs and violence into America. Radical Islamic terrorists are preparing for another big US attack. Christians are being executed en masse in the Middle East.
And so on and so forth.
And what was the solution to all those issues? He himself, of course. As sociologist and author Barry Glassner put it:
“[Donald Trump’s] formula is very clean and uncomplicated: Be very, very afraid. And I am the cure.”
Another American president who used a lot of fear-based rhetoric was George W. Bush. For instance, right after the 9/11 tragedy, the warning he issued was: “Be afraid, be very afraid.” Then for years onward he was repeatedly talking about America being in danger of more terrorist attacks and that the only way to make it safe again was to bomb Iraq.
Today, it’s crystal clear that Bush had a hidden agenda: to expand and strengthen the American Empire by gaining economic and geopolitical power. Panicked and confused, millions of Americans couldn’t understand what was really going on and blindly consented to the so-called War on Terror.
I could go on giving many more examples of politicians who’ve tried to control the masses through the use of fear, but I think these will suffice to carry my point across.
Terrorized About Terrorism
When we feel that our survival is threatened, we’re ready to do just about anything to protect our lives. Yet we’re often unknowingly harming ourselves instead.
For example, a study estimates that at least a thousand additional lives were lost in US road accidents the year after the 9/11 attacks. The reason? At that period of time a lot more people chose to drive rather than fly, out of fear of another possible air-bound terrorist attack, although the probability of death due to inflight terrorism is calculated to be 1 in 540,000, while the probability of dying from a car accident is calculated to be 1 in 7,000.
Of course, it’s understandable why American citizens chose driving over flying. If you pay attention to any mainstream newspaper or TV channel, you must be thinking that terrorism is one of the top causes of death. The reality, however, is that you are way more likely to die from a multitude of other causes than terrorism, including heart disease, cancer, obesity, suicide, workplace accidents and contaminated food.
But the mainstream media doesn’t seem to care about those. So why does it make such a fuss over terrorism?
There are various reasons, such as siding with their preferred political parties, but the most important one is simply this:
Fear sells like nothing else.
When, for instance, you read a newspaper headline that elicits a fear response in you, you are much more likely to get the newspaper and read it. Why? Because as author and journalist Neil Strauss put it:
“We’re wired to respond to fear above everything else. If we miss an opportunity for abundance, life goes on; if we miss an important fear cue, it doesn’t.”
Fear drives better ratings and better ratings means increased profit. The mainstream media knows this very well and is doing its best to capitalize on it. By terrorizing us, it’s able to keep our attention hooked and ruthlessly exploit us for its financial gain.
You are What You Buy
Another way fear is used to control you is through commercial advertisements.
You might not be consciously aware of it, but corporations are heavily using fear-based advertising to make you buy their stuff. And it has been found to work pretty well. By instilling fear in people, advertising manipulates them into making emotional rather than reasoned choices.
Let’s see an example of how fear-based advertising works.
All the great marketers know well that one of the primary human desires is to connect with other humans and feel part of a community, and hence that one of the things people are most afraid of is to be excluded from their social groups. So through advertising, marketers usually try their best to convince you that if you don’t buy stuff nobody will like you anymore and that you’ll probably be ostracized by your community.
Buy the latest iPhone and you’ll not appear to be poor. Get this pair of Nike shoes and you’ll be cool. Obtain this wristwatch and you’ll feel important. Purchasing them will cost you some money, but not doing so will cost you your happiness.
Afraid and insecure, most people blindly do what they’re told, thus wasting their hard-earned money buying things they don’t really need and which only provide them with a temporary, superficial sense of belonging.
Dealing with Fear-Based Manipulation
Now that we’ve looked at some different ways fear is being used against you, I’d like to share with you a few simple tips that can help you to avoid falling victim to fear-based manipulation.
The first and most important thing is to identify fear when it arises within you and try to see it for what it is, without shying away from it or pretending that it’s not there. By bringing fear into your conscious awareness, you’ll be able to examine where it’s coming from and what message it’s trying to convey to you, which will help you to better understand and deal with it. In fact, research suggests that just acknowledging an emotion and explicitly identifying fear can help manage its subsequent effects on our behavior.
Secondly, when dealing with political, social or other important issues, remember to associate feelings of fear with the need to slow down and regain mental and emotional clarity. Instead of succumbing to impulsive reactions, take the time to educate yourself on the issue at hand. This will not only allow you to assess your options and take better-informed decisions, but also to discern what you should fear from what you shouldn’t.
Lastly, instead of blindly conforming to the norm and obeying to authority figures, act mindfully and take responsibility for your actions. Just because your favorite politician, an award-winning journalist or a commercial on a major TV channel tells you what to do or believe, that doesn’t mean you should. Sadly, after years upon years of conditioning, most people don’t use their critical thinking and instead let others think for them. To break free from that conditioning, be sure to doubt — and not mindlessly accept — any “truth” that’s being thrown at you by someone else, regardless of who that person might be.
“Swimming in stress hormones”: what is fear manipulation and how to counter it
By understanding and managing our emotional reactions, we can choose the best paths and choose those actions and actions that will help us make sober decisions. Forbes Life publishes a chapter from the book "Emotional Intelligence: Win Without Manipulation" by AST
The fear response is almost completely autonomous, we do not trigger it consciously. Fear was and remains the most important emotion for survival. If for a second we imagine that we have completely ceased to feel fear, then we get the plot for an apocalyptic film: people are not afraid to go out onto the highway towards rushing cars, stroke an angry tiger, climb onto the roof of a skyscraper without insurance. The absence of fear makes us too vulnerable, therefore, in the course of evolution, those people and animals that were careful survived.
Many fears - the dark, insects - are genetically embedded in us, even if we have never had our own experience that would confirm their validity.
However, in today's world, fear very often turns from an ally into our enemy. Compared to our ancestors, we are much less likely to face a real threat to health or survival. The trigger that triggers the fear response can be anything: a sudden loud noise, a stray dog, a stranger following you late at night, a plane ride, having to speak in public, or news of a dangerous virus. The processes honed by evolution are taking place exactly as they did tens of thousands of years ago: when we are afraid, we prepare to run or fight. But where can you escape from the office of the boss, who is dissatisfied with our work and threatens to be fired?
How can one combat the depreciation of the ruble or economic instability?
And how will the mobilization of all physical resources help us not to be rejected by a loved one?
More and more often we are not afraid of something specific that threatens our life and safety, but we foresee possible unpleasant events.
We paint ourselves terrible things that can happen, and we begin to fear them. Moreover, the reaction caused by the expectation of a frightening event is the same as real fear. The same hormones, the same surge of energy that we need to "fight or flight", and from time to time - the suppression of fear.
Resources mobilized under the influence of fear remain unused, and we live in constant tension, literally bathe in stress hormones and can never fully relax.
Increased anxiety is the scourge of our time. More and more people tend to experience intense anxiety frequently over relatively small things. Unlike fear, which is associated with a specific threat, anxiety is caused by uncertain prospects. And given the fact that certainty and guarantees in modern society are becoming less and less every day, anxiety floods us more and more often.
Life in megacities, where most of the world's population is now concentrated, every day throws new challenges to our psyche.
Change happens so fast that we don't have time to adjust. The acceleration of the rhythm of life, social isolation, lack of stability - all this causes constant anxiety due to the inability to control one's life and somehow plan for the future.
According to WHO, neurotic spectrum disorders are diagnosed in 10-20% of the population, and every seventh inhabitant of the planet at least once in his life is faced with one or another type of neurosis or anxiety disorder.
When fear turns from a survival mechanism into pathological anxiety, it becomes akin to drug addiction: it occurs literally by the hour, although there are no objective reasons for it. Sleep is disturbed, there is a "bad feeling", excitement, concern for loved ones, for one's health, for the future. Anxious thoughts are compulsively scrolling in my head again and again. A person becomes irritable and sees confirmation of his fears everywhere.
If you try to ignore your condition by suppressing your anxiety and hiding it from others, the symptoms only get worse and can eventually lead to even more serious problems.
In addition, a person who constantly experiences anxiety is simply not able to change his life on his own. His brain is set to look for danger, and he sees it everywhere. Stress hormones turn off creativity and keep thinking in a cage of imaginary limitations. It is impossible to live happily in it. An anxious person will strive for close relationships with the opposite sex, but at the same time be afraid of them, since any intimacy makes him too vulnerable. The fear of "not justifying the trust" will force him to give up career growth or change his unloved job.
Pharmacological treatment of anxiety quickly masks the symptoms and creates an illusion of recovery, but does not address the causes. If a person does not have real skills to understand emotions and manage their condition, anxiety will reappear as soon as he stops taking drugs. It will be possible to get out of this cage only when a person himself learns to notice the occurrence of anxiety or fear, analyze their causes and separate the imaginary danger from the real one.
These skills are also necessary because fear is another favorite trap for manipulators and one of the most effective. When we are anxious, we are not able to analyze what and why causes the emotion of fear and whether there is a reason for it, so it becomes very easy to frighten us with anything. And since fear makes us fight for survival with all our might, we easily follow the manipulator's lead - just to ward off the threat.
Related material
Manipulation of fear
Fear is a very strong emotion that makes it very easy to control people. It is enough to tell the victim a frightening story so that she herself thinks out the terrible consequences and agrees, for example, to give up her rights and do what she would never do in a state of her right mind.
Fear is much stronger than the social emotions of guilt and shame, which we have already dealt with in this book.
The instinct of self-preservation is basic for all living beings, it makes us act without hesitation, abandon values and moral norms. For example, during wars, people can betray their homeland out of fear for their lives; during repressions, they can write denunciations against other people in order to save themselves. Situations that in ordinary times seem completely unacceptable become possible when fear focuses all the attention and efforts of a person on a single goal - to survive at any cost.
Politicians skillfully use this, creating the image of a dangerous external enemy in order to unleash bloody wars and, instead of condemnation, receive the support of the population. Various religions frighten believers with the coming retribution for sins and thus force them to keep the accepted commandments. Pharmaceutical companies use the media to whip up the horrors associated with this or that disease in order to sell the medicine to as many people as possible.
A person frightened by mortal danger will not ask questions about the quality of a new drug and its possible side effects, which often turn out to be much more serious than the disease itself. To get rid of fear and finally return to normal life, he will gladly buy everything that is offered to him for any money, and will be grateful for being saved.
The manipulation of fear is often based on outright lies. So, for example, there are "deadly" diagnoses that have never existed before, and needs invented by marketers, without which we have done just fine all our lives.
Artificially created hype allows companies to sell stale or unpopular goods. "Last chance to buy at a low price" makes the victim of advertising think that tomorrow the goods will rise in price or disappear and they need to immediately make a purchase. At the same time, the company's warehouses are filled with millions of units of this product, and no one is usually going to raise prices.
This technique is as old as the world, but it still works great. Frightened people themselves often create a shortage of goods due to the fact that they believed the rumors and began to panic buy them in large quantities.
Any fear in one way or another comes down to the fear of death. In this sense, the fear of being rejected by society (social death) is tantamount to the fear of dying (physical death), since at the genetic level we have a need to be part of a group. Throughout the history of mankind, the survival of each individual individual depended on this. Therefore, even now we are afraid of being left without the support of “our own” so much, as if our life depends on it. And this makes us take the manipulator's word for it, ignoring the voice of reason.
So if the manipulator succeeds in planting fear in the victim's subconscious and then gives her a way to get rid of it, his ploy is 100% effective.
At the same time, the manipulation of fear works more subtle than direct blackmail or threats.
In the case when we are given ultimatum conditions or threatened with unpleasant consequences, it is quite obvious that the situation is not normal and there are serious problems in the relationship. For example, when a wife threatens her husband with divorce if he does not do what she wants. Or the boss promises to fire the employee for every minor mistake, thereby urging him to work better.
Manipulation of fear is not a direct promise of negativity, but it becomes a trigger that triggers the emotion of fear.
Related material
Parents and children
A girl is crying in a store and demands that her mother buy her a toy. Mom, without saying a word to her, turns her back on her and starts to walk away.
The girl swallows her tears in horror, calms down very quickly and runs after her. Mom achieves her goal - to get rid of the uncomfortable behavior of the child, because of which she herself feels embarrassed and ashamed.
But at what cost? The fear of separation from a parent is the most powerful for a small person who depends on his adults for everything. For a girl, the loss of her mother is tantamount to physical death, so she makes every effort to hide her emotions, suppress them and win back her mother's love and approval. But the repressed emotions do not disappear: the girl is still upset because she cannot get what she wants. Only now she is forced to hide her frustration, to cope with it herself, and besides, she was convinced that no one is interested in her needs and in order not to lose the most important person in her life, you need to behave only in a certain way. This experience, especially if it is repeated many times, will seriously undermine her confidence in the world in the future. Suppressed anger will turn into destructive auto-aggression - behavior in which a person inflicts mental or physical harm on himself.
Mom should have told her daughter that she loves her very much, but she can't buy her a new toy right now.
Explain to the girl her emotions and show that it is normal to get upset when something does not work out as expected. In this way, we teach children to understand and accept their emotions, not to consider themselves “bad” just because they experience something “wrong”. We do not cultivate in them a sense of fear, which turns them into obedient slaves of someone else's will.
Parents constantly complain to their adult daughter about health problems, they say that they don't have long. At the same time, they refuse the treatment that their daughter offers them, but which requires them to take some action themselves (change their diet, give up harmful foods, move more, quit smoking). They take advantage of the fact that the daughter is afraid of losing them and gives them more attention: she often calls and comes, brings medicines and food, and persuades them to go to the doctor.
Caring for elderly parents is natural and normal, but in this case, the parents take an infantile position and seem to be capricious, manipulate with fear so that the daughter continues to feel sorry for them and live their life.
If the daughter refuses to comply with their conditions, since they refuse to comply with it, she will immediately begin to feel guilty, considering herself ungrateful. This is an extremely difficult situation in which you need to very smoothly and gradually mark your boundaries - in such a way that there is time to live your own life.
Men and women
It seems to the wife that her husband has cooled off towards her lately. She doesn't talk to him directly about it because she thinks he won't tell her the truth about his feelings anyway. Instead, she herself begins to act as if she has a connection on the side: she constantly stays late at work, smiles enigmatically or comes up with excuses when he asks her where she is going, updates her hair, begins to take better care of herself. As a result, the husband really begins to worry that he will lose his wife, and there is not a trace of his temporary cooling: he is again infatuated with her, a new period of passion begins in the relationship.
However, in this situation, where manipulation seems quite appropriate and clearly useful, things can go very differently. If the husband really has a serious relationship with another woman and he is thinking about what to do - divorce or stay in the family - then this wife's behavior will only push him to leave, as it will partially relieve him of responsibility and make it easier to make a difficult decision. Without an honest conversation, mutual lies can lead to divorce much faster than the absence of any action on the part of the wife.
Friends
A girl who is popular, charismatic and influential in her circle manipulates her friend into doing things she doesn't like or doesn't like (follow endless requests, come to meetings at inconvenient times, etc.). The girlfriend agrees because she does not value herself, deep down she considers friendship with such a bright personality unworthy, she is afraid of losing her favor.
Of course, we are not talking about true sincere friendship. A popular girl is an egocentric, she simply uses notorious people, graciously endowing them with her attention and skillfully manipulating the fear of ending "friendship" if her maid of honor friends suddenly decide to refuse to follow her instructions.
But as long as the victims agree to such a relationship, the manipulation will work again and again.
Related material
Colleagues and manager
The manager avoids direct communication with the employee, and instructs his assistant to look for candidates for a similar position. The employee finds out about this, begins to fear losing his job and tries in every possible way to earn the favor of the manager: he does work beyond his duties, takes the initiative, stays in the office - in a word, does everything to show his involvement and indispensability.
The manager, who initially did not plan to fire the employee, but wanted to increase his motivation, achieves his goal.
Recall the example of Seeds. The boss overly praised his merits, but Semyon himself experienced heightened anxiety due to the economic crisis and the situation on the labor market. And his own fear allowed the boss to easily achieve his goals.
The tendency to experience unreasonable fear makes us very vulnerable to manipulation, and in addition, it greatly poisons life. After all, while we are afraid, we are always waiting for negative events, completely unaware of the beauty and happiness of the current moment. None of our fears may ever come true, but we can never get back all the time we spent worrying about the future.
Skillful manipulation: how to communicate with intolerable people
Even if you decide to complain, you are unlikely to be believed: manipulators are too persuasive.
How to properly build communication with manipulators, too sensitive and passive-aggressive people - in Richard Templar's book "Rules for managing people. How to unleash the potential of each employee”, which is published by Alpina Publisher at the end of January
It is sometimes difficult with everyone, but there are people with whom it is almost impossible or even dangerous to communicate. They can be aggressive, seek to control everything, or be negative. Difficult people will still be difficult, but if you understand their secrets, strategies and tricks and adapt your behavior, then you can get along with them. Forbes publishes a chapter from Richard Templar's book The Rules for Managing People. How to unleash the potential of each employee» - on how to deal with hypersensitive people, passive-aggressive and manipulative characters.
Sensitive people can't get tough
I once worked with a guy who could be thrown off balance by literally anything.
The slightest hint of criticism, a sad story from the news, any kind of negative emotion that someone showed in his presence. Dealing with him sometimes became difficult - if you needed to somehow constructively evaluate his work, it was like walking on eggshells.
If you yourself are not such a hypersensitive person, dealing with such people is probably a problem for you. Therefore, I have included hypersensitive people in the section on difficult people - because it is sometimes very difficult to communicate with them. However, unlike most of the other types described here, sensitive people are not at fault. Most likely, they were born that way, and we need to learn to adapt to them. At the same time, they are often the first to identify potential problems and dangers, and they can also be excellent diplomats, because they know how not to upset people. They usually treat others the way they would like to be treated, so they rarely treat someone rudely or inconsiderately.
It makes no sense to advise them to "be tougher." They can't, and they really shouldn't.
The problem, especially if you have slightly thicker skin than them, is not to upset them. Therefore, next to them you need to be very careful. Hypersensitive natures perfectly capture any hint or innuendo, so just be kind and thoughtful.
Of course, sometimes it is necessary to tell such a person that his work is not up to standard or that something has gone wrong in your relationship. Assuming that he is not at the same time an emotional blackmailer, then even if he bursts into tears, he will not do it in order to make you feel guilty. It will just be an uncontrollable emotional reaction. Try to get him to recognize problems on his own: “There's still room for improvement here. What do you think would help speed up the process next time?” With this approach, he himself will make constructive proposals, and you will only have to agree.
Note that the phrases in this example are built impersonally. Not “what can you do to speed up the process?” But “what would help speed it up?”. This makes it easier to avoid personalized criticism. If your partner is hypersensitive, you can say, "I was terribly upset when I tried to start the car and found that there was no gas in it" instead of "because you spent all the gas."
When dealing with a hypersensitive person, focus on the positive and use a carrot instead of a stick. Explain to him what you want, not what you don't want. You want to always have some amount of gasoline left in the car. There is no need to talk about the fact that otherwise you are angry.
An elementary school teacher once told me that he had a "list of students not to yell at" because they couldn't stand it. Likewise, hypersensitive people should be on your list of those to avoid if you are in a bad mood and easily pissed off.
Passive-aggressive people are afraid of conflict
I remember coming home very late one day as a teenager. An elderly relative was visiting us, and the next morning at breakfast she said to me: “I hope you had a good time? Yes, probably, since you did not come home until twenty minutes past three! It was said with enthusiasm, and I should have smiled back, but I understood the implication perfectly. What she really wanted to say was, in front of my mother, “You woke me up when you got home!” That's why she knew exactly what time it was.
The purpose of passive-aggressive behavior is to criticize or complain without going into open conflict. We all do this sometimes, but for some people it's normal behavior when they're upset or angry. Usually such people are afraid of conflict, usually because they have some unpleasant memories associated with it, but they do not want their disappointment to go unnoticed.
In fact, passive-aggressive behavior is completely pointless because it doesn't solve any problems. It just makes everyone feel uncomfortable.
I once had a colleague who always turned in any work at the last minute so that everyone else would work harder. Technically, he was on time, but all the other team members always tried to help each other in order to finish everything early. This man was angry with us and thus tried to punish us. He could not say that he had some kind of problem, because he was afraid to provoke our aggression. I still have no idea what he was angry about, but whatever it was, it never resolved. I suspect he is still angry with those he works with today.
One of the biggest problems with this behavior is that if you complain directly to a person, they will definitely deny everything. “I didn’t do everything at the last moment on purpose. It just took longer than I thought." And it turns out that you are unfairly accusing a person.
And he seems to have the right to feel offended.
What to do if you got such a passive-aggressive boss, partner, mother, colleague, child? First, acknowledge that this is aggressive behavior, no matter how well veiled it may be. Otherwise, you will feel guilty that you "unfairly" accuse him. If you let him continue like this, it will be bad for both of you.
Sometimes humor works. In our family, any behavior of this kind is usually met with a joke: “You don’t need to be so passive-aggressive with me!” Even if this person denies everything, after such words, he can no longer continue to behave like this. More stubborn violators should be pinned to the wall. But at the same time, you need to show them that expressing your disappointment or resentment does not necessarily lead to conflict. This is what they fear and will not change their behavior unless they realize that there is no reason for their fear. Just tell it like it is and show them that you want to work out a solution to their problem that will benefit everyone.
Also, be specific. Don't say, "You always turn in your work at the last minute." Give specific examples and let the person know that this is not acceptable. In no case do not try to answer the aggressor in the same way, for example, do everything for him at the last moment. This will make you even more passive-aggressive than he is. What about your moral high ground then?
Manipulation is not just persuasion
The perverse competitive spirit we talked about in the previous rule may be one of the reasons why people manipulate others to get what they want. Of course, we all try to manipulate someone from time to time, but for some people, the manner of covertly and insidiously using others becomes the norm.
I remember very well talking a lot about ways to get people on your side, and you can see that this is also a form of manipulation. In my defense, I can say that I urge you to use my advice in a way that does not harm, and in many cases, on the contrary, helps other people.
That's why I use the word "influence" and not "manipulation." As you know, I'm just sharing my observations about what works. Of course, I must honestly admit that insidious and unscrupulous approaches sometimes work too. But when I talk about manipulators, I'm talking about people who plot and intrigue without considering how it will affect other people, and often in doing so harm them.
Okay, now let's talk about what's wrong with manipulators. I can't list all the possible—often complex—reasons for this behavior. But the point boils down to one thing: life experience has somehow convinced these people that manipulation is the best way to get what you want. Experienced and successful manipulators are likely to get what they want most of the time. The problem is that, as a rule, this is not what you want.
Such people - at work or in the family - always find some new opportunities to control you. You know they do it, but you can't prove it.
They deny everything - and so convincingly that your boss or colleagues are unlikely to believe you if you decide to complain. They ask leading questions, they blackmail you emotionally, they never admit their guilt, they try to convince you that only you have problems, they lie, they spread false rumors, they deliberately derail your plans, they instinctively feel your vulnerable places... An amateur manipulator is already difficult to deal with. And if you get a major league player, it's a real nightmare.
What to do with them? For starters, don't let them convince you that you are to blame. You know that this person is a manipulator, so any of his statements about your hypersensitivity, forgetfulness or illogicality are worthless. Learn to trust only your own perception of the situation. Every manipulator has his own favorite strategies - try to learn to recognize them and plan your responses in advance. If a manipulator at work is trying to take credit for you, start forwarding copies of letters to your boss that indicate otherwise (you can say that you just wanted to keep him updated on how work is going).
