Essay: Psychological manipulation in the Bible

Techniques of manipulation

Manipulator is using multitude of techniques in which he/she tries to hide his/her own wishes and practices in the name of community welfare or higher power. Manipulative people in power are usually trying to elicit a feeling of guilt from their victims; they use emotional blackmail and make appeals for responsibility whereas on the other hand the attention is intentionally driven to distraction from the real issue or subject. During process of manipulation it is common to state things that are in discrepancy with reality or seriously distort it what normally in turn triggers a strong emotional reaction. That is then often proposed to be perceived by uninformed audience as an expression of soar, bad faith or lack of loyalty on the side of victim. For manipulator, an important factor is to focus on the way how to make the expected deformed impression rather than focus on facts or nature of the problem itself. If the one that manipulates succeeds in causing the strong emotive reaction, then he pretends to conduct himself in an extraordinarily kind manner, showing off as trying to achieve for settling the dispute, while pointing out it is the opponent who let himself to be governed by “bad faith” hence disclosing that the problem must be evidently at his side. In order to provoke inappropriate response, fabricated or invented disfavoring personal information is usually being spread, or even more preferably, some distorted real information presented against the victim of manipulation.

Non-verbal Techniques of manipulation

There are several tricks on the level of non-verbal communication aiming to gain dominance and evoke the feelings of guilt or anger. For example, it is possible to use long and quizzical glance focused onto eyes of other person what is in normal communication unnatural. When given person after some while decides to look to the side out of politeness, it naturally causes one to experience submissive emotion, which can be then misused by manipulator for introducing the uneven dominance into communication. The second possible technique is to stage a failed greeting attempt or other similar defaming incident. It is very effective, in front of witnesses, to stretch out a hand for farewell-shaking exactly in the moment when other person is turning backwards due to being just about to leave, thus having no chance for noticing and reacting, what is then implicitly interpreted as greeting refusal and impoliteness. It also serves its purpose in such moment to look around and get confirmed that others have noticed this “incident” and with pretended interest and contrite grimace let others know how this untactful refusal hurts and how one’s feel sorry for that. When we meet a person that is a disguised manipulator for first time, it might be easy to get impressed by his/her charity and seeming friendship, which would however last only until the first moment when we express our independent opinion different of his/her own or when we do something what is not up to his/her expectations.