Psychological techniques for manipulating mental consciousness

Definition of manipulation

To date, researchers of manipulation techniques have formulated about 20 definitions with which they explain the concept of “manipulation.” Let's list some of them here:

1. This is an impact on the spiritual sphere of a person , control of people, as well as hidden domination, which is carried out in a non-violent way.
2. Deception or playing on the weaknesses of another person , promoting actions beneficial to the manipulator on the part of the object of manipulation.
3. Secret influence on the psyche , causing damage to the individuals towards whom it is directed.
4. A way to turn a person into slavery.
5. Forcing actions that interest the manipulator using emotional and irrational means.
6. Targeted management.
7. This is the desire to dominate , manage, dominate at any cost and constantly win, using means such as cynicism, lies and control.
8. Structuring the world by a manipulator , allowing him to always achieve his goals and win.
9. The use of one's hidden power and spiritual power , which contradicts the will of another person and forces him to fulfill other people's desires.
10. Programming of thoughts, emotions, behavior, intentions, attitudes, relationships, psychology, carried out in a hidden way.
11. This is the attitude towards other people as things and means to achieve goals.
12. The influence on the individual’s psyche is so skillful that the object of manipulation appears desires and intentions that are not actually his true desires and intentions.
13. A strategy of behavior of the manipulator, approved by society, but carried out by it for its own purposes, which contradict the interests of the recipient of the manipulation.
14. Using or controlling the person being manipulated so that he acts or thinks as desired by the initiator of psychological manipulation.

Characteristic signs of psychological manipulation

Based on the definitions of manipulation, we can highlight the most important features that distinguish it from other types of people management:

• this is a specific way of controlling an individual;
• manipulation implies hidden control of another person, a secret influence on his psyche, which the manipulated is not aware of. This is its difference from open or explicit control, when the addressee understands what goal the managing subject is pursuing;
• manipulation brings one-sided benefit to the initiator;
• its implementation harms the manipulated and contradicts his actual will.

Of course, not all types of covert control are manipulations, since sometimes the goals of a person who secretly influences the decisions and actions of another individual are socially approved and benefit both parties. Examples of such useful management can be the actions of parents who unobtrusively encourage their beloved child to acquire good habits regarding work and their own health, or the actions of a manager who cares not only about the prosperity of the company, but also about the well-being of the employees working for it.

Why do people want to manipulate?

Psychological manipulation is a widespread phenomenon in modern society. According to a survey conducted by psychologist V.P. Sheinov among managers of various companies in the former USSR, eighty percent of all respondents witnessed manipulation in the workplace. To the question “Have you encountered manipulation in your family and how often?” 29% of respondents indicated that they became victims of manipulation often or very often.

If manipulation is so often used by people to achieve goals, then a reasonable question arises: “For what reasons do people strive to manipulate, why do they choose this particular method of solving life problems?”

There are several explanations for this:

1. Manipulation allows an individual to gain power over people .
2. Skillful manipulation helps shift responsibility to another person and avoid punishment.
3. The rapid development of psychology in the 20th century, with the help of which techniques and methods for managing people were developed, previously used mainly in sales and advertising, and now, thanks to the availability of various books that reveal the secrets of manipulation, and the Internet, an unlimited number of people can use them.
4. As Erich Fromm pointed out, market relations and capitalism contribute to the spread of manipulation and the search for new ways to control people covertly.
5. Manipulation helps you feel important and increase your self-esteem .
6. Getting pleasure from psychological games with the recipient of manipulation.

Manipulation model

In order to achieve his goal, the manipulator must carry out certain sequential actions that lead to the desired change in the behavior of the addressee. Based on a study of data on various manipulations, the researchers developed a model of a typical manipulation, which consists of the following steps:

1. Collection of information about the object of future manipulation. Why does the manipulator need this? Studying the future victim, he notices its strengths and weaknesses, emotional vulnerabilities, habits, or, in other words, targets of influence. Then the manipulator considers which baits are best applicable to the identified weaknesses of the addressee, what kind of surrounding background is required for the successful implementation of the plan.
2. Presentation of a bait, the task of which is to attract the recipient of the manipulation into contact. As a rule, the bait emphasizes the beneficial and in the interests of the manipulated side of the matter and, at the same time, helps to conceal the real goals of the initiator of the contact. For example, the promise of a guaranteed receipt in the future of a significant amount of money when joining a financial pyramid or hype can act as a bait for greedy and greedy people. The real goal of the manipulator: to collect as much money as possible is skillfully hidden behind beautiful words about the possession of untold wealth, power, prestigious things, etc. awaiting the victim, which increasingly inflame the imagination of the recipient of the manipulation and dulls his critical thinking. Other examples of lures could be talking about what worries the manipulated person, or about his area of ​​​​interest, which is very often used by professional traders.
3. The use of necessary background factors is often combined with the presentation of bait to enhance its effect. Thus, a manipulator can exploit altered states of consciousness of an individual, for example, trance, in which a person’s volitional centers are weakened and critical thinking is difficult, or play on a person’s habits and behavioral scenarios used in his life. In particular, the manipulator, knowing that the recipient of psychological manipulation is a person who is always responsible for his words, can obtain from him an oral promise to fulfill any obligation that is clearly disadvantageous for the manipulated. Sometimes a favorable external background helps the initiator of manipulation achieve their goals; for example, to increase trust, scammers use law enforcement uniforms or expensive suits, which allows them to avoid many uncomfortable questions from potential victims.
4. The manipulator needs lures and background in order to reach the targets of influence of the addressee or, in other words, to the sources of his motivation. They can be emotions, desires, interests, ideals, beliefs or inclinations.
5. The final stage is to encourage the manipulated to be active, namely to perform those actions that are beneficial to the initiator of the manipulation. This step is the general result of the influence of the background and lures on the vulnerabilities of the recipient’s psyche.

Manipulation as a type of psychological influence

Common carriage - selection of judgments that require uniformity in behavior and create the impression that everyone does this Read more: Organization of a psychodiagnostic examination

1.4 Manipulation as a type of psychological influence

Psychological influence consists in the influence of one individual or group on the psyche of another group, on their thinking, imagination, feelings, will, etc. The goal and results of psychological influence are the restructuring of the psyche of the target, achieving certain mental shifts and changes that affect activity and behavior.

Manipulation as a type of psychological influence is an inducement hidden from the recipient to experience certain states, change his attitude towards something, make decisions and perform actions necessary to achieve the goals of the initiator. At the same time, it is important for the manipulator that the addressee considers these thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions to be his own, and not imposed from the outside, and recognizes himself as responsible for them. [p.112, 9]

Means of influence:

Ø Violation of personal space, expressed in too close proximity or even touching

Ø A sharp acceleration, or vice versa, a slowdown in the pace of conversation

Ø A teasing statement (for example: “Are you so easily upset?”)

Ø Encouraging statements (for example: “It’s unlikely that you can do it”)

Ø “Innocent deception”, misrepresentation

Ø Slander and slander disguised as insignificant and random statements, which can be accepted as such only due to a misunderstanding

Ø An exaggerated demonstration of one’s weakness, inexperience, ignorance, “stupidity” in order to awaken the recipient’s desire to help, to do the manipulator’s work for him, to convey valuable or even secret information to him, to teach him to do something, etc.

Ø “Innocent” blackmail: “friendly” hints about mistakes, mistakes, violations committed by the addressee in the past; humorous references to “old sins” or personal secrets of the addressee [pp. 112, 9]

Gretsov A.G. in his book “Psychological Trainings with Teenagers” he identifies the following methods of manipulation:

1. Exaggeration of typical behavior. Most people tend to look closely at those around them and try to behave like them, to do what is accepted. Few people want to be a black sheep. Therefore, when they want to persuade a person to behave in a certain way, he is usually presented with this behavior as typical for many.

2. Link to authorities. People tend to listen to the opinions of those who are well known, have achieved a certain weight in society, have some important knowledge, etc. Manipulators abuse this by demonstrating false authority or simply buying a public statement of authority.

3. Creating rush and excitement. It takes a person some time to think thoroughly about his actions. But they try to deprive him of time when they want to persuade him to take dubious actions. By creating a feeling of haste in a person, it is much easier to force him to act under the influence of a momentary impulse rather than reason.

4. Abuse of the reciprocity rule. The rules of good manners instruct us to reciprocate in situations where they help us, provide a service, or give us a gift. But sometimes they can give us a “gift” or provide an unsolicited favor on purpose - in order to exert influence, to achieve something from us.

5. Imposing obligations. When a person accepts any obligations, at least in general terms, then it is much easier to convince him to accept those details that he did not know about, because the person strives for consistency in his behavior.

The main components of manipulative influence are: targeted transformation (distortion, concealment) of information; concealment of impact; targets of influence, i.e. those mental structures that are influenced; robotization [p. 112, 10].

Manipulation is a type of psychological influence, the skillful execution of which leads to open arousal in another person of intentions that do not coincide with his actually existing desires. [p.382, 19]

Manipulation as a type of psychological influence helps to achieve the goal. However, inadequate and illiterate use of methods of influence can lead to undesirable consequences - depersonalization of the individual - the object of influence, erasure of his individual psychological characteristics, or even destruction, both mentally and physically.

Manipulation is a component of interpersonal relationships and does not manifest itself. There are people who activate the conditions for manipulation to occur. In this regard, a personality trait is identified that contributes to successful manipulation - Machiavellianism. In Russian psychology, the concept of “Machiavellianism” is often replaced by the ability and tendency to manipulate.

Currently, the concept of “Machiavellianism” is often used in various humanities. It is more widespread in Western psychology and is practically not used in Russian psychology, where Machiavellianism is often replaced by the ability or ability to manipulate people.

Western psychologists call Machiavellianism a person’s tendency to manipulate other people in interpersonal relationships, i.e. in this case, it is implied that the subject conceals his true intentions when using false distracting maneuvers so that the interaction partner, without noticing it, changes his personal, true goals or methods of action.

Machiavellianism is generally defined as a person's tendency in an interpersonal situation to manipulate other people through subtle, subtle, or nonphysically aggressive means such as flattery, deception, intimidation, or bribery. Machiavellianism can also be referred to as a strategy of social behavior that involves manipulating other people for personal gain. Each individual is capable of manipulative behavior to varying degrees, but some people have more pronounced tendencies and abilities than others.

Probably, we would all like not only to be able to influence people, but also to successfully resist outside influence on us. The development of this skill is facilitated by certain training programs aimed at developing the skills of influencing and countering it. And before drawing up a training and conducting it, it is necessary to identify the level of expression of the desire to influence people, for which a survey is carried out.

CHAPTER 2. ORGANIZATION, METHODS OF CONDUCTING AND RESULTS OF PSYCHODAGNOSTIC EXAMINATION

Common carriage - selection of judgments that require uniformity in behavior and create the impression that everyone does this Read more: Organization of a psychodiagnostic examination

Information about the work “Means, types and patterns of psychological influence: manipulation”

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Targets of influence used by manipulators

Targets of influence depending on the size of the audience

The general rule here is this: the greater the number of people whom the manipulator wants to expose to the influence of his techniques, the simpler and more universal he should choose targets, for example, such as the desire for success or wealth, the desire for security, comfort or pleasure, the desire to have a happy and prosperous life. family, health and self-esteem.

If the audience being manipulated is small, then the manipulator, as a rule, looks for specialized and targeted targets of influence that are characteristic of this group of people.

Formable impact targets

The formation of targets of influence is used by skilled manipulators in advance of the actual act of manipulation. To carry out their plan, the initiators of manipulation first and quietly cultivate and consolidate in the mind of the manipulated thoughts and desires that are beneficial to them. Then, if necessary, manipulators can appeal to the formed targets for their own selfish purposes, and the recipient of the manipulation, of course, will not be ready to protect themselves from this kind of influence.

Very often, similar tactics in corporations are used by managers at various levels. First, they encourage the formation of low or high self-esteem among employees, or create fables about a caring and sensitive boss, or make significant efforts to increase the status of the company in the eyes of employees and third parties, and then use the formed targets of influence to push their interests and goals.

Targets of influence exploited by manipulators

• guilt is a frequently used target of influence in family relationships, as well as in teacher-student interactions;
• envy;
• greed, manifested as temptation in front of large sums of money;
• vanity, expressed in an uncontrollable desire for fame and glory;
• the desire for approval of your thoughts, feelings and actions from the people around you;
• inability to refuse imposed thoughts, desires or actions;
• lack of clear and defined personal boundaries and unclear self-awareness;
• low self-confidence, which implies a lack of firm conviction in the correctness of one’s decisions and actions and, as a result, a lack of the persistence necessary to defend them in front of other people;
• uncontrollable passion for pleasure and entertainment;
• naivety, i.e. such an individual's idea of ​​the world in which all people around him are fair, honest and have empathy;
• excessive intellectualization, which means that the recipient of the manipulation makes excessive efforts to understand the motives of the manipulator, and believes that the initiator of the manipulation has the right to cause psychological and other damage;
• emotional dependence;
• superconsciousness. A victim of psychological manipulation who has this quality tries to justify the actions of the manipulator and accepts his point of view on the events that occurred;
• gullibility, which leads to the fact that people are subjected to manipulative influences, which in most cases could be avoided if they did not trust strangers, or did not refuse to check documents or invoices for goods, etc.;
• impressionability, forcing victims of manipulation to succumb to the charm, beautiful words and loud promises of the manipulator;
• narcissism, leading to the fact that individuals with such a character trait are extremely easy to succumb to praise and flattery;
• infantilism as a psychological feature of a person that contributes to his making immature and rash decisions;
• loneliness, which can become a target if a person pays increased attention to this, from his point of view, shortcoming. The manipulator, noticing such weakness, can exert a negative influence simply by periodically contacting a lonely person;
• impulsiveness, leading potential victims of manipulation to the point that they can, through their own actions, help the initiator of manipulation achieve his goal, making hasty decisions based on a momentary mood or emotion;
• excessive thriftiness of some people, which prevents them from making the right decisions due to the fact that they, afraid to spend a lot of money and forgetting that the stingy pays twice, purchase things or services of very poor quality from manipulative sellers.
• the slowness of the victim, used by manipulators to force him to quickly make a decision in artificially created conditions of lack of time. Since the addressee, being under time pressure, most often does not have time to figure out what’s what, the manipulator, taking advantage of this, offers his own option that is beneficial for him;
• the ignorance of victims, used by the initiators of manipulation as a target of influence, when it is necessary to support their words with references to supposedly made scientific discoveries, to give a false or distorted interpretation of any facts or phenomena from the angle desired by the manipulator;
• fears, which are a magnificent hook with which skilled players with human souls catch their victims. There are a lot of all kinds of fears, for example, fear of death, fear of loss of social status, fear for the future, etc., so there is no point in describing each of them in detail. Suffice it to say that the multi-billion dollar businesses of insurance companies are based on nothing but human fears, which they cleverly exploit by forcing the client to pay for an insurance policy;
• revenge;
• jealousy.

Personality manipulation

From the book by Georgy Grachev and Igor Melnik “Personality Manipulation: Organization, Methods and Technologies of Information and Psychological Impact”

Film "Aladdin's Magic Lamp"

- The princess was nowhere! She dreamed everything!

​​​​​​​​Coercion of the individual, a specific method of control.

The process of manipulative influence can be carried out directly by the manipulator, but there are situations when he acts as the initiator and organizer of complex psychological manipulation, in which he uses other persons to achieve his goals (for example, using the method of “involving third forces”).

That is, the manipulation process can be extended over time and represent a multi-step, step-by-step procedure for exerting a manipulative influence on a person. It can be relatively simple, including a “one-act” period of communication using one or several techniques of manipulative influence, or structurally quite complex, that is, include a complex (system) of various techniques of manipulative influence, the action of which is aimed at various psychological structures of the individual and involving various psychological mechanisms with phased implementation over certain periods of time and in various interaction situations. Thus, complex manipulation has its own temporal, spatial and social structures.

In these cases, additional structural elements appear that seem to “relay” the manipulative influence from the manipulator to the addressee. It is advisable to designate them as “mediators” or intermediaries of manipulative influence. When considering complex interpersonal manipulation, it is possible to use the concept of “script”. But even in the case of multi-step interpersonal manipulation, at each stage some intermediate goals of the general plan are solved and specific techniques of manipulative influence are applied.

The next distinctive feature of manipulative influence is its secret nature, hidden from the recipient. In this regard, two levels of influence are distinguished: obvious and hidden.

The explicit level acts as a disguise, as a cover for manipulative influence. It performs the function of a “legend” or “myth,” as E.L. notes. Dotsenko, “disguising the true intentions of the actor.” Moreover, both the fact itself and the goals of the hidden level of influence may be hidden. But it is significant that “this level, however, is hidden from the addressee only psychologically. Phenomenally, it is built into the plot of the “legend” as a set of elements that can look either as part of it (if the manipulation is skillful enough), or as random inclusions that are usually not paid attention to. These elements are functionally a “bait” that the manipulator hopes the recipient will “peck at.”

"Targets" of influence

Another concept that needs to be introduced to describe psychological manipulation of a person is “targets” of influence. When considering the meaning of this concept, we will use the result of an analysis of a number of works on this problem carried out by E.L. Dotsenko. “The most psychological,” in his opinion, “is undoubtedly the topic of targets of influence. The fact that influence is based on a person’s base desires and aggressive aspirations is often denounced (Goodin, 1980; Key, 1989; Sheldon, 1982). It is noted that manipulators exploit such drives that should function flawlessly: the need for security, food, a sense of community, etc. More “advanced” methods of manipulation involve the preliminary “fabrication” of opinions or desires, fixing them in the mass consciousness and in the ideas of an individual, so that they can then be addressed (Vaitkunene, 1984: Schiller, 1980: Kassirer, 1990). For example, creating a myth about a caring president or about the respectability of a company, convincing a partner that they want to help him or that he is in danger.”

In addition, in the literature, targets of influence are understood as individuals, their associations, social groups, populations, and even countries—objects of psychological operations.

When considering interpersonal manipulations, personal structures and certain mental formations of a person are currently identified as targets. Summarizing the available data on this problem, the following five groups of human mental formations can be used as a working classification of targets for manipulative influence on a person:

1. Drivers of human activity: needs, interests, inclinations.
2. Regulators of human activity: group norms, self-esteem (including self-esteem, self-respect, pride), subjective attitudes, worldview, convictions, beliefs, semantic, goal-oriented, operational attitudes, etc.
3. Cognitive (information) structures (including the information-oriented basis of human behavior as a whole) - knowledge about the world around us, people and other various information that provide information support for human activity.
4. The operational composition of the activity: way of thinking, style of behavior and communication, habits, abilities, skills, etc.
5. Mental states: background, functional, emotional.

The need to highlight in situations of interpersonal interaction, among the whole variety of targets, precisely those to which the influence is directed determines the advisability of introducing such a concept as the direction, vector or arrow of influence.

Advantages of the manipulator over the addressee

The power and effectiveness of manipulative influence depends on the presence of certain advantages that the manipulator has over the addressee. We have already noted the hidden nature of the manipulative influence for the addressee, which immediately creates advantages for the manipulator. In addition, there are other advantages that allow the manipulator to use specific influence techniques and enhance its effect.

The classification of these advantages was proposed by E.L. Dotsenko. It uses a source that creates benefits as its basis. Taking this into account, he identifies the following four main groups: “First, the actor may already have some of his own set of advantages:

a) status advantages (role position, position, age):

b) business (qualifications, arguments, abilities, knowledge).

Secondly, the actor can attract the power of third parties. If these are specific or sufficiently defined “others,” then this type of power can be called

(c) representative support (“I’m from Nikolai Nikolaevich,” “I’m not trying for myself, but for the team”). If the actor relies on generalized others, let's call it

(d) conventional advantage (traditions, morality, etc.).

Thirdly, power can be derived from the very process of interaction with a partner:

(e) dynamic forces (tempo, pauses, initiative),

(f) positional advantages (exploiting the emotional tone of a previous or current relationship), and

(g) a contract is the result of joint agreements.

And finally, fourthly, strength is obtained from the partner’s weaknesses or his mental characteristics.”

Neutralization of manipulative influence

We have introduced and briefly described a number of concepts that reflect the main elements of the process of manipulative influence, which allow us to describe it schematically. That is, the system of these concepts allows us to present this process in a general form. But in order to search for opportunities for constructive protection of the individual from psychological manipulation, it is necessary to consider this process in a slightly different light. It is necessary to consider it from the point of view of the tasks that arise before a person when manipulative influence is exerted on him.

For a person, when organizing protective procedures to neutralize manipulative influence, a number of specific tasks arise. They can be formulated as follows:

— timely detection of the fact of manipulative influence and its direction;

— forecast of the likely purpose and consequences of the impact (changes in behavior, attitudes, assessments, possible damage to the addressee, target, etc.);

— formation of an adequate response, one’s own behavior in a situation of manipulative influence.

The key task is to identify the very fact of manipulative influence and its power, since this is what the negative consequences for the addressee depend on and this is the main danger to the individual. See Formation of a mechanism to counteract manipulative effects on the consciousness of an individual

Signs of manipulation that should alert you

Language . If you hear incomprehensible or unfamiliar words from your interlocutor, be more careful in your further conversation with him. Very often, specific terms are used to show imaginary expertise or have a hypnotizing effect on you.

Emotions . When a person, while communicating with you, begins to put pressure on your emotional sphere, this is a clear sign that he has some kind of hidden goal and is trying to achieve it by playing on your feelings.

Urgency and sensationalism . The point here is that the victim’s internal stable psychological background is undermined, and she begins to feel nervousness and anxiety, leading to a weakening of her defenses against external influences.

Repetition . This technique is widely used by religious sects in order to facilitate the assimilation by new adherents of the dogmas and rules established in this teaching. To achieve this goal, people are put into an altered state of consciousness, forcing them to listen to repeating musical rhythms, like the beating of African drums, which is used by shamans to enter a trance and communicate with the gods, or repeat mantras for several hours. When a person’s will and his resistance to external influences decreases to the level required by the manipulators, the required information is instilled into the individual.

Splitting up . A person using this technique does not present the problem to you as a whole, but breaks it down into several parts in such a way that you cannot comprehend it and make an informed choice. Therefore, you have no choice but to trust a manipulator who has complete knowledge.

Taking it out of context . The manipulator, in order to achieve the decision he needs, is silent about the critical external factors necessary for a full understanding of his plans, and diverts the conversation in a direction that is beneficial to him.

Totalitarianism solutions . The solution that the initiator of manipulation tries to impose on his victim appears to them as the only true, correct or approved by society. The manipulator can motivate his words for other reasons, the main thing here is that he does not want to leave freedom of choice to the recipient of the manipulation.

Mixing your own opinion into the transmitted information . A very skillful manipulation that allows you to turn neutral information into one that is very beneficial for the manipulator, since he gradually and imperceptibly inspires the desired thoughts in the addressee. Such manipulation is very common in media messages, which is why European legislators have introduced regulations to limit the use of such psychological tricks.

Covering up with authority . A reference to an expert or a person who is respected in society or in the eyes of the victim, used in order to persuade her to make the decision necessary for the manipulator.

Activation of stereotypes . When you notice your actions and decisions being judged by people who base their actions on the norms of behavior and beliefs accepted in a certain group, they are trying to force you to be like everyone else and play in accordance with the accepted rules, and if you do not share their values, then , you are the object of manipulation.

Basic technologies of manipulation in communication

Bibliographic description:

Bagulina, N.V. Basic technologies of manipulation in communication / N.V. Bagulina.
— Text: immediate // Current issues of modern psychology: materials of the I International. scientific conf. (Chelyabinsk, March 2011). - Chelyabinsk: Two Komsomol members, 2011. - P. 10-12. — URL: https://moluch.ru/conf/psy/archive/30/34/ (access date: 10/08/2020). Manipulation is one of the most interesting types of human behavior; it is an integral part of social culture. Manipulation is understood as the deliberate and hidden inducement of another person to experience certain states, make decisions or perform actions necessary for the initiator to achieve his own goals.

Manipulation technologies are those methods of influencing a person with the help of which states are caused in a person that are beneficial to the manipulator. Thus, manipulative technologies are those actions in which manipulation manifests itself. The degree of success of manipulation depends on how wide the arsenal of these tools is and how flexible the manipulator is in using them.

The main components of manipulative influence:

— handling information;

— withholding information and using certain methods of presenting information;

— impact on psychological targets.

Handling information

The information supplied by a person is material with which you can do whatever you want. It can be distorted, concealed, or the method of presentation adjusted. Distortion of information ranges from outright lies to partial deformations, such as manipulation of facts, collective belief. Collective persuasion is a systematic attempt to persuade people to accept a particular inclination, command, or doctrine. This term is primarily used in techniques designed to manipulate human thoughts and actions against the desire, will and knowledge of the individual. This attempt is made by controlling nature and the social environment in order to destroy loyalty to any undesirable groups, individuals or patterns of behavior.

Informative indicators that a person is lying are the voice and characteristics of speech, which reveal the person’s emotional state. The study of special literary sources allows a number of authors to identify the most characteristic signs of insincerity that appear when transmitting false information: involuntary changes in intonation, rate of speech, timbre of voice, signs of trembling in the voice, the appearance of pauses when answering questions that should not have made you think, the appearance of speech expressions that are not typical for a given person in ordinary communication, or vice versa, the disappearance of typical words and phrases for him, demonstrative emphasizing with the help of speech means (intonation, pauses and other methods) of some fragments of transmitted information, in order to mask or distort the true relationship to this information.

People who try to lie strive to control their behavior, including the sound of their voice, but they cannot know exactly how much they succeeded, since it is quite difficult to exercise complete self-control of the sound of their own voice. Unlike the voice, a person is better able to control his face, so in many cases it is possible to notice a lie precisely thanks to the analysis of facial expression. Focusing on a partner’s face, observers often pay attention to the following parameters:

- running glance. This is a traditional sign associated with the fact that a person who is not accustomed to lying experiences anxiety during the course of a false statement and has difficulty keeping the gaze of a communication partner and averting his eyes to the side;

- light smile. A smile that accompanies a lie allows you to hide internal tension, but it does not always look quite natural;

- microtension of the facial muscles. At the moment of a false message, a shadow seems to run across the face. Video recording allows you to record short-term tension in facial expression, lasting a fraction of a second. This involuntary reaction is a very reliable indicator of lies;

— control of the partner at the moment of a false statement. When telling a lie, some participants briefly concentrate their attention on their partner's face, as if trying to assess how successfully they managed to deceive the person;

- movement of the pupils of the eyes. Various vegetative reactions - redness of the face or its individual parts, dilation of the pupils of the eyes, rapid blinking and other characteristic changes characteristic of feelings of shame and fear - accompany insincerity on a subconscious level in people who are not accustomed to lying.

When analyzing facial expressions, eyes, general facial expressions of a person associated with a person’s reactions, trying to determine whether he is lying or not, it is necessary to remember the individuality of the person, the presence of a so-called background state. It is well known that during the Polygraph test procedure, the operator first measures the general background of the subject’s normal reaction, asking him questions of a neutral nature. Then he asks control questions that cause anxiety, and finally, significant questions that are directly related to the investigation. It is the comparison of various response results that makes it possible to draw certain conclusions.

Concealment of information and use

certain ways of presenting information

The next way to manipulate information is withholding information, i.e.
hiding certain topics, avoiding those topics, or selectively dosing information. The method of presenting information plays a certain role in concealing information or distorting it. If you bring down an avalanche of the same type of information on a person or, conversely, present information in small, very dosed portions, the person will not be able to use it effectively. And yet, he cannot blame him for not being informed. Another common technique in distorting information is the subliminal presentation of information, when there is a sharp change in sound, a change in the musical theme, if it is necessary to draw the audience’s attention to some information, a change in the announcer’s text. These methods of psychological influence are called linguistic traps. There are the following ways to use linguistic traps: Universal statements
, which actually say nothing, but create the effect of perceiving an exact argument: “Such is life,” “War is war.”
"Generalization"
.
This is the division of people and phenomena into classes or by time: “It’s always like this,” “It’s been like this all my life and it will be like this.” An implicit reference to supposedly generally accepted norms
affects mainly the feeling of guilt: “You didn’t even close the door behind you.”
Multiplication of actions or situations
: “There are all sorts of people walking around here,” “There are many of you like that, but I am alone.”
Use of indefinite referential indices
: “At our institute they believe,” “It is generally known that...”, “There is an opinion...”.
Communication sabotage
, in which the previous remark is ignored, and the answer is introduced with new content: “Are you going to college tomorrow?” All these manipulative statements contain the manipulator’s fears that his social status will not be high enough, so the manipulator seeks to artificially increase it, claiming the right to teach and have especially significant information. The manipulator begins communication with some confidence in the success of the planned enterprise. This confidence is embodied in the desire to create the necessary superiority of power over a partner in order to overpower, outwit him, and hook him. Communication partners differ in the presence of their own strengths; this is a set of certain advantages that a communication partner almost always possesses. These are status positions - role positions, position; business – qualifications, arguments, abilities, knowledge of a person. These are advantages in the creation of which third parties play an important role, for example, representative support, reliance on the forces of specific third parties, the requirements of norms, morals, values, or procedural forces, advantages that are derived from the very process of interaction with a partner: speech rate, pause, initiative.

Impact on psychological targets

One of the central issues when considering the technology of manipulative influence is the question of the targets to which this influence is directed. As a rule, the main targets are the needs, interests, inclinations, norms, attitudes, behavioral stereotypes of the person who is influenced by the initiator of the influence.

Usually, the impact is based on the base desires of a person. This is sex, a sense of ownership, a hostile attitude towards those who are different from us, instability in the face of the temptation of power, money, fame, luxury. As a rule, manipulators exploit drives, needs for safety, food, a sense of community, love and affection.

For the manipulator, the context of influence is of great importance. Communication always takes place somewhere under some circumstances, i.e. there are some temporal and spatial characteristics of the communication situation. The selection and organization of interaction conditions lies in the fact that the manipulator controls the external variables of the interaction situation: physical conditions, cultural and social context.

Under physical conditions

we understand such environmental features that determine the environment in which communication takes place: in the office, on the street, in the classroom, in the car, in the kitchen, and so on. These are features of lighting, audibility, temperature, smells, weather, interior, furniture arrangement, and so on. The opportunity for distraction is different on the street and in the office, so experienced manipulators are attentive to the conditions. There are well-known ways to solve business issues in everyday life, when going out into nature, or vice versa, many scammers use luring people out onto the street, where it is easier to divert attention from fraudulent actions.

Cultural background

interaction includes the features of the communication situation determined by cultural sources - the language people speak, national and local traditions, cultural norms regulating the ways people coordinate their actions: taboo topics, bad gestures, limits of jokes, stereotypes of perception, prejudices, etc. .

Social context

– this is a set of communication variables set by certain groups of people, real or conditional. Examples of social interaction situations are a friendly party, a banquet, waiting in a doctor's office, shopping queues, and so on. The structure of a social situation includes the distribution of roles, standard social role prescriptions, flexible rules and norms of attitude.

During communication, structuring of communication time occurs. Popular psychoanalyst Eric Berne proposed to distinguish the following ways of structuring time [3, p. 33].

1. Rituals

. This is a stereotypical series of simple additional actions set by external social factors: greeting, farewell, sharing news, and so on.

2. Pastime

. A series of simple semi-ritualistic additional actions grouped around a single theme. Widely used when you need to kill time, at parties, at banquets, among friends.

3. Games.

It is a series of consecutive hidden moves with a clearly defined, predictable outcome. This series of moves contains a trap, a catch. Games are used to obtain winnings for one of the parties.

4. Activity.

This is a joint work in which people come together to achieve some common or identical goal.

To summarize, we can say that the main manipulative technologies are based on withholding information or providing deliberately false information. Therefore, a manipulative style of interaction often reduces the total amount of information when making important decisions, which leads to errors in activity and a decrease in work efficiency.

Literature:

1. Borozdina G.V. Psychology of business communication. M.: Infra-M, 2005
2. Grigorieva T.G. Fundamentals of constructive communication. M., 1997
3. Osipova A.A. Manipulations in communication: know how to say “no”!.-Rostov n/D: Phoenix, 2005

Key terms
(automatically generated)
: withholding information, manipulator, method of presenting information, influence, facial expression, distortion of information, collective belief, partner’s face, handling information, social context.

Protection against manipulation

If you want to successfully resist attempts by manipulators to satisfy their desires and goals at your expense, you must adhere to several rules that will help reduce the possibility of negative impact on you to a minimum:

1. Reduce your contacts with potential manipulators and do not rely only on your psychological stability. Skilled players will find a way to break it if they wish.
2. Be unpredictable. Keep in mind that many people have been hooked by manipulative people into making promises to them. It is extremely advisable to remember that any person is not a slave to his words and, with due justification, can refuse them or change his mind.
3. Control your emotions; this is one of the key factors for success in confronting a manipulator. For many people, showing feelings in a conversation or argument is a sign of weakness. According to generally accepted opinion, the loser in an argument is not the one who did not find counterarguments to the opponent’s statements, but the one who became angry, angry and lost self-control. Therefore, when you feel that the interlocutor is trying to put pressure on your feelings, try with all your might to remain calm.
4. Do not allow the manipulator to turn communication with you into a monologue when he talks incessantly and does not allow you to get a single word in.
5. When an allegedly unalternative solution to a problem is imposed on you, always stop it by naming other options out loud. If for some reason you are deprived of this opportunity, imagine alternatives in your mind. This action will allow you to concentrate on your thoughts and not fall under the influence of a manipulator.
6. Learn to refuse people's manipulative requests they make to you. It is much better to sometimes be wrong and tough than to endlessly carry out someone else's will. One way to make it easier to say “no” is to avoid justifying the other person’s actions and realize that you have the right not to agree to proposals simply because you don’t like the other person.
7. Use ethics as a defense. Make it a condition for communication with you to comply with ethical requirements. Why is this necessary? The fact is that ethics is a strictly defined set of rules that prescribe creating convenience and comfort for the interlocutor. Manipulation, as a rule, makes the recipient of the manipulation experience serious discomfort. From this we can conclude that the implementation of ethical standards by all participants in the dialogue allows them to protect themselves from the unwanted influences of other persons participating in the conversation.

Direct influence technique

A request is an optional influence, i.e. You can do it, you can not do it. Most people don't know how to use it. The request can be made on equal terms, from a position above or below. It may carry a veiled order or demand (i.e., with a request you simply soften a more stringent instruction).

When is it effective to use a request? When it is easy for a person to do what you ask. Or you have significant authority. Or you have a formal right to ask for something (family and household issues). Either you have a good relationship with this person.

How to strengthen the request? You need to back up your request with something. It can be light, a compliment, a smile, gratitude, a touch.

An offer is a request to do something in exchange for something on your part (mutual exchange). A common mistake is that you do not understand why another person should respond to your offer. Those. you must know what to offer your interlocutor so that he agrees to it, show him the benefits of your offer for him.

A demand is a requirement to do something, and you offer nothing in return. Used much less frequently than a request or an offer. The effectiveness of the requirement will greatly depend on whether you have a formal right to do so, a trusting relationship, and authority.

Order - when you have the right to order, and a person cannot refuse (example: employer - employee). The efficiency of orders is usually 100%. The main difficulty here is how to give orders in order to get exactly what you want from a person.

To enhance direct influence, use the following techniques:

• "A broken record." You repeat the same thing and don't switch to discussing something else. Often people give up after 2-3 repetitions.
• "Logical sales". This is a quality offer, presented correctly, i.e. you are selling a person some idea, an action. Usually this works when the interlocutor is logically stupider than you and he is easily fascinated by logic; or if the interlocutor is smart, open to new information and your goals partially coincide. You must understand what problems the other person has + you must understand what solution to those problems you can provide + what benefits he will receive from this solution.

Most people do not understand the true problem of the interlocutor or cannot articulate the benefits for him.