I've long said that I believe I can "manipulate" people. I've recently come to understand that it was the observation of the microexpressions and, as you say, pattern recognition that allows me to steer conversations quite effectively.
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My therapist said that this isn't manipulation (in the pathological sense, I guess), but I engineer outcomes from people and that feels like I'm manipulating them.
You seem like a great person to ask... What do you think? Manipulation or benign (as if it could be a binary thing 😂)?
I think it's complicated. Manipulation isn't, in and of itself, bad. Humans do it all the time to ensure safety and good communication. Where it's bad (I think) is when there's a push for controlling a person beyond anything they'd normally consent to. When I'd studied NLP, I got the possibility
For usefulness. Creating a bond quickly. Getting a point across efficiently. Where NLP got gross was the teaching on covertly tracking how a person owned landed in a positive state and creating unconscious trigger points (like a touch on shoulder) you can later activate to put them in that
State to get them to agree to what you want them to do regardless of if it's in their best self interest or not. Tracking / connecting and appeasing isn't manipulative. Deliberately shifting people's psyche for an outcome that serves you, & you can artificially create an argument it serves them, is
To put it another way, this psychic person would've said i manipulated her since I gave no tells on how I received her info on purpose. I argue it was protective as she put a bunch of deliberate emotional barbs out designed to target me feeling insecure so I'd open my wallet. Defense/ offense
And thanks for this use of NLP. TIL about Neuro-Linguistic Programming, but it certainly makes sense here. (My mind first went to Natural Language Processing, aka having computers deal with human language.)
Ah, I see you are equally sensitive to others trying to manipulate you. I've become so aware of psychological marketing tactics and even casual comments from others that are trying to cause me to react in a certain way. A bit of demand avoidance results from that.
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You seem like a great person to ask... What do you think? Manipulation or benign (as if it could be a binary thing 😂)?
I'm sorry I can relate. 🫂