1st Chapter from 'How to Manipulate Anyone - 27 ways you are being manipulated right now'
Manipulation Trigger: Familiarity
Note: The first part of the chapter presents the manipulator’s viewpoint. The second part explains how to identify and resist manipulation. This is not an endorsement of manipulation. Manipulation is a lose-lose scenario.
Manipulation Trigger: Familiarity
Familiarity gives your target of manipulation a sense of belonging and tribalism. If he wishes to keep this feeling, he will have to follow you, please you, and even adapt his belief system to yours.
Say the things he wants to hear, and appear to do the things he wants to see, so he sees you as one of his own. As you become his familiar, he feels compelled to trust you, because people are desperate for confirmation of their biases. With familiarity, you confirm your target’s biases by regurgitating them in non-meaningful ways. Your target needs validation because deep down he is terrified of the possibility of being wrong. And for him, your bias confirmation is like a gift from heaven. He will trust you because he wants to trust you. And people choose believe what is convenient for them to believe.
Once you gain your target’s trust, you may subtly inject your manipulative message in between familiar words and actions; he won't even notice the swindle. For example, if your target is religious, you appear religious yourself. Appear even more religious than he is. You parrot religious affirmations, and you participate in religious activities. Pretend that you believe in what he believes, and he will love you for the validation you bring. In between your act, you subtly suggest what he should be doing as part of your common tribal identity: buy your product, support your cause, vote for you, or even go out with you. He will be biased to comply with your suggestions because he trusts you. Familiarity is undeserved credibility gained through deception.
Make your target feel like you are “one of his people”, or “like him”. Make him feel like you are “on his side”. Human brains tend to simplify things into an “us versus them” false dichotomy. By “othering” those in an “out-group”, we brand everyone dissimilar to us as adversaries by default. At the same time, we idealize and trust the familiar “in-group” by default. We treat our in-group with undeserved favoritism, since we are biased in their favor, especially when compared against an out-group. Watch an international sports match, and you understand how we instinctively support our perceived in-group over others, even without knowing anything about the individuals involved. We instinctively want to like and believe those with whom we feel familiarity. We want them to be right, we want to trust them, and we want to make excuses for them whenever they are being corrupt.
As a master manipulator, you want your target to view you as “one of his”, and as a member of his “in-group”. If he sees you as a familiar, he will open up to you, and inhibit his suspicions of you. You pretend to be his friend, because you constantly bring up the things you have in common, be it ethnic background, religion, politics, ideology, hobbies, and common hatred. You simply parrot and recycle their values, ideals, and vapid truisms, and that’s enough to win them over.
The key is to never call them out on their BS, and to never be honest when you disagree with them. You never give them well-intentioned criticism, even if that could help them grow; any misalignment of your value systems undermines familiarity. By being deceptively agreeable, you become unquestionably familiar. Most people only think in a “love me or hate me” false dichotomy, so they will consider any constructive conflict as a sign of hostility and unfamiliarity. Your well-intended honesty would likely thwart your manipulation.
With familiarity, you indirectly enter your target’s mind by opposing his opponents, while you appear as an ally. If he is to open up to you and your subtle suggestions, he must assume that you understand him, and that you want what’s best for him. However, he must come to this conclusion by himself, if he is to fully accept it. You don’t just claim you are his friend; you let him arrive at this conclusion by himself through your feigned familiarity. And you accomplish this by simply mimicking his value system.
For better results, you undermine your target’s familiarity with his peers by subtly questioning his relationships with relatives, friends and peers. Cast doubt on the incentives of others in his in-group. Are they what they appear to be, or are they hypocritical traitors to their professed values? Make your target feel like he can’t fully trust anyone in his in-group, because none of them are as devoted to it as he is. Ask him whether his peers take advantage of him in any way. Praise his virtuous superiority compared to his in-group, this way separating and isolating him from it. If he is insecure enough (and most people are), he will fall for the flattery that marginalizes him, only to have nowhere to go other than you. As you convince your target that he is a superior representative of his in-group, he will not consider from them any warnings about you. And this perceived isolation makes him even more desperate for the familiarity that you alone bring.
It is easier to manipulate people who feel strongly about something unpopular that represents a small minority. Their need for validation is even greater, because public opinion threatens their confidence in their fringe beliefs; and nothing invalidates more than unpopularity. People suffer cognitive dissonance when exposed to input that is contrary to their beliefs, values and principles. So, as you sooth their pain by reaffirming their fragile beliefs, they adore you without understanding why. This conditions them to fully trust you, as they willingly disregard suspicions of your intent.
Is your target religious? Then demonstrate with zeal your religious piety. Is he politically affiliated? Regurgitate the talking points of his political party. Is he associated with activism? Show how much you support his cause, and how much you hate those who oppose it. The more passion and confidence you exhibit in your presentation of familiarity, the better.
Familiarity is why people fall for scams by manipulators who feign familiarity, only to deliver results that are opposite to their claimed intent. For example, self-proclaimed pacifists have been manipulated by euphonious politicians into supporting the hypocrisy of “preemptive wars”, that are in fact aggressive wars. Environmentalists were duped into supporting private-jet-owning corporatists who regurgitate vapid environmental messages; the same corporatists who fund genetic modification of plant life, and who conduct business in countries with no environmental standards. People who value education were fooled into supporting centralized government curricula that promote single-minded indoctrination rather than actual education, critical thinking or philosophy. Freedom-oriented people are daily tricked into tolerating government overreach, just because their familiar “leader” said so; and they don’t see the inconsistency. Demagogues gain undeserved trust through the deception of familiarity.
If you appear to stand for what people believe in, they will likely believe you in everything else. If they agree with you in some issues, they’ll also want to agree with you on others. They want to believe the politician who claims to care about workers and small businesses, disregarding that he receives fat donations (bribes) from fat corporatists. People want to believe that big corporations somehow care about the environment, ignoring the fact that the same companies do business with countries with the worst environmental impact by far. People desperately want to trust the market-manipulating billionaire when he calls to “tax the rich”. They don’t consider that the same billionaire enjoys tax cuts and government subsidies funded by taxes taken from small businesses and workers.
If your target of manipulation is a feminist, you demonstrate discontent for the patriarchy, and you say whatever validates her belief system. If your target is a conservative, you voice your support for right-wing politicians, as well as your animosity against the opposition. If you target is a stock broker (though you’ll have a hard time manipulating one of those), you may claim to admire what he does. Note that, if you choose someone’s profession to achieve familiarity with him, he needs to truly define his identity through his job. If you pretend to admire someone’s job when he only works to pay bills, he will likely see through your manipulation attempts. Make sure that your target truly values the theme you choose for familiarity.
Familiarity manipulation is often all you need to coerce your targets. Once they see you as one of their own, they are likely to follow your advice, lend you money, buy your product, vote for you, or even trust you with their spouse.
Wolves wear sheep’s clothing, because sheep trust each other.
How to resist manipulation
It’s natural to want to belong to an in-group, and to surround yourself with people with whom you share values. However, just because someone appears familiar with similar viewpoints doesn’t mean he is trustworthy solely on the merit of familiarity. It doesn’t mean he is always right, and it doesn’t mean that everyone dissimilar is always wrong. Almost nothing is as simple as a false dichotomy.
Manipulators always pretend to understand your struggles; they get you. And when you find someone who is “like you”, you feel compelled to trust him blindly and unconditionally.
However, just because someone says the things that you find agreeable doesn’t mean he means them, and it doesn't mean he is your friend, even if he does. Manipulators say the things that tickle your ear because they want to gain your trust by validating your beliefs. And we all want validation for our beliefs, especially when our beliefs are not shared by the majority. So, when we feel marginalized for our values, we are likely to fall for familiarity manipulation, because we are desperate for others like us. We are desperate for reassurance that others too value what we value. We want to fool ourselves into trusting a possible manipulator, just because he confirms our biases. The rarer our belief validation, the more we value it. This shows how we can’t be manipulated without our permission. We allow it to happen to us because of our own desperate needs and insecurities.
Politicians use familiarity to manipulate you for your support. They regurgitate generic talking points and truisms that everyone more or less supports, or at least a political partisanship does. When you hear them, you feel like they speak to you and for you. But they only say the things they know you want to hear. They don’t have to prove their words through actions. Even when they betray you by breaking their word, they still keep saying the same things you want to hear; and you continue to make excuses for them. The purpose of politicians is to voice the things that appease you, and the things that agitate you. Their words speak louder than their actions (or inaction), because when someone seemingly agrees with what’s in your head, you automatically presume they are on your side. Your desperate need to validate your way of thinking overrides your logical skepticism of their intentions. So, you willingly choose to manipulate yourself for momentary reassurance.
A good indication that you are being manipulated through familiarity is when you find yourself agreeing with someone 100%. This is highly improbable, if not impossible. You are probably being manipulated when you find yourself desperately making logical leaps and mental gymnastics to make elaborate excuses for someone’s misconduct or inconsistencies. If you are a fan of someone, and you never find any flaw in them while you make up excuses for their misbehavior, then you are being manipulated through familiarity.
Make sure that your familiars actually practice what they preach. Their words must reflect their actions, otherwise they are being disingenuous, hypocritical, and deceptive. Test their intentions. Put them in a position where they have to show their true colors. Are they a true environmentalist, as they profess to be? Then, what kind of car do they drive? Do they make the effort to carry with them reusable coffee cups? If they claim to value health and the health system, do they bother working out and eating healthy? Small things reveal one’s true values.
If you sense inconsistency between someone’s declared position and their actions, then perhaps they may not be who they claim they are.
Be suspicious of those who say exactly what you want to hear; they may be pandering to you to gain your trust before they exploit you. Be extra suspicious of people who use familiarity to enlist you into an in-group, which will then dictate your behavior. Your need for belonging constitutes you manipulable, and robs you of your self-ownership.
Be suspicious of those who try to cast doubt on your group identity. Indeed, sometimes people who care for you may scrutinize your in-group for your own good. But if they truly respect you, they only need to demonstrate to you how better other in-groups are, and then let you decide without pressure. If they are secure in themselves, they’ll be humble enough to accept that they could be wrong about their scrutiny of your in-group. Manipulators, however, will seldom show humility when they attempt to alienate you from your in-group.
In the end, your resilience to manipulation boils down to how secure you are in your own conviction. If you are strong in your values and principles, you don’t require external validation. When your self-esteem is unwavering, you don’t rush to idolize someone simply for sharing familiar values.
Avoid taking pride in your tribalism; for example, appropriating the accomplishments of your vague ethnic group, your political party, your sportsball team, or your “race” (whatever that means). Borrowed tribal glory is an indication of a void in individual self-worth. You must first be confident in your individual self-determination and self-worth before you can be confident in your tribe’s worth. First, nurture your individual self by consistently adhering to solid principles and values. Only then will you be able to contribute within a healthy in-group that individuals get to define; not a toxic in-group that defines the individuals.
Lastly, catch yourself when being tempted to idolize someone whom you almost worship and deify, and for whom you make up wild excuses. The need to idolize is infantile, and it shows low self-esteem and unmet childhood needs. By idolizing others, you may think that you are borrowing their glory; but in reality, you are only denigrating yourself for desperately looking outward for self-worth.
Sheep need sheep herders. Wolves tolerate no tyrants.
Do you know anyone who’s been manipulated through familiarity? Kindly share it.
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