Dark Psychology and

Manipulation
Improve Your Life by Understanding
Persuasion, Body Language, Emotional
Influence, with Secret Techniques against
Deception, Hypnosis, NLP Secrets, and
more

by
Steven Secret
 Copyright © 2020 Steven Secret. All rights reserved.
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

What is Dark Psychology? Discover the dark side of your mind!

Factor D, the dark side of people
Psychological Manipulation in the forensic field
Psychological manipulation occurs through good communication
The "Dark Triad" of personality
Dark Triad: the three components
Dark Triad in work and relationships
How does the Dark Triade show?
The Dark Triad and depression
What Is NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)? A method to enhance personal development
How does it work?
The criticisms
But what exactly is NLP?
The Persuasion. How to handle others
Speaking in perfect way.
Prompt response and firmness.
Take advantage of weaknesses.
Phrases to manipulate people
How to manipulate people: 13 proven strategies that really work!
The persuasion. How to handle others
Persuasion tactics
Five more ways to manipulate the mind
7 Handling techniques to know absolutely
How to defend yourself from mental manipulation - Personal Growth
Unconscious mental manipulation
Mental manipulation techniques
How to defend yourself from mental manipulation
Psychological violence: tips to recognize and overcome it
How to leave a psychopath
Here are some signs that can warn:
Altered states of consciousness: the myth of hypnosis
Persuasion: conditioning others to achieve their goals
Cialdini and the art of persuasion
The five secrets of persuasive communication
Information and persuasion on the Internet
How to defend yourself from captological persuasion
Persuasion: "Nine weaknesses for mental manipulation"
Tricks to interpret people's body language
12 signs to understand that someone is lying to you
Strange psychological mechanisms that explain why we sometimes act absurdly
Obvious signals for interpreting and understanding Body Language
The 5 Keys to Successful Non-Verbal Communication
Emotional manipulation: what it is and how it works
How to identify a manipulator
7 Signs That Reveal That You Are A Victim of Emotional Manipulation
Emotional counter-manipulation techniques
The fog technique
The wolf discovered by sheep
Recognize and STOP emotional handling
Hypnosis techniques
Hypnosis: the myths to dispel
Regressions and false memories.
Therapeutic hypnosis.
But how do you hypnotize?
Regressive hypnosis
Erickson hypnosis
Hypnosis techniques
Self-hypnosis
Hypnotic psychotherapy
A hypnotic technique
What is Dark Psychology? Discover the dark
side of your mind!
Our mind has a dark side that can make us psychopathic: who is
most at risk!
A research team made up of Danish and German scholars has shown
that the human personality has a real dark side, to which all evil traits such
as selfishness, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism are linked.
This connection between the various dark traits determines that
whoever presents one is more likely to manifest the others.
The dark traits of the human personality such as sadism, narcissism,
selfishness and psychopathy are all closely related to each other, so much so
that those who present one of them are more likely to manifest one or more
of the other malevolent traits.
In simple words, there is a real dark side of the human personality,
which underlies the lack of empathy, morality and all those characteristics
that make the human being wicked, even to the point of feeling pleasure
before the suffering of others.
To demonstrate the existence of this "dark core" a research team
made up of three Danish and German scholars, has been born; Professor
Ingo Zettler, professor of psychology at the University of Copenhagen,
Benjamin E. Hilbig of the University of Koblenz-Landau and Morten
Moshagen of the University of Ulm.
The three scientists came to this conclusion after conducting a series
of experiments with over 2,500 participants, evaluating the dark traits of the
human personality both with statistical methods, and through behavior
analysis capable of bringing out a common thread between an egoist, a liar
and a sadist.
The common denominator of the evil traits has been called by
Mosaghen and colleagues "Factor D" (Dark Factor of Personality), which
represents the general tendency to maximize individual utility to the
detriment of that of others, neglecting the fate until knowingly causing
damage and with pleasure.
All justifying their actions on the basis of beliefs, useful to prevent
the development of feelings of guilt or shame while behaving with malice
and absence of morality.
It may seem absurd that there is a link in the personality of a
psychopath, a narcissist and an egoist, yet it is precisely what has emerged.
Factor D has been highlighted in at least nine dark traits of our
personality.
To prove its existence, the scholars verified how well the
participants agreed with various statements (such as "I know I'm special
because others keep telling me" or "It's difficult to go on without smoothing
corners here and there") and assessed behavioral trends such as: aggression,
impulsivity, selfishness and lack of ethics.
Statistically analyzing all the data obtained; the presence of this dark
nucleus emerged which underlies all the malevolent traits. It is precisely
because of it that a liar is more likely to be sadistic than someone who is
not.
Knowing the existence of this factor can lead to benefits both in the
field of research and, in evaluating the possibilities that a person may
engage again in harmful and criminal activities.

Factor D, the dark side of people

A research by the University of Copenhagen identifies a common

trait in the darker personalities. This common trait is what D factor is.
DISTOCK factor
According to a new study, there are nine distinctive and common
traits that define a person's dark side. Research results show that these types
of individuals are characterized by the D factor.
 This factor implies a tendency to put one's goals and interests above
all else.
A person has a dark personality type ("Dark", hence factor D) when
he presents traits related to sadism, psychopathy, narcissism or
Machiavellianism. In a document titled "The Dark Core of Personality",
published in the journal Psychological Review, the common denominator is
the "general trend of maximizing one's individual usefulness".
In essence, put your goals and interests above anything else. Even if
it means hurting other people.

Factor D, the study by the University of Copenhagen

Researchers Ingo Zettler, psychologist at the University of
Copenhagen, Morten Moshagen, professor at the University of Ulm, and
Benjamin Hilbig, professor at the University of Koblenz -Landau, studied
2,500 people.
They asked them to agree or disagree with several statements.
For example, "Sometimes it's worth suffering a bit to see others get
the punishment they deserve." Or, "I know I'm special because everyone
keeps telling me." Zettler said the results showed how dark aspects of
personality seem to have a common denominator.
This suggests that dark traits are an expression of the same mental
outlook on life, which researchers have called the D factor.
What are the most common dark personality traits identified by the
team? There are nine in all:
➢ Selfishness - The excessive need to put one's needs first and foremost.
➢ Machiavellianism - The belief that ends justify means, no matter how
manipulative or insensitive they are.
➢ Moral disengagement - The ability to behave unethically without
worrying about the consequences.
➢ Narcissism - Self-obsession, mania of greatness, looking down on
everyone else, still wanting their attention.
➢ Psychological law - Believing that you are better than everyone and
that you deserve better treatment than others.
➢ Psychopathy - A lack of empathy or shame coupled with impulsive
and reckless behavior.
➢ Sadism - Wanting to inflict emotional or physical harm on others to
feel pleasure.
➢ Personal Interest - Desiring social and financial success above all else.
➢ Malignancy - Destructiveness and willingness to cause harm to others,
although this can hurt us.

Psychological manipulation is not only a psychological process, but

it is a communicative process: a good communicator is the one who
manages to convey simple, even if deep and surprising, concrete and
credible messages, leveraging emotional factors and with an easily
reproducible narrative modality.
It is not necessary to believe in a supernatural source of evil: men
alone are perfectly capable of any evil.

What does psychological manipulation consist of?

In making this short guide we have tried to broaden the canons of
popular psychological literature, usually dominated by chapters that
describe how we can achieve greater personal well-being, what influences
sentimental relationships or how to get along with our partner in love,
children, work colleagues etc.
Other more specialized chapters provide useful information to an
audience of professionals in the psychological disciplines, updating them on
new diagnostic procedures, intervention techniques, efficacy studies, etc.
On the other hand, who ever said that psychology is only a helping
discipline?
It is probable that the profane reader, in front of the word
psychology, imagines himself entering an elegantly furnished study, with
the wooden floor and the walls dominated by watercolors, certificates and
an immense walnut bookcase.
His imagination will then take him to a comfortable sofa on which
to sit, or even lie down, telling what goes on in his head to a bearded
gentleman, intent on taking notes.
Today we would like to offer you a much less reassuring image.
Inviting you inside a dusty and locked room, without windows, with the
ghostly light of a neon that illuminates the face of your interlocutor, intent
on smoking a cigarette while his gaze, grim, it does not abandon even your
eyes for a moment; he knows that sooner or later you will tell him what he
wants to hear.
The study of the processes of manipulation, suggestion and
influence is a topic dear to social psychology, which has been dealing with
it for decades.
The end of World War II, forced the western world to reflect on
totalitarian regimes, raising disturbing questions about the contribution of
each individual in the genesis and maintenance of political and social
systems, based on the restriction of freedoms, violence and the justification
of the most heinous crimes.
Milgram (1974) demonstrated in a masterly way what Hannah
Arendt, almost simultaneously, wrote while attending Adolf Eichmann's
trial in Jerusalem: an ordinary man, placed in a favorable socio-cultural
context, could become a ruthless Nazi hierarch. Milgram identified, in the
obedience, and in the fear of contradicting a source of authority, the factors
capable of carrying out a brutal action, such as administering a high voltage
electric discharge to a defenseless person.
However, Eichmann's description of Arendt highlights even more
disturbing factors in their meanness, such as careerism and the need to
conform to a hierarchical system, as well as an inability to reflect on the
consequences of one's actions.
On the one hand the fear of contradicting an authority, on the other
the desire to be complicit in it, regardless of the moral implications.
 But let's stop here. While these examples concern processes of
influence, in which a person adapts himself in a more or less conscious way
to imposed decisions, in the more frankly manipulative processes, the
victim is subjugated in the way of thinking and perceiving reality,
convincing himself of what is inculcated in him.
Psychological Manipulation in the forensic
field
Understanding the phenomena of psychological manipulation is
particularly important for forensic psychology, which among other things
deals with how legal evidence can be influenced by the psychological
conditions of the witness.
The phenomenon of false confessions is perhaps the most significant
example of this. It also appears that investigative forces in the US (but not
only in the US) are easy to confuse conducting an interrogation with
extorting a confession. It must be said that in the United States judicial
system, the confession of a defendant assumes a decisive evidentiary value
for the fate of a trial, even in cases where there is little factual evidence. In
25% of cases in which a person was exonerated thanks to DNA testing, the
imputation was made through a false confession. Even if you are thinking
that you are not the types to confess to a rape or murder that you have not
committed, research indicates that innocent people are particularly
vulnerable during interrogations.
According to Redlich and Meissner (2009) in the United States there
are different ways to conduct an interrogation in order to produce (or extort)
a confession, all united by three phases:
❖ Isolation: the suspect is detained in a small room and left
alone; he is not allowed to contact a trusted lawyer. The detained
subject is thus encouraged to live a precarious psychological
condition, with feelings of anxiety and insecurity.
❖ Confrontation: investigators assume on principle that the
person they face is the culprit. So, they communicate explicitly, that
the evidence is in hand, and allows them to incriminate the person (it
is useful to remember that the police are legally allowed to lie); that
he should not deny his faults, and that these have serious
consequences.
❖ Minimization: in this phase the person who conducts the
interrogation assumes an empathic attitude with the suspect, in order
 to gain his trust, offers him justifications for the crime he (not)
committed.
Lovers of the TV series will be able to observe an interrogation thus
described in the first season of True Detective, operated by a convincing
Matthew McConaughey. We can therefore conclude that interrogations are
an ideal setting for exercising psychological manipulation.
It is interesting to observe how these methods of conducting
interrogations seem to adapt to Walker's circular model of abuse (1979):
according to the author, the genesis of domestic violence would follow four
phases, indicated as:
1) Increased tension: communication between the abusive
partner and the victim is interrupted, the latter feels frightened and
feels the need to appease the abuser's anger.
2) Accident: the abusive partner shows anger towards the
victim and exercises threats and intimidation, verbal, physical or
behavioral abuse occurs.
3) Reconciliation: the abusive partner apologizes and justifies
himself by blaming the victim, denies the abuse behavior or
minimizes its severity.
4) Calm down: the accident is "forgotten", and no other abuse
occurs. Partners experience a fictitious "honeymoon".

In light of the similarities between the two models, it does not seem
risky to say that false confessions are much more than a manipulation
technique, but appear as a subtle and refined form of torture: even if this
term never appears in the models described, it is evident that the victim of
these processes finds himself living in a state of fear and submission, with
the impossibility of asking for help or leaving the relationship.
It follows that the only way to get by is to agree to the demands of
those who hold power in the relationship.
Another factor that can help subject those who are questioned is the
lack of rest. A recent study investigated the role of sleep deprivation using
an experimental method.
 The dependent variable consisted in the admission of having
accomplished a fact that had not been committed, namely the production of
a false confession. The 50% of the subjects assigned to the experimental
group, who had spent a blank night at the university laboratory, produced a
false confession, against 18% of the control subjects.

Psychological manipulation occurs through good

communication

Psychological manipulation is not only a psychological process, but

it is a communicative process: a good communicator is the one who
manages to convey simple, even if deep and surprising, concrete and
credible messages, leveraging emotional factors and with an easily
reproducible narrative modality.
In this regard it can be very useful to know the six principles of
social persuasion:
1) Reciprocity: a principle of "I offer you a finger to take your
arm", indicates our tendency to return a favor that is offered to us. A
persuasion technique that uses this principle is that of free samples,
customers are provided with a small quantity of product with the
"innocent" intention of informing the public, while this sets in motion
the obligation to return the gift.
2) Commitment and consistency: the need to appear consistent
with what we have done leads us to a mental change that overcomes
personal and interpersonal pressures, in an effort to be consistent with
that commitment. A persuasive tactic that exploits this principle is the
"foot in the door" technique which consists in obtaining big purchases
starting with a small one.
3) Social proof: sometimes, in deciding what is right for us, it
helps to try to find out what others consider right. For example, we
tend to consider an action more appropriate when others do it too. The
use of testimonials in advertising is one of the practical transpositions
of this principle, another example is the fake laughter in sitcoms.
 4) Sympathy: as a rule, we prefer to agree to the requests of
people we know and like, or who we perceive as similar to us.
Husbands who fell victim to the Tupperware parties will recognize
the dramatic effects that this seemingly harmless principle has on our
patience.
5) Authority: a principle of the galactic mega director, indicates
the sense of deference towards the authority for which we tend to
follow to the extreme the order of an authoritative person (or
presumed such) in a given field. This is why dentists are used in
toothpaste commercials.
6) Scarcity: a product becomes more attractive when its
availability is limited. This principle also represents an excellent
deterrent to procrastination: have you ever heard of the "race to the
last purchase"? Based on this principle, sellers frequently use limited
number tactics, or offer valid for a few days.

The characteristics of those who perform psychological

manipulation
Finally, let's move on to the description of the psychological
characteristics of the manipulator: if this is the career you want to
undertake, it might be helpful to have personality traits related to the Dark
Triad, or a construct used to describe a constellation of three personality
traits:
- Narcissism: personality trait that describes individuals who
tend to appear ambitious, determined and dominant in interpersonal
relationships, up to exhibit a sense of superiority.
Machiavellianism: personality trait that describes individuals with a
strong tendency to cynicism, to a lack of consideration for ethical and
moral principles, with a tendency to manipulate others to achieve
their goals.
- Psychopathy: it is considered the most malignant trait of the
Dark Triad, it describes people characterized by low levels of
empathy, combined with high levels of impulsiveness and search for
 excitement. Many of these individuals manifest frankly antisocial
conduct.
Now that, in this short guide, we have illustrated the main
theoretical knowledge on psychological manipulation, we are sure that your
trust in mankind has certainly not increased.
However, we believe that knowing these processes is the necessary
prerequisite for being able to defend oneself, reminding the reader to be on
guard when our interlocutor evokes feelings of insecurity or frank threat, or
when seductive behavior is followed by requests for commitment
(economic, affective, working…), to which he feels he is struggling to
escape.
The questions to ask in these cases are
"What is he trying to achieve by addressing me in this way?",
"Is it really impossible for me to escape?",
"Are there contrary arguments to oppose?".
Recognizing the manipulative behavior is the first step to be able to
escape from it; with the necessary firmness that derives from the awareness
of one's rights that never have to be trampled, both within the walls of the
house, and in the courtrooms.
However, psychological manipulation is part of life, and we don't
want to invite the reader to become paranoid in an attempt to defend
himself against unknown threats.
Leaving aside extreme cases such as police interrogations, being
persuaded, but also letting yourself be pampered, are common experiences;
for those who have a business it is not uncommon to suffer a scam from a
customer or supplier, as well as for those in search of the love of life, it is
not uncommon to suffer the charm of people with less noble intentions.
But these experiences, however unpleasant, are not the proof of a
defeat: we can take sporadic blows without losing confidence and positivity
in facing life, aware that the world is not always a reassuring place to live.
The "Dark Triad" of personality
The Dark Triad, or dark personality, is a mixture of narcissism,
machiavellianism and psychopathy. What is hidden behind this shady
character?
The Dark Triad is a psychological construct that identifies some
personality traits not necessarily pathological, deriving from the mixture of
narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy. These people have
characteristics that do not perfectly reflect one of the three categories
mentioned but share some aspects that, instead of making them unpleasant
and unpleasant, are highly attractive and successful.

Dark Triad: the three components

The three components that make up the dark personality have

characteristics that are partly superimposable, but distinct in themselves,
which mix to form a unique and different personality from the three that
generate it.
By narcissism we mean a tendency towards grandeur, a continuous
search for admiration and approval, a sense of superiority and a feeling of
being special with an effort to accept criticism, which leads to seeking
situations and people who give flattery and recognition.
Machiavellianism instead indicates manipulative skills, high
rationality and planning to the smallest detail of the moves to the point of
justifying even the least adequate means, poor morality and exploitation of
others and situations for one's own advantage.
Finally, psychopathy is characterized by the absence of empathy,
the scarce presence of remorse, the sense of guilt and anxiety with respect
to the consequences of one's sometimes aggressive and unfair action,
disinterest in many areas of one's own action and difficulty in expressing
feelings and emotions, resulting insensitive.
 The three characteristic aspects of the dark personality lead to
assume significant characteristics in terms of personality and behavior.
Specifically, the person with Dark Triad tends to be manipulative to the
point of exploiting the other for his or her own advantage, with a detached
and cold attitude towards the consequences generated and a constant
thought of grandeur and right, which animate his / her actions.
In the emotional sphere, he seeks strong sensations in different
areas, up to performing extreme and dangerous acts for himself or others,
without concern, guilt or moral sense. He has an excessive care of himself
and his physical appearance, with attention to detail and not caring for
external criticisms that are perceived as a manifestation of others' incapacity
and ignorance, with consequent closure of relationships animated by these
circumstances.
However, they are often attractive and intelligent enough to plan
their behavior rationally and punctually.

Dark Triad in work and relationships

In the workplace it often happens to observe skilled, rational but

extremely insensitive leaders without a sense of guilt and remorse. In fact,
these subjects have excellent leadership skills, are charismatic, skilled
planners and organizers, are very good at influencing the behavior of others,
generating a mixed climate between terror and admiration. Their action is
often characterized by manipulation and exploitation with the aim of
achieving ever higher goals which are what often guarantees their success
and prestigious positions.
In private life and relationships with the opposite sex, they tend to
put their charm, charisma and manipulative tendencies into play, reaching
high levels of mating in the short term; with casual sexual relations,
extramarital and fleeting relationships without a real interest in the partner.
They are often attractive especially for people with fragile personalities,
victims of disappointments in various areas of life who know how to make
them feel good and desired, and then leave them after reaching their goal of
pleasure.
 Among the socially aversive personalities mentioned in Kowalski
(2001), three are the ones that have attracted the most attention of scholars:
1) Machiavellianism : the term, introduced in 1970 by
Richard Christie based on the writings of Machiavelli, indicates a
manipulative personality, cold and controlled, with a low moral
sense, self-centred and tending to deception;
2) Narcissism : the construct of subclinical or normal
narcissism was proposed by Raskin and Hall (1979) in an attempt to
define a subclinical version of the narcissistic personality disorder
indicated in the DSM, and includes some indicators used in the
original diagnosis: grandeur, sense of right, dominance and
superiority. The existence of a subclinical form of narcissism is
supported by strong scientific research.

3) Psychopathy : the adaptation of the psychopathy

construct to a subclinical sphere dates back to the studies of Hare
(1985) and Lilienfeld & Andrews, (1996). The central aspects of the
construct include high impulsivity associated with the search for
strong emotions, low empathic ability and low presence of anxiety
and remorse (it seems that psychopaths present an alteration in the
functioning of the brain structures responsible for processing fear).
In 1998 in their studio, McHoskey JW, Worzel, Szyarto C. claimed
that narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism were more or less
interchangeable terms to indicate certain aspects of personality in a non-
clinical sample of individuals, all sharing a trait called "ELEVATION ".
Subsequently, however, Paulhus and Williams in their 2002 study
found sufficient data to demonstrate that the three dimensions were only
partially superimposable and therefore had to be considered separately. In
this study, the authors note that disturbed but not yet frankly pathological
personality types are reported in the scientific literature, frequently
characterized by the simultaneous presence of three pathological features:
machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy; the latter present mostly in
subclinical form.
 These three dimensions go to configure what is called the "Dark
Triad" of personality.

The authors conducted a study of a sample of 245 students by

measuring these three dimensions through different assessment tools
(standardized questionnaires, self-report tools and laboratory assessments).
The results show that the three constructs of the personality, although they
show some interrelationships - sharing some aspects and manifestations -
nevertheless remain distinct and not equivalent aspects. The measure they
seem to share without a shadow of a doubt is the dimension of
"unpleasantness" measured through the Big Five Questionnaire (McCrae
and Costa).
The aspects that unite the three dimensions of machiavellianism,
narcissism (subclinical) and psychopathy (subclinical) are the following:
1) Subclinical psychopathy is distinguished by the low level of
neuroticism (an indicator that measures the tendency to be anxious,
pessimistic, stressed, angry, frightened and emotionally unstable)
2) Machiavellianism and psychopathy both show a low level of
conscientiousness and morality
3) Narcissism correlates positively with the presence of high
cognitive skills. Narcissists and - to a lesser extent psychopath - share
high scores indicative of self-exaltation and a sense of superiority and
"grandeur".
The authors conclude that the Dark Triad of personalities shows
constructs that partly overlap but that nonetheless remain differentiated.
However, there remains a strong conceptual and empirical tendency
to overlap between the three constructs of the Dark Triad; for example,
some researchers have noticed how all three traits of the triad share
characteristics such as:

· lack of empathy
· interpersonal hostility
 · interpersonal aggression

How does the Dark Triade show?

The individuals characterized by the dark triad show, as we have

seen, some distinctive traits that derive from subclinical forms of
narcissism, psychopathy and from the characteristics of machiavellianism:

· handling
· instrumentalization of the other
· deception tendency
· emotional coldness
· absence of empathy and moral sense
· absence of remorse and fear
· search for strong emotions
· impulsiveness
· sense of grandeur and specialty
· sense of right
· desire for power and dominance
· exaggerated care of the physical aspect
· acute intelligence
· tendency towards aggression and hostility
These people move around the world more or less with impunity,
and it is not at all difficult to find them on the net among the disturbers
(trolls), in the workplace - especially within the management class, or
between interpersonal acquaintances.
In fact, the famous "serial lovers" clearly show many of the
characteristics of the dark triad:

· emotional coldness and disinterest

 · exploitation attitude of the partner
· search for strong sensations
· tendency to change partners frequently
· they do everything to conquer the prey which is then
used and "thrown away" without remorse
· search for sexual adventures and experiences to the
limit
· abuse of drugs and / or alcohol
· inability to establish an intimate relationship
· lack of moral sense
· deceptions and lies
· handling

Research has highlighted the potentially destructive effect that these

individuals have on the environment and their partners.

The Dark Triad and depression

The Dark Triad describes the combination of psychopathy,

machiavellianism and narcissism.
These traits have often been associated with negative aspects of the
personality and share insensitive manipulation, deception and aggression
but each has its own distinctive element: psychopathy is related to higher
levels of aggression and impulsiveness and is characterized by behaviors
aimed at the search for thrills, dishonesty, egocentrism, manipulation and
antisocial behavior.
Machiavellianism is linked to hypocrisy, exploitation, insincerity
and insensitivity while narcissism is linked to domination, superiority and
self-centered attitude, from exhibitionism and the search for admiration.
A lot of researches have focused on the negative consequences these
traits can have for society at large. However, relatively little importance has
been attached to negative emotional consequences. In fact, in association
with this set of traits, high levels of anxiety, alexithymia and problems in
emotional regulation have often been traced. The purpose of the study by
Gómez-Leal et al (2019) was to explore how the three personality traits that
make up the Dark Triad could be related to some depressive symptoms, in
particular to continuous depressed mood, low self-esteem, irritability, to
changes in appetite and sleep.
Several previous studies have explored the relationship between
depression and the three traits separately, but no study has ever considered
them together.
The data show that high scores of psychopathy and
machiavellianism are related to the presence of depressive symptoms. As
for psychopathy, there is currently an open debate on the relationship
between this trait and depression, as some authors consider both constructs
to be mutually exclusive. This is because psychopathy is intended as an
activation disorder, and conversely, mood dysfunctions such as depression
which is included among the inhibition disorders. The authors, however,
support the idea that both constructs are not exclusive, and that in fact,
proves a positive relationship between them, mis precisely the outsourcing
of negative moods such as anxiety or depression can cause antisocial and
psychopathic behavior.
Compared to machiavellianism, the positive relationship found with
depression is in line with previous literature. It is characterized by the
emotional detachment that is usually observed in people suffering from
depression and anhedonia. As for narcissism, there has been no finding of a
positive relationship with depression.
The authors explain this by observing that narcissism is a
characteristic which differs from psychopathy and Machiavellianism, in
terms of social character because the individual tends to seek positive
validation from others. Therefore, people with high scores on this trait often
have good social support, which is considered to be a protective factor for
mood disorders.
Some of the sub-dimensions of the Dark Triad traits associated with
depressive symptoms showed significant differences according to gender.
The negative relationship between depressive symptoms and the self-
sufficiency dimension of narcissism is stronger in women than men while
the relationship with vanity has only been observed in women, while the
relationship with contempt for conventional morality has only been
observed in men.
The gender differences found in the relationship between vanity and
depression could be explained by the fact that, the aspects included in the
sub-dimension of vanity are more dominant in women therefore a
dissatisfaction with one's body image could justify the depressive
symptoms, while self-sufficiency in women is associated with greater
economic independence and greater professional success which by
guaranteeing a high level of satisfaction with the quality of life, protects
them from depressive symptoms. Finally, in men, the highest scores on the
dimension of contempt for conventional morality could be linked to a lack
of social connections, which could result in higher levels of depression.
From an application point of view, the results of this study could
have implications for the implementation of prevention and treatment
programs focused on depression in conjunction with Dark Triad. The
detection of high scores on certain Dark Triad sub-dimensions could be
useful preventive interventions, avoiding future depressive symptoms or
emotional problems.
What Is NLP (Neuro Linguistic
Programming)? A method to enhance
personal development
The acronym NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and
indicates a methodology for changing the thoughts and behaviors of one or
more people, in order to help them achieve the desired results.
Born in the 70s in California in the middle of the New Age era, NLP
owes its success to the promise (often kept) to improve performance at
work and to achieve happiness through personal development. The founders
of NLP, the psychologist Richard Bandler and the linguist John Grinder,
started from the belief that they could identify the thought patterns and
behaviors of successful individuals, and then teach them to others.
One of the main techniques of NLP is in fact constituted by
imitation or, as adepts define it, modelling: by imitating the language and
behaviors of successful people it would be possible to make our skills our
own and achieve their own results.
NLP is mainly based on language processing, but also uses other
communication techniques to make people change their thoughts and
behaviors.

How does it work?

NLP is based on the idea that people operate through internal

"maps" with which to represent the world.
NLP thus tries to identify these maps (which are nothing more than
subjective experiences of what surrounds us) to change their orientations. It
is a methodology that aims at a change of thought and behavior.
 It should be specified that NLP has nothing to do with hypnosis. On
the contrary, it works through the conscious use of language to modify a
person's mental and behavioral pattern.
What is it for?
NLP finds a wide field of intervention, using various techniques
according to the desired purposes.
Starting from the idea that thought and behavior can be modelled,
NLP is used for:
· treat anxiety, phobias and stress, thus improving emotional
responses to certain situations;
· achieve successful professional goals, such as increased
productivity at work and motivation;
· remove negative thoughts and feelings associated with a
past event;
· improve their communication skills.
In general, NLP is used as a method for personal development
through the "enhancement" of one's skills, which aims to have greater self-
confidence and to communicate better with others.

The criticisms

To date, the efficacy of NLP has not yet been demonstrated, despite
the fact that more than 40 years have passed since its conception, nor has
this practice been the subject of rigorous scientific analysis, as happened for
example for cognitive psychological therapy-behavioral. This has led to an
absence of formal regulation, which can give rise to both arbitrary
interpretations of the method and to its "manipulative" use.
Furthermore, scientific research on NLP has found contradictory
evidence.
Some studies from the 1980s to 1990s have proven the benefits
associated with NLP. For example, a study published in the journal
Counselling and Psychotherapy Research found that patients in
psychotherapy (various addresses) had improved symptoms and quality of
life after being treated in association with the NLP methodology and
psychotherapeutic treatments.
However, a review published in the 2014 British Journal of General
Practice refutes the effectiveness of NLP with at least 10 studies. In
summary, according to these studies, there is little evidence to assert that
the method works with demonstrative evidence, especially when it intends
to treat people's health, including mood disorders, weight management and
substance abuse. According to scholars, the positive effects on the impact of
the method would exist, but they are not exhaustive and not convincing.
Only 18% of all research on NLP found clear cause-and-effect support for
the theories underlying the method.
However, it should be noted that the research was conducted mainly
in therapeutic contexts, and not in the commercial context, where NLP
would find greater use.
One of the most used communication techniques in the last twenty
years is Neuro Linguistic Programming. Known as NLP, it is one of the
"sciences" most used by researchers, athletes, consultants, managers,
training experts and professional communicators.
NLP was born and developed in California in the 70s, thanks to the
collaboration of the mathematician Richard Bandler and the famous linguist
Jhon Grinden.
Reserved for a few in the past because of the high cost of the
courses and the difficulty of the books that dealt with the subject, this
science gradually manages to make its way into the psychological sphere.

But what exactly is NLP?

NLP it is a psychological method that studies people's behavior,

analyses models and thus extracts the practical techniques to teach to
potentially overcome any situation (work, success, relationships).
 What NLP teaches is that each of us can, with willpower, change
and revolutionize one's life in an instant, abandoning limits through the help
of concrete techniques. Each person is the architect of his own destiny,
determined exclusively by our decisions and not by the living conditions as
many believe and which are already "prescribed" and not changeable.
The message that NLP wants to convey to us is the secret of living
well, that is "living life trying to make the most of it”. It is we, and only us,
who can make everything we want possible, starting from the
determination, constancy and determination, which from the beginning
must not be missing, together with the desire to fight for a purpose,
therefore the energy that goes put into practice, up to the exercise,
application, construction and achievement of our goal.
In a nutshell, this method would help us become the people we
always wanted to be; an opportunity to learn how to use our mind and body
in the most functional way possible.
Talking about NLP is equivalent to dealing with themes based on
creativity, on freedom, on self-esteem, on choices and therefore on courage.
The founders of NLP in fact coined this term (Neuro Linguistic
Programming) precisely to highlight a link between neurological processes
(neuro), language (linguistics) and the various behavioral screens that have
been learned only through experience (programming).
It is indeed impossible, according to Bandler and Grinden, to find a
field where this model cannot be applied: from self-esteem problems to
sports or school skills, from courtship to success, and there are those who
even claim that this discipline somehow manages to fight depression and
other psychological disorders.
Summing up, NLP has among its main purposes, the goal of
developing successful habits / reactions, amplifying effective behaviors to
make what we want for us to happen and decreasing unwanted ones, which
limit the occurrence of our design drawings.
With Neuro Linguistic Programming you learn to model the quality
of the internal images lived and the sensations perceived so that they act for
our benefit in the future. NLP makes us aware of our unconscious behaviors
and programs that we can modify as we wish.
 There are NLP academies where you can learn and put into practice
all the possible techniques to achieve what you want a purpose: motivation,
the basis for all our desire, is the ingredient fundamental that pushes us to
fight to get it. Without it none of us would be able to reach the end to which
it aspires.

Do you want to understand who you are facing in 60 seconds?

Do you want to sell successfully?
Would you like to increase your charisma or have a seductive
and convincing voice?
According to the method in question, this can be done and much
more.

Optimism, joy of life and cooperation are the three secrets of living
in harmony. Everyone needs a paladin.
Have you ever wished for some things for yourself and done nothing
to get what you claim you want? Have you ever wanted to lose weight, to
free yourself from the slavery of some addiction such as alcohol or
smoking, to want to learn a language or play an instrument?
Certainly yes, but how many of you have put your goals into
practice and how many others have been stuck? This is how it happens, for
all those belonging to the second sphere, who finds us doing only one
action: complaining. The coach then takes over and helps us take stock, find
our orientation, define ourselves as people. It spurs us to find a motivation
in the event that our "journey" becomes tortuous.
There are four types of coaches:
Life coach : the one who helps us achieve personal goals;
Company coach : the one who helps companies and professionals
in the sector to act more effectively and with determination in professional
life;
Career coach : one who helps people in the phases of professional
change, therefore a career jump or even a professional regression;
 Sport coach : helps students raise the level of performance and thus
triggers mental and physical training.
The main objective of NLP is therefore to explain to us how
everything we are is the simple result of what we have thought. Our life is
in our hands.

Don't believe it? Try it for yourself!

NLP is an attitude ...

An attitude characterized by a sense of curiosity, adventure and
desire to learn the necessary skills to understand what types of
communication affect others. It is the desire to know things that are worth
knowing. It is looking at life as a rare opportunity to learn.

NLP is a methodology ...

A methodology based on the principle that every behavior has a
structure ... and that this structure can be extrapolated, learned, taught and
even changed. The guiding criterion of this method is to know what will be
useful and effective.

NLP is a technology ...

A technology which allows a person to organize information and
perceptions in order to achieve results deemed impossible in the past.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming therefore deals with the study of the
structure of subjective experience and what can be calculated from it.
His basic belief and promise are that effective thinking strategies
can be identified, assumed and used by anyone who wishes to.
NLP was born from the fruit of years of research, carried out by
Richard Bandler and John Grinder, aimed at finding out what the behavioral
and linguistic elements were that allowed successful people to have such a
significant constancy of positive results.
 The results were the identification of a series of specific and
reproducible behavioral strategies and linguistic models.
The hoaxes of neuro linguistic programming.
From psychotherapy to coaching, NLP is still without solid
experimental evidence, and has many characteristics of pseudo sciences.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has been rejected by science
in every possible and imaginable way, yet it continues to be talked about.
The more attentive will have noticed that in the film Kingsman -
Secret service (2014) neuro linguistic programming is passed off as a
weapon of seduction.
It is in fact almost impossible to find a field where the NLP,
according to its supporters, cannot be applied: from courtship to leadership,
from self-esteem problems to sports skills, success is at hand, and there are
even those who come to propose discipline to combat depression and other
psychological disorders.

But what exactly is Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

The origins.
The NLP was born in the first half of the 70s, the golden age of the
New-Age, and perhaps it is no coincidence that the crib was the California
lysergic. The dads in the new discipline were Richard Bandler, a
psychology student at the time, and linguist John Grinder, both from the
University of California, Santa Cruz, who had begun to work out a sort of
“theory of everything” of psychotherapy from their respective fields of
study.
One of the cornerstones of the new, revolutionary branch of
psychology would be imitation or, as the adepts define it, modelling:
imitating the language and behavior of successful people it would be
possible to make our skills our own and achieve their own results.
It is thus in fact, according to the Gospel of Neuro-Linguistic
Programming, that Grinder and Bandler arrived at another fundamental
intuition called Meta-model: studying the work of three famous
psychotherapists and integrating it with theories by famous linguists such as
Gregory Bateson and Noam Chomsky, they convinced themselves that the
key to therapy was not so much what the patient said, but how he said it.
According to the NLP, in fact, three processes exist in language
(generalization, cancellation and distortion) through which we
unconsciously eliminate part of the information. According to the NLP, the
psychotherapist's task would be to ask the patient for the words he chooses
to use, so that he himself can understand the underlying structure.
Simplifying, if the patient says, "Everyone is treating me badly"
(generalization) the therapist could reply "Is there really nobody who treats
her well?" and so on.
Grinder and Bandler also distilled the concept of the
representational system. In our mind we create subjective representations of
the reality that surrounds us based on what our senses perceive, from which
derives one of the evocative mottos made by the followers of the NLP:
"The map is not the territory”. But from this reasonable (and certainly not
original) premise, the fathers of the NLP arbitrarily deduced that it is
possible to understand how each of us thinks, based on a series of clues
from language and eye movements.
If we frequently use expressions like "I see you like cinema" we will
reveal that our preferred representational system is the visual one. The
auditory representational system will instead be indicated by expressions
such as "I have heard too many speeches on this issue" while the
kinesthetics, that is, the people who relate to reality above all in terms of
touch, taste and smell, will tell us " his handshake I didn't like it." You
could then use this information to experiment, or to experiment, other ways
of processing information, or to get in tune quickly.
Summing up, Bandler and Grinder said that the Neuro-Linguistic
Programming was derived from the most modern psychological and
linguistic theories of the time and consisted of a set of methods (among
which we have mentioned only some of the most important) that would
allow you to effectively reprogram your own way of thinking and
communicating. Yet, as it soon became clear, none of this was true.

Little science, a lot of pseudoscience.

 Starting from the name, Neuro Linguistic Programming deliberately
refers to concepts proper to science and the academic world. Despite the
emphasis on its practical aspects, whether they are healing from phobias or
becoming leaders, it is therefore essential to remember that any appeal to
the scientific nature of the NPL is completely inappropriate.
The linguists, neuroscientists and psychologists who dealt with the
self-grill tomes published by the duo (and their successors) are in
agreement: the numerous luminaries that Grinder and Bandler call to
support their theories, have nothing to do with them. For example, legend
has it that Noam Chomsky's transformational grammar has contributed
considerably to the development of the NLP, but Chomsky's ideas are
theoretical constructs which explain how people speak, it doesn't tell people
how they should speak. Furthermore, Chomsky has abandoned or modified
his own theories since the 1960s. But those who support the NLP do not
keep up with modern theory. In addition to borrowing the terms, the NLP
does not resemble any of Chomsky's theories or philosophies. Furthermore,
Chomsky does not patent his theories.
Stollznow refers to the rights of use of the name and principles of
the NLP, which led to a long legal dispute that saw Bandler and Grinder
opposed. In this regard, the linguist comments:
“None of the innumerable models, pillars and principles of the NLP
has helped these founders to resolve their personal and professional
conflicts”.
What makes the NLP a pseudoscience is also what has presumably
allowed it to survive in health to date. The descriptions of the methods that
make it up have enough technical jargon to give an illusion of scientific,
and the methods themselves are so vague and numerous that it is easy to
find someone capable of seducing us with its deceptive plausibility.
All this also makes it easily updatable (by anyone who wants, since
there is no shared education and certification system): for example, there
are those who now bring up mirror neurons, ace taken by pop psychology,
and of course it cannot miss quantum mechanics: it is no coincidence that
the Grinder agency is called Quantum leap .
 But it works?
The theories behind the NLP will also be ridiculous and based on
invented or outdated assumptions, but this is not in itself enough to say that
it does not work in some way.
The problem is that the vague and adaptable nature of this
pseudoscientific discipline, makes it impossible to test in a way that is
satisfactory for those who practice it. For example, when the psychologist
Richard Wiseman and colleagues showed that it was not possible to
understand if a person was lying by eye movements, some experts began to
deny that the claim really belonged to the NLP.
Having said that, many studies have been carried out to evaluate the
effectiveness of the NLP, both in psychotherapy and in communication and
based on them there is broad consensus on its ineffectiveness.
In fact, few scientific studies support it and systematic reviews have
regularly rejected it. And to say that there were high expectations: the
American army, was also interested in certain new-age techniques that were
spreading in the 80s, including the NLP, and asked a National Research
Council committee to evaluate them. Della NLP was particularly interested
in the part that would allow influencing others, but at the end of the two
years of investigation the committee's response was negative.
Even modelling, which would seem so captivating on the surface,
has no place in modern psychology. Many studies have shown that
achieving a certain success (economic, political, etc.) is the consequence of
a series of circumstances influenced by a synergy of factors, some of which
are even random (ability to seize an opportunity, the presence this occasion,
a fertile ground that allows its development; a social and cultural need that
can accommodate it, and, obviously, a good background preparation). In the
absence of these factors, simple talent would remain frozen like a closed
car, a garage, without petrol and a suitable road to travel on. Regardless of
the form and content of language, its particular use is certainly not the key
to a certain success nor the imitation or learning of the form of that used by
people who have achieved extraordinary results in a given field. The
relationship between language, its reprogramming and consequent success,
therefore, is unfounded.
 Business
Although it was born as psychotherapy and with the aspirations of a
scientific revolution, the only niche where the NLP could logically survive
was that of self-help and coaching and it is these sectors, in fact, the only
ones that enthusiastically produce the evidence of his operation. It is a pity,
however, that these efficacy tests are exclusively anecdotal: how come
nobody systematically checks how a representative sample of customers
reacts to the techniques of the NLP, and if a certain effect is really
attributable to the NLP and not to other factors?
In the meantime, anyone can enter the business, because the
lawsuits have established that even the founders are not entitled to the
exclusive name, so whoever wants can register his favorite combination, if
he arrives on time.
Will only the kinesthetics feel a little teased?
The name Neuro-Linguistic Programming is composed of three
terms which mean:
· Programming: according to scholars, we have assets of
programs enclosed in our mind and these programs can be modified.
· Neuro: these programs are arranged in such a way as to
become neural configurations.
· Linguistics: language is part of our system of
communication with others and through precision languages it is
possible to extract the limits that hinder the achievement of our
objectives.

NLP is an attitude….
An attitude characterized by a sense of curiosity, adventure and
desire to learn skills necessary to understand which types of communication
influence others.
It is looking at life as a rare opportunity to learn.
 NLP is a methodology….
A technology based on the principle that every behavior has a
structure that can be extrapolated, learned, taught and even changed.
The criterion of this method is to know what will be useful and
effective.
NLP innovation consists in presenting a model rather than a theory,
recognizing the subjectivity of verbal and non-verbal communication.
It is important to clarify the difference between theory and model:
the role of a model is to describe the functioning of a system, while a theory
tries to explain why this system works in this way.
One could summarize this with the formula: theory is concerned
with why and the model of how.
We are talking about a model that does not deal with the reality of
the facts, but with the mental representation that individuals have,
regardless of the reasons that generated it.

NLP is a technology….
A technology which allows a person to organize information and
perceptions that come from both external and internal reality, in order to
achieve results previously thought impossible. This method therefore deals
with the study of the structure of subjective experience. His basic belief and
promise are that effective thinking strategies can be identified, assumed and
used by anyone who wishes to.
But what does it mean to study individual experience?
It means that each individual is in contact with the external world by
means of sensorially, that is, he perceives the world through the five senses
and internal sensations. This perception is filtered by three types of filters,
which formed his personality.
These filters are:
· Genetic filter that comes from its genetic heritage inherited
at birth is a complex summation of genes from the past;
 · Social filter that is built in growing, through the education
received, culture, education, values, the social belt to which it
belongs, the ideologies learned and professed, the lifestyle that has
influenced the choices.
· Individual filter that is made up of personal history, of
what happened in life and which conditioned values, emotions,
feelings.
It is therefore very evident that each person perceives things
differently from another, and this diversity forms the internal mental
process which is composed of the mental representations of what is
perceived, influencing the values and beliefs, which initiate an internal state
composed of emotions, feelings and sensations that form the metaprograms,
the strategies of people still in the form of mental representations.
After all this internal work, the person responds to stimuli with his
own language, which as we have said is of two types, verbal and non-
verbal. Non-verbal language is much more important than verbal and often
represents true communication as it is unconscious, automatic, symbolic.
NLP is therefore communication and research. It is a model born
from the observation of excellent communicators; therefore, it teaches, first
of all to be good listeners and good observers, capable of understanding
others before being communicators, also teaching how to have control of
their strategies and then be able to communicate effectively. The great
innovation of NLP is to enter the observation, listening and sensations that
non-verbal communication produces on four levels:

1.
What happens with the interlocutor;
2.
How its communication is expressed;
3.
What provokes in those who listen to this
communication;
4.
 How it behaves, consequently who has listened and what
answers it provides.
We can say that NLP represents the most advanced frontier of
hypnotic and cognitive therapies, which finds, in the reorganization of the
strategies of the unconscious mind, it’s fascinating and promising aspect. It
turns out to be a powerful tool for its plasticity, ability to adapt to any
human being. Undoubtedly NLP cannot allow us to understand what our
purposes are, but it can certainly help us clarify our objectives and their
realization.
The main features of NLP are:
In the emphasis placed on the creative and reorganizing capacities of
the unconscious mind, distinct from the psychoanalytic unconscious that is
completely neglected, both as a structure that created the psychic problem
and as an entity capable of solving it. In the meticulous description of the
sensory processes, through which the individual organizes the data of
external reality into its internal one, integrating them with those already
existing. In organizing a system of psychotherapeutic strategies, based on
the therapist-operator's technical ability to enter into relationship with the
non-dominant hemisphere of the person in front of him, rather than with his
cognitive processes. NLP is distinguished from other behavioral sciences by
the effort made towards satisfying the scientific criteria of elegance,
reliability and precision, through the use of constants, independent of the
change in human nature.
The Persuasion. How to handle others
Knowing how to manipulate people can be useful in many areas of
the job of manager and seller that's why I will give you some techniques to
manipulate people but know that there is no spell.
Normally when we talk about manipulating, we know that people’s
negative thoughts are generated, because there is already a negative idea of
who uses psychological manipulation, to get what they want, and think that
manipulation of the mind is for people who plot, alter and deceive. By
bringing the manipulation into the world of work, the perception changes
completely: those who manage to obtain the results they set themselves are
considered a great manager or a skilled seller.
How to go about manipulating people
The manager or salesperson who can convince people to do what he
wants uses techniques that allow him to have effective communication. The
list of points below highlights aspects from which you can understand how
to manipulate the mind:

Speaking in perfect way.

The most fearsome of the manipulators is the one who speaks

perfectly.
Thanks to its excellent property of language, knowledge of the
topics, use of pauses, cadence of sentences and use of the right tone, it
intimidates and displaces the interlocutor creating imbalance and always
trying to have the last word.
Mastering the manipulation of thought is a process that requires
time and exercise.
Have you ever met someone who can always and easily obtain
consent?
 Prompt response and firmness.

To be able to manipulate the human mind, you must be able to

respond immediately to objections, especially the less important ones. The
answer must not only be immediate but also aggressive and intimidating.
Another way to convince others is to rephrase the other's claims in
their favor: good faith and education do the rest.
The idea is to create in the other such a confusion that makes him
lose sight of the common thread. Enduring insistence on one's position and
direct attack in an almost offensive way are the techniques that give the best
results.

Take advantage of weaknesses.

The masters of manipulation are able to quickly identify the weak

point of the person with whom they are speaking and manage to leverage
this weak point to achieve their purpose.
Knowing how to manipulate people also passes through the
appropriate use of phrases that have the specific purpose of creating an
emotional reaction in the interlocutor:

Phrases to manipulate people

Flattery

1.
You are the only one who understands me.
2.
What would I do without you?
False modesty
 1.
He certainly knows more than I do
2.
You teach me…
Intimidation
· Without me where are you going?
· Just try to piss me off and you'll see
ATTENTION: These phrases should be used with caution because
the wrong approach could blow up all the negotiation: nobody likes to be
manipulated.
The counter moves
If you think you are an easy person to handle, the best thing to do is
to be aware of your weak points in order to better defend yourself and not
believe in advances, be superior to aggressions and be indifferent to talking,
so as not to fall into the trap.
Conclusion
Some manipulate entire masses of people to support their ideas,
others succeed on the job and others succeed only with family members, but
in principle we all know what it means to manipulate people and how to do
it.
Do you feel more manipulative or manipulated?
Exercise:
· Do you know what your weaknesses are, those that if
caught make you feel defenseless?
(e.g. a particular topic, complimenting language, money ...)
· Who do you use manipulative communication techniques to
talk to?
 How to manipulate people: 13 proven strategies that really
work!

Now, you don't have to turn into an American Psycho master

manipulator. However, it doesn't hurt when you know how to manipulate
people the right way.
Manipulative people have a stereotype for being, well, highly
manipulative, narcissistic and sociopathic. But this does not mean that
manipulation is a bad thing.
I would say that there is a scale of manipulation that goes from
persuasion to good ... to evil. But listen, sometimes when someone is
stopping you from getting something you want or need, you have to find
another way to get it.
So, if you find yourself being the good guy and getting hit in every
corner you do, it's time to play smart. I'll show you some techniques,
however, you need to remember that manipulation only works when you
don't see yourself being manipulated. If they catch you, it's too late.

Strategies to manipulate people

It is normal to feel bad when manipulating someone. But
sometimes, you have no other choice. If you feel like you've walked
everywhere and taken advantage of someone, then it's helpful to know how
to manipulate people. So, here are some strategies for you.

1.
Work with their emotions. The easiest way to manipulate
people is with their emotions. You saw it on TV and in movies,
and it works like a charm. You want to guide them to feel in a
specific way ... a way that benefits you. This is an emotional
manipulation, I mean, if you're making fun of it, I understand.
2.
 Take possession of your emotions. Before you can
manipulate someone, you will have to master your own
emotions. If you are not in control of yourself, you are making
yourself a target in your own game.
You have to laugh when it is necessary, shed a tear when necessary,
in other words, you have to do an act. Depending on the emotion you want
them to feel, you will need to be able to use your emotions even on demand.

3.
Trust me. People who have been manipulated before are
usually quite receptive to signs, so if you think trust can be a
problem, you have to make them trust yo u .
The best way to do this is to open up to them and talk to them about
something personal. When you open them, they will see that you trust them.
If you are not good at acting, maybe you follow a rather true story.

4.
Be nice. Listen, none of this will work if you don't like
them. Whether you are a good person or not is irrelevant. Your
goal is to make them like you. So, if you are a negative person,
put those real feelings aside and let that smile out of you. Don't
kiss them, because they will notice. But if you behave well, then
you will slip immediatel y .
5.
Learn body language. If you want to know how to
manipulate people well, you need to be able to read people's
body language. Most people's self-expressions go through non-
verbal communication. People might say "yes" or "no", but it's
your job to read them and see if that's what they really mean. It's
all in the body.
6.
 Guilty approach. This is one of the oldest and easiest
ways to manipulate someone. The good old guilty approach.
Your mom probably did this to you 1000 times when she wanted
you to do something.
When someone feels guilty about something, they will try to fix it.
This is when you suggest to them how they can compensate. It works best
with people who are prone to feel guilty.

7.
Play victim. Personally, I can't stand people who play
victim, but sometimes it works. If you play this card, you cannot
use it all the time. People get tired of the victims after a while.
But if you're going to use the victim's card, pair it with the guilty
approach for the best results.
8.
Use what you have. If you have a beautiful face or a
beating body, use it to your advantage. I know it's bad to hear, but
it's definitely the easiest way to get someone to do something.
People are superficial, so you can even get on that train if it gets you
what you want. Also, sooner or later, your looks will fade away, and
therefore you won't be able to use this method.

9.
Take out the bribe. You are probably wondering if people
are using more bribes, well, let me tell you, they do. If you want
to make someone do what you want, bribe them.
You can bribe them with material, emotional or mental rewards.
They will feel persuaded to do what you want because they consider it an
advantage for them. But first, make sure you find out what that person
needs.

10.
 Be in love. Sex sells, people. So, what you should do is
bring out your charm and the coquettish side. By mixing both
charm and flirtation, the person feels good. This usually works
on people who are alone and have low self-esteem. I mean, it
sounds horrible ... because it is. But I have a feeling you're not
too worried.
11.
Fear and Relief technique. This technique of manipulating
people involves you playing with someone's emotions. This is to
help the person when you see that they are going to give up. The
goal is to give them an emotional boost that leaves them
unattended. In those moments, they are more likely to do what
you want.
12.
"Feet in goal" technique. This is another classic and
extremely effective. It is very subtle and complicated, which is
what makes it so manipulative. Basically, ask them to do a small
task and then to follow the real task you had in mind.
13.
If you are caught, don't act manipulatively. This is a
beginner's mistake when learning how to manipulate people.
Once caught, they continue to exhibit manipulative behavior.
What you need to do is act calmly and allow them to control the
situation. You have to create doubts.
If you haven't heard of any of these manipulation techniques, well,
I'm somehow happy to hear it. However, use these tactics for how to
manipulate people, not necessarily to hurt, but if you can't get what you
want. Try one of these techniques, they always work.

The persuasion. How to handle others

 Maybe you didn't know, but we can all learn to be persuasive, to do
yes, to those close to us. There are real tactics, the result of years and years
of psychological studies, which serve to perfect the difficult and diabolical
art of human manipulation. Yes, you understand correctly, persuasion is an
art. Being able to convince anyone to say yes is a fine and subtle technique
that can be learned and then put into practice. Call it persuasion or
manipulation, without paying too much attention to the positive or negative
connotation that the term must have, but in fact it exists.
It is that art that we involuntarily put into action, when we try to
bring others to our side continuously, both to convince the partner to see the
film we have chosen, that is to convince the son to engage in the study, and
that is to demonstrate to colleagues of having made the right choice, it does
not matter, it is appropriate to say that the end justifies the means. To make
someone persuaded by our thoughts, you don't need to raise your tone or
use sweet words. Persuasion techniques consist of a truly complex
communication process in which words, tone of voice, listening, the ability
to empathize with others count. We need very specific strategies. We put
aside arrogance and try to make others do what we want, convincing them
in a genuine and strategic way. Persuasion is a powerful force in everyday
life and has a great influence on the whole of society. Think of the well-
known population drivers, politicians, advertising managers. Politics, legal
decisions, the masses, the news are all factors that are influenced by the
power that persuasion creates. Anyone is affected by it.
Some feel so secure and immune, that they think they are not even
touched by someone's persuasion; they think they have a natural ability to
see through an attempt to sell, to understand the purpose of others well, and
therefore to be able to reach autonomously effective conclusions.
Unfortunately, this is not the case, because persuasion can be subtle, and
how you respond to these influences can depend on a variety of factors that
cannot all be controlled. For those interested in the topic, some useful and
practical advice, the result of years of psychological studies performed on
people of various bands.

Persuasion tactics
 We learn to listen: if we know what matters to the other, we can
become persuasive. So first, we listen to the other to get as much
information as possible about him. To convince a child to study more, it is
essential to know what he likes, what he does, what he does not resist, what
to leverage. If you are able to make it clear that you know more than your
interlocutor, this will immediately recognize your credibility and authority
and will make you convince more easily.
Giving a gift: the rule of reciprocity means that when we get
something, we tend to feel indebted to a person who has given us a gift,
until we somehow manage to pay back. This is what charities usually do
when they give supporters a small gift. Better not to exaggerate, otherwise,
there is the risk of cracking the altruistic motivations at the origin of the
gesture of the other, and that the latter, receiving something in advance,
feels satisfied and then unmotivated.
Appropriate language: it is a matter of choosing kind words, decided
without involuntarily cracking suspicions of responsibility towards the
other, helping him in a confidential dialogue, calling him by name and
looking him in the eye. We must pay attention to the terms that could make
the other feel pressured, evoking a counterproductive sense of antagonism
and accusation. Formulate the speech using nouns rather than verbs. Asking
"How important it is for you to be a winner at the next race" is more
profitable than asking "How important it is for you to win the next race".
Stick and carrot: change the rate at which both positive
reinforcements and negative disincentives are administered. Uncertainty
makes learning faster. Maintaining behavior or longer, even when
punishment and reward are removed, is helpful. It is the principle, or
system, if you like, of chronic gambling addiction.
Leave the time to change your mind: we must not think of being
able to persuade quickly. Leave the time and space to do it. If you have
collected a refusal, repeat the same question after some time to the people
you want to convince. It is probable that the motivations that had prompted
at first to say no, in the meantime have vanished or are weaker.
Concept of the freedom of others: also say phrases like: “You are
free to think it as you think! Don't feel obligated in any way". Phrases like
these reaffirm the other person's freedom and avoid the other person feeling
pressured or annoyed by your attempts to persuade. Instead, he will be more
easily persuaded.
Elements of persuasion
Persuasion is symbolic, it uses words, images, sounds etc.
It is a deliberate attempt to influence others.
The key is self-persuasion. People are not forced, instead they are
free to choose.
The ways in which persuasive messages are transmitted can be
numerous and varied, including verbal and non-verbal through television,
radio, the Internet or face-to-face communication.
Persuasion can really be applied in many ways; you can use the
technique to persuade or swear.
In this chapter I just wanted to talk about how the art of persuasion
can change the way you communicate and sell yourself, to achieve goals.
Being good persuaders is an art, but also knowing how to defend yourself
from the various persuasion techniques is useful to know for both reasons.
It's like knowing how to use a weapon. It is useful for attacking someone, as
it is for knowing how to defend yourself from someone else. Persuasion is a
tool, and like any tool it can be used for right or wrong ends. Many of the
concepts that have been elaborated in this post are intrinsic in our daily life,
more than we are able to notice at first. With this section we have only tried
together, to put some order in the chaos of the different intuitions that you
may have had already in first place. I hope, I have been clear in explaining
the potential of these principles and make them even more tangible through
practical examples. So, if you want, you can deepen your knowledge about
it, giving yourself to the reading of interesting and curious books, which
exist on the market.

Five more ways to manipulate the mind

The human mind always surprises us. Science continues to study it,
but its deepest secrets are not yet known. The more scientist’s study it, the
more they come up with new puzzles.
We start from the idea that we know reality through the mind. We
delude ourselves that being "rational" brings us closer to the truth.
However, various experiments show that things are perhaps not quite like
that.
“The senses are the bridge between what is understandable and
what is not.”
There are many ways of deceiving the mind. Several studies have
shown that it is possible to induce someone to perceive non-existent
realities and to distort existing ones. The mind, therefore, is not only
concerned with organizing the world of reason, but also with populating the
world of fantasy. Below we will talk about the five experiments that prove
it.

1. The mind and the illusion of the marble hand.

In 2014, a group of neuroscientists from the University of Bielefeld
(Germany) conducted a curious experiment on the perception of the mind.
The scholars gathered several volunteers asking them to sit down and place
their hands on the table in front of them. Then, they gently hit their right
hand with a gavel. At the same time, the sound of a huge hammer was
hitting a block of marble. A few minutes later, all participants felt that their
hands were stiffer, heavier and harder, as if they were made of marble.
Their brains had combined tactile and sonic perception and, given that sonic
was stronger, it had prevailed creating the illusion of the marble hand.

2. The prisoner's dilemma and temperature.

The prisoner's dilemma is a hypothetical situation proposed in game
theory which shows that the best solution for people involved in a
competitive problem is that they all cooperate in an organized way.
It is assumed that there are two complicit prisoners. They are
separated and invited to betray each other. Several alternatives are
proposed: one is offered complete freedom on the condition of betraying the
other or that no one betrays the other and that both receive only one year of
condemnation.
 This dilemma was reproduced as a real experiment, one of the
prisoners was put a hot object in his hand, the other a piece of ice. The same
situation has been reproduced with other pairs of prisoners.
The result was always the same: the prisoner with the hot object in
his hand was less selfish. Temperature seems to influence the way our mind
processes information.

3. Prolonged isolation.
Prolonged isolation has been shown to have important effects on the
mind. A significant case is that of Sarah Shourd, imprisoned in solitary
confinement in Iran for 10,000 hours. Sarah began to have frequent
hallucinations so that she could no longer understand if she or someone else
was screaming.
Prolonged isolation, together with darkness, causes serious changes
in the brain's perceptual capacity. In particular, the sense of time and body
rhythm is lost. The daily cycle can increase to 48 hours, 36 of activity and
12 of sleep.

4. The McGurk effects.

Science has shown that the senses work together. They are a sort of
"mix". What we feel is not independent of what we see, touch or smell. The
mind combines these perceptions and builds global meaning. For example,
it has been shown that if a person sees the needle of a syringe, he will feel
more pain during the puncture or injection. It is not so strange, therefore, to
close your eyes before the sting.
Various experiments have been made on this, with different senses.
In England, some volunteers were invited to dine in the dark. The meal was
a delicious steak, but once the lights came on, the diners saw that the meat
was blue and most of them wanted to vomit.

5. The illusion of the invisible body.

The human brain confuses reality and fantasy with great ease. A few
years ago, in Sweden, an experiment was conducted at the Karolinska
Research Institute involving 125 volunteers who were given virtual glasses.
Once worn, they saw themselves and beside a person who used a brush over
them, to each brush stroke disappeared. While watching this scene, a person
really touched them with a brush.
The participants had the feeling that they had become invisible.
Later they were exposed to a very demanding public and their reactions
were monitored: the stress levels were very low.
They were more relaxed because they believed they were invisible.
As you can see, it is not so difficult to deceive the mind.
All these experiments show that brain perceptions can completely
deviate from reality. In this case, it is a matter of physical experiences, but
the same goes for abstract experiences. As much as we are convinced
otherwise, we are not as close to reality as we think.
7 Handling techniques to know absolutely
Thanks to numerous studies it is now possible to recognize many
manipulation techniques capable of weakening your will and opening your
mind to forms of conditioning.
It is during this process that the potential victim must work and
draw up his own defensive lines and, to do so, it is essential to recognize
these mechanisms.
In this book, manipulation techniques that use torture, sensory
deprivation or submission will not be described; techniques that do not find
a real place in everyday life for most of us.
Manipulation techniques for the use of sects and cults that we can
frequently find also in current working contexts will be described,
especially in those contexts and territories where work blackmail is very
strong.
These are some manipulative techniques that I personally
experienced when working for social cooperatives.
However, I must warn you that my ex-boss is extremely intelligent
and fully part of the most skilled persuaders of our time, he has truly
extraordinary abilities: refined tastes, excellent dialectic, always available
for pleasant conversations and great sensitivity towards others.
This is not to justify myself, but to make you notice that most of you
will only encounter crude and illiterate bosses who will make you regret
immediately having accepted the job, therefore no persuasive art; just crap.

1. Love bombing
"Love bombing" is one of the most widely used mental
manipulation techniques that has the longest lasting effects.
The initial phase is characterized by enticements, seduction, non-
sexual bodily contacts but full of affection (basins, caresses, hugs) and a lot
of attention towards any needs of the newcomer.
 The newcomer is surrounded with love by the leader and the
members of the group, who put him at the center of their attention. The aim
is to create a family environment.
In a second phase, one or two people already well integrated in the
group, who follow the leader's instructions, dedicate themselves exclusively
to him: "Partner System".
Soon the newcomer will begin to imitate the group's behavior and
language, to feel accepted and be part of it.
I am aware, not all of you have been bombed with love ... I have
been privileged.

2. Association stimulus response

Ivan Pavlov, a Russian Nobel laureate scientist, managed to
demonstrate this mechanism by conducting experiments on dogs.
He first started feeding some dogs, always preceding the "lunch" by
the sound of a bell, observing how the animals reacted with intense
salivation to the sight of food, symbol of a natural reflex of the dog,
functional to digestion and associated with hunger.
After a period of training, Pavlov subjected the dogs to the sound of
the bell without giving them food; the animals reacted with the same
salivation, which was a sign of emotional expectation.
Pavlov thus demonstrated how it is possible to associate emotional
states (and the consequent physical reactions) with external and variable
elements.
These reactions are called "conditioned reflexes" and are the basis of
the development of mental conditioning techniques.
Moving from dogs to humans: before receiving the salary (food) the
leader makes you sign the pay check (bell) followed by a bank transfer with
which you pay for your things and hope that there will also be a beer at the
kiosks.
 After a certain period of study and training, the leader will make you
sign the pay check (bell) and you will begin to "salivate" even if your
emotional expectation will be disappointed because you will realize that
your account is crying: they have not credited your salary!
They will do it, one day, after a few months, they will do it.

3. Learning process
Pavlov's principle is based on an innate mechanism, the learning
process, which is so elementary as to completely escape our attention.
In the study of the learning process Pavlov introduced the
importance of "reinforcement", or positive stimulus, and of "dissuasion", or
negative stimulus.
As it is easy to imagine, moving from dogs to men, the procedure
and the consequent reactions change: the greater the complexity of the
subject, the wider the field in which the processes multiply, while remaining
the basic mechanism.
The reinforcement (positive) in my case, were small career
advancements which did not correspond to any increase in salary but only
responsibility.
A little power, which was taken away from you (dissuasion) if you
made some "mistakes".

4. Groupthink.
The "Groupthink " or "group thinking" has been the subject of many
experiments that have shown how individuals are strongly conditioned by
the opinions of the group, in their perceptions and behaviors.
Solomon Asch, Polish social psychologist, demonstrated its validity
in 1956 through one of his experiments. This consisted in including some
subjects in small groups where, shown three lines of very different length,
they were asked to indicate which of the three corresponded, for example,
to one meter.
 The other members of the group, accomplices of the experimenter,
unanimously gave an evidently incorrect answer. Well, 33% of the subjects
allowed themselves to be influenced by this response and in turn indicated
the clearly wrong length.
If the socially accepted answer, even if incorrect, is that the
normality is to wait for months to collect the salary, a large number of
subjects will be influenced by this answer.

5.
Financial obligations.
Often sects and cults create an economic dependence on adepts or
induce the donation of properties, both real estate and cash. Let's see what
happens in some co-ops.
First phase. It is accepted by all employees to receive late wages, 2
months becomes 3, 4, sometimes 5 and reaches 6-month peaks.
Those who just can't manage to ask the leader for advances that are
weighed as "personal favors" (economic dependence) for which you are in
debt and you must show gratitude.
Second phase. Employees no longer receive wages and are told that
there is no money, so a new ideology must be embraced. The ideology of
financial obligations provides that employees must give up wages that have
not yet been collected, in order to mature their new status as a worker.
This status costs at least 6 months and is sold as a business
opportunity. The new ideology becomes the object of Group Thinking and
those who do not adapt are isolated. Isolation weakens the victim and
makes them more vulnerable to mental attacks.

6.
Social control.
Under the name of social control are gathered all those forms of
conditioning that a group puts in place towards the individuals who
compose it. It is present as a form of reinforcement in indoctrination
processes.
 The person who has not adhered to the new ideology of financial
obligations is deprived of all the positions of responsibility acquired over
time with positive reinforcements; all career advancements collapse in one
fell swoop.
He is deprived of the affection of the leader (this has created many
problems for me) and removed from the group that has already joined the
new ideology. To avoid contamination, the victim will work in isolation or
in penalizing conditions with other people who, like him, have not
embraced the new ideology (Pacis: the way of the giant crosses).
Once a month, the victim is placed in a circle of people who have
already joined the new ideology (the meeting).
The group will transmit to him concepts and interpretative models
inherent in the circle, models that he will find himself absorbing by
associating them with the sensation of recognition of a new status.
There are no more competences or meritocracy: if the victim accepts
the new ideology of financial obligations, he can be part of the group of
elected representatives, if he does not accept, he returns to the hell of
isolation.

7.
Labels.
Another typical mechanism of social control is that analyzed by the
"Labelling Theories".
These develop from the assumption that in a given social context
people tend to become as they are "labelled", according to social class
criteria.
Once a given labelling has been started, the individual would be
forced to feel, and therefore to behave and become in all respects, that type
of person. It is evident how this mechanism is adopted by manipulators to
modify the subject-victim's perception of self.
Anyone who does not accept the ideology of financial obligations is
labelled as an antagonist. Even if the antagonist has not sold his money for
the ideology, he will magically receive the salary and will be the only
person in the whole group to receive the "punctual" salary. Here a paradox
is created. Obviously, this mechanism will only polarize all the group's
hatred towards the antagonist who must also undergo, at the same time, a
highly calculated hierarchical mobbing.
So, the antagonist has no choice but to abandon the fold.
How to defend yourself from mental
manipulation - Personal Growth
There is not only physical violence. There is also the psychological
one. Often it is a real mental manipulation that involves people who, in a
particular moment of their life, take on the role of victims and are unable to
react to their attackers. But there are ways to recognize this type of
violence.
And also, those to get rid of it permanently.
Mental manipulation is a modality, used in a subtle and sometimes
even unconscious way, of inducing others to perform actions or say things
other than their own will.
The individual who uses this type of psychological violence
(because this is what it is), aims to satisfy his own needs also at the expense
of others.
Barbel Mechler, who has been dealing with victims of psychological
manipulation for over 10 years, explains in her book “Surrounded by
Psychopaths”, that these people actually adopt predictable patterns of
behavior.
And once they understand these mechanisms, they can be used
against them to get rid of them permanently.

Unconscious mental manipulation

Manipulating a person is an action that can be carried out even

unconsciously.
An example is the case of those people who, without realizing it,
push others to take some actions.
 For example, a mother who wants to be helped by her son in
household chores could, if an explicit request did not work, implement a
sort of emotional blackmail. That is, it could send passive-aggressive
messages, such as: “If you really loved me, you wouldn't do that”.
Such sentences may seem harmless but, in reality, they can trigger a
sense of guilt in the other person that will push them to satisfy the request
made.
Those who use these techniques of mental manipulation, even if
they are not fully aware of it, want to obtain a position of power in a
relationship. As the example described clearly demonstrates, emotional
blackmail of this kind has happened to everyone, at least sometimes.
And all of us have been manipulated at times and other times
manipulators ourselves.
On the other hand, the actual mind control that some unbalanced
individuals can voluntarily exercise on others, taking advantage of it and
enjoying the situation created is quite another matter.

Voluntary mental manipulation

For some individuals, manipulating people is a practice so inherent
in one's being that it is even part of the personality structure.
These are individuals with psychopathic connotations, not in the
psychiatric sense of the term, but with antisocial predispositions and
characterized by a marked narcissism.
The basic characteristic of people who act in this way is the belief
that everything is due to them.
These individuals start from the assumption of “deserving” that
others make all the sacrifices possible for them, and an incredible thing to
think for those who are not part of the category, without even expressing
thanks in return.
They do not feel empathetic and often have a contradictory moral
sense and do not understand or share the most common social rules.
 Usually, the victims of these people are precisely the most naive and
confident, who are easily excited and who, therefore, will tend to notice too
late that they have been “used” in an opportunistic way.
But what are the ways they use to manipulate people?

Mental manipulation techniques

The mental manipulator, in his perverse game, usually proceeds by

following certain stages.

1. Calibration.
Initially, the person who wants to take control over the other, begins
to study gestures, movements, positions, mimicry of his victim.

2. Mirroring.
Later, try to reproduce the observed movements and body patterns.
In fact, it is proven that: taking the same position and the same tone of
voice of the person we are talking to creates a relationship of “symmetry”
with our interlocutor.
This way of acting immediately establishes in the other person a
feeling of “equality” which leads to trusting those in front of you because
you perceive it as similar to yourself.

3. Tracing.
Those who “control”, at this point, will begin to propose new
interactions and new modalities on the basis of what was previously noted.
He will then be able to insert gestures “similar” to those observed which,
however, can lead him where he wants to go.
To be sure to create a sort of “engagement” in who is listening to
him at that moment and to be sure of being followed, often, the manipulator
first shows his trust.
Normally, he uses phrases that express positive feelings towards
those in front of him and that invite him to feel safe and to let go.
 It is as if he said: “If I trust you, you can trust me”. The feeling of
reciprocity is thus triggered, and the relationship is established.

4. Relationship.
In a short time, in this way, a relaxed and relaxed atmosphere is
reached where there is complicity. Through jokes, signs and friendly words,
the manipulator ensures the total trust of the person in front of him. At this
point, he will be able to make his requests.
One way often used to get to this final stage is to attest one's trust to
the victim by asking him to perform a particular action that requires
maximum reliability.
For example, a shopkeeper who wants to sell something precious,
could ask the customer to keep the precious object in custody for a moment,
or to try to use it, proving that he has no doubts or hesitations towards that
person who, immediately after, feeling that confidence about himself, he
will give it just as easily.
Control the mind: is it really possible?
The issue is controversial. It is certainly possible that some
individuals with weak personalities, and inclined to depend psychologically
on others, and to delegate their lives to people who decide for them, easily
fall to the mercy of more or less positive charismatic leaders.
Often the victims want at all costs to belong to a group without
which they cannot feel “adequate” and, in order to do this, adhere to ideas
and actions that they do not fully approve of.
Leaders who manage to plagiarize a person in this way are often
legitimized by the group itself, and it is not easy for those who find
themselves in such a situation to get out of it without the help of someone.
But there are ways to defend yourself from mental manipulation or
even prevent situations like plagiarism.

How to defend yourself from mental manipulation

 1. Keep in mind the methods of emulation.
Remember the mirroring techniques and ways to gain the trust of the
people described above. If you practice noticing these patterns of behavior
in other people, you will gradually be able to “watch your back” not only
from real manipulators but also from fake and mean people.

2. Listen to yourself.
Your body always sends signals. The intestine is our second brain,
the nerve cells found in it make it particularly sensitive to the different
situations and emotions we experience.
So, if you “feel” something is wrong, don't “liquidate” your emotion
by pretending it never existed. Pay attention instead and you will find that it
really has something to say to you. If you feel manipulated or the person in
front of you does not seem “clear”, move away immediately. Then you will
think about analyzing the situation.

3. Become more aware of your thoughts and mental mechanisms.

Do you know that you can learn to see your thoughts for what they
are and not take them for pure reality to believe blindly? The best way to
“train yourself to observe them” is meditation.
Start like this:
❖ In the morning, as soon as you wake up, instead of
catapulting yourself out of bed or dozing off a little longer, take 5
minutes.
❖ Sit in a comfortable position, even in a chair it's fine.
❖ Set a timer so you don't risk checking the time all the
time to know how much has passed.
❖ Start focusing on your breathing. Feel the cold air
entering from the nostrils and the warm air coming out.
❖ Whenever a thought comes, watch it rise and then
disappear from your mind, like a cloud in the sky.
 ❖ At the end of the 5 minutes, take the time to “go back
to normal life”, get up slowly, slowly move the ends of the body and
enjoy the feeling of having reconnected with yourself.
Find out how 10 minutes in the morning can improve your day
Gradually, thanks to this exercise, you will realize more and more
that your thoughts tend to be always the same and that you have
mechanisms that "direct" you from one side rather than another.
Knowing yourself better and better, you will understand how you
feel and what you feel not only while you meditate but also in many other
circumstances of life, in front of different people. Meditation moments will
be your “gym” for life.

1. Learn to see things from another perspective.

Whether you find yourself immersed in the manipulation situation at
that moment, or that you “relive” it in your subsequent memories, try to
imagine that someone else will come to see the scene. A stranger suddenly
appears and watches what is going on. What could he see?
You will almost certainly notice further details which you had not
thought of, and which will give you useful information on how you were
behaving at the time to “get manipulated”, and how your interlocutor was
behaving.

2. Accept to be wrong.
You are not perfect, just like all other humans. If you happen to be
manipulated, don't condemn yourself. It is the worst thing you can do, and it
could lead you straight to a new manipulation. Instead, do not judge
yourself negatively, accept what has happened and try to learn from it.
Manipulation, especially in a mild form, is a phenomenon in which each of
us can run into life or, without realizing it, can use against another person.
So, if this happens, get up and continue with your head held high. It is not
serious, and above all, it can happen.
Particular attention deserves the mental manipulation that is
exercised by some types of men towards women. In addition to it, of
course, there is also physical violence which, however, deserves a separate
book.
Psychological mental manipulation can actually cause as much (if
not more) physical harm in some particular conditions. But how to
recognize psychological violence against women?
Psychological violence against women manifests itself with various
signs, at first almost insignificant and then, gradually, more and more
present in the couple's life.
Psychological violence: tips to recognize and
overcome it
1.
The fear of judgment.
When one of the two partners (often it is the woman, but not only) is
no longer well in the couple, she owes it to the fact of “feeling” constantly
judged.
One of the 2 members of the couple (the manipulator) adopts the
strategies listed above to make the victim feel at fault and under constant
observation.
The fear of judgment is often manifested by those who experience it
with a strong desire to close in on themselves and there is an ever less
complicity and desire to dialogue between the two.

2.
The lack of play.
In a situation of psychological violence within the home, there is
less and less chance and desire to have fun and play with your partner. We
move further and further away, and all occasions become too serious and
tense. We don't exchange jokes anymore and we no longer use the playful
tone that we used to use before.

3.
Search for refuge elsewhere.
The partner “victim” of mental manipulation tries to take refuge in
other activities that can make him forget the couple's situation and
otherwise satisfy him.
It is not uncommon for a member of the couple to throw themselves
headlong into work or a hobby to be able to stay away from home and do
other things. Unconsciously, people are already trying to escape the
situation.
 4.
The lies.
To mask reality and what it feels like, both partners start to lie. The
one uses lies to manipulate his partner and the latter, especially in the early
stages, to deny those who are close to them but also to themselves their
condition of unhappiness.

5.
Anger.
In a mentally manipulated situation, the feeling of anger and
frustration grows considerably.
The people involved shoot for minimal problems even in contexts
outside the home. It is perceived that, although psychological violence
maintains a balance (albeit sick), the relationship is precarious within.
If you recognize any of these signs, don't wait any longer. The
situation could escalate. Instead, look for a way to “detach yourself” from
your executioner as soon as possible.
If it is difficult for you, compare yourself with friends and loved
ones outside the couple. They will be able to give you the help you deserve
and that you need.

How to leave a psychopath

And, if it seems appropriate, do not be ashamed to seek the help of

an expert. It is a right, and also a duty towards yourself.
Recognizing the manipulative behavior of others is fundamental for
our well-being and for the effects on our self-esteem. If we know how to
recognize it, we can draw on resources to escape manipulation.
But what is manipulative behavior?
 It is a behavior that some people in certain contexts assume with
others, relying on their sensitivity and their values, in order to influence
their choices without taking into account their rights, their well-being and
their balance.
As you can see, the elements that characterize the manipulative
behavior are two:

1.
Attempt to influence the choices of others regardless of
their well-being,
2.
The attempt is expressed in a "hidden", not explicit way,
leveraging certain sensitivities of others.

For example, it is not manipulative behavior to explicitly declare

one's goal and try to convince someone to support it.
While it is manipulative behavior to hide one's goals, prompting the
other person to behave in a certain way that favors the hidden goal.
Manipulative behavior is therefore potentially very disturbing and
dangerous.
To defend yourself from manipulative behavior, you must first
recognize it.

Here are some signs that can warn:

1.
Detect contradictions or inconsistencies between what the
other says and what they really do.
2.
Feeling "forced" or "pressed" to do something or behave
in a certain way without there being obvious elements of
objective constraint.
 3.
Be the object of observations that upset or hurt us.
These signals all depend on a modality that is always present in
manipulative behaviors: the presence of more or less masked criticisms,
addressed not to specific behaviors or opinions, but to others as persons.
This type of criticism is called manipulative criticism and consists
of summary judgments about others as unsuitable, wrong, different,
unhealthy, bad, unreliable, incapable, unlovable people, etc.
One of the most subtle criticisms of manipulators is to attribute to
others their own aims and style. For example, saying "you are a person in
total bad faith" can be a way to hurt the other by attributing exactly your
own behaviors.
Other examples of manipulative criticism are: "You are an
unreliable person", "You are not very serious", "Other men (or other
women) do not do this ...", "You completely miss any form of self-love".
Manipulative criticisms, therefore criticisms of the person as such,
can also be subtle.
For example: "I did not expect such behavior from you" is not a
criticism of the behavior but is a subtle criticism of the person. In fact, the
manipulator is telling us that his opinion of us as people is seriously
compromised as a result of our behavior.
Once the manipulative behavior has been recognized, we need to
run for cover.
The typical errors of response to manipulative behavior consist
either in indulging the manipulator's pressure, or in discussing or arguing
about the criticisms that have been addressed to us.
The best response to manipulative behavior is, instead, an assertive
behavior, that is to say to reaffirm one's opinion clearly without taking into
consideration the criticisms of the person.
Purposeful manipulation and deception are widespread in the animal
world and in human societies. But upstream of the tricks and strategies, it is
useful to have clear ideas on relational processes - biologically predisposed
- which can transform a normal relationship into a highly effective
manipulative dynamic.
All this, however, leads to an obvious question: how to defend
ourselves from the manipulative tricks of other subjects?
A distinguished gentleman enters a jewelry store and chooses some
awfully expensive jewelry. With the permission of the owner of the shop, he
puts them away in a case closed by a zipper, because, he explains, he will
come back later to buy them, but he would like to stop them. The customer
then delivers the closed case to the shop owner, asking him to close it in the
safe, which is promptly carried out.
The customer leaves. As shown by the recording made by the
camera, now studied in the police schools, the case delivered in the hands of
the jeweler, however, is not the one with the precious, but another, cleverly
replaced by the thief-magician.
In this case it would have been enough for the robbed person to
check the contents of the case, but this operation was inhibited by the
instinctive urgency of putting the gems "safe", after having seen them touch
and manipulate by the customer.
Furthermore, in the jeweler’s mind, the precious stones had already
been "sold": one more reason to protect them with a supplement of caution.
Caution that turned out to be catastrophic.

This episode is a professional scam.

If in our culture there is a top ten of indefensible concepts, that of
manipulation is very likely to be part of it. Manipulating is usually
synonymous with deceiving, entangling, misleading in view of objectives
that often damage the manipulated.
The word itself derives from the medieval pharmaceutical Latin,
where “manipulus” defined the handful of medicinal herbs to be mixed to
obtain who knows what poultice. In reality it is not so true that
manipulation must always be ethically unacceptable. In fact, it is easy to
think of situations in which a manipulative strategy is implemented in the
interest of the other or in any case without the deliberate will to harm: in
medicine for example, but also in the relationship between parents and
children, in psychotherapy, in marketing and even in teaching.
Just as it is a fact that there are situations in which a manipulative
activity against someone is put in place for a superior or more general
advantage for the benefit of many: in negotiation, in the economy, in the
management of particular emergencies.

Manipulation as a communication phenomenon

In pragmatic terms, manipulation is a subcategory of
communication.
If communicating is synonymous with influencing, manipulating is
synonymous with influencing by taking advantage of the "sensitive points"
of the manipulating. Therefore, in order for there to be manipulation, a
substantial asymmetry is required in the relationship between who acts and
who is acted. If this is the premise, a clear distinction must be made
between one-many manipulation (such as that of advertising, mass media,
certain religions, group cultures) and one-one, as in the example given at
the beginning.
It is quite evident that in mass manipulation, rather than art, it is a
question of a mix of consolidated techniques and power. Here the context is
under control and the chances of counterattack by the manipulated are
practically nil. What gives effectiveness to the mass manipulation strategy
is the unchallenged pressure capability regarding contextual conditions and
the passing of information, rather than technical refinement.
Other discourse instead in the one-one interaction. In human
relationships, manipulation strategies are actually very common, and the
person implementing them is usually a psychologically disturbed individual
in need of people to be controlled in some way. It is obvious, however, that
these are not the most suitable individuals to become experts in
manipulation.
As an ancient Chinese story says, being masters in something
implies being able not only to do it, but also not to do it. In a context of
professional manipulation, however, there is one of the two participants
who deliberately implements techniques and strategies in view of objectives
that the other is not able to suppose. In more detail, if we go to consider the
elements that contribute to configuring a manipulative strategy, we see that
they are more than you usually think.
In addition to the manipulator and the manipulated, there are the
respective objectives and expectations, the target groups and the context.
Here it is true that the manipulator has the advantage of the factors set out
above, however the manipulator can always notice something and react
accordingly. Try to control the context, or even - more simply – do not let
yourself be "guided" by the other. That is, do not enter into that state of trust
or psychological-emotional subjection, which is the fundamental
prerequisite of any manipulation sequence. In other words, if it is important
to focus on the manipulator's "tricks", even more, so is the fact that these
techniques, can only work from the moment when he is able to create a
particular type of relationship in which he is the guide.

Altered states of consciousness: the myth of hypnosis

Among the most frequent reports of those who have been

manipulated - assuming that they realize it - there is that of having found
themselves in a "particular mental state", in which his normal critical and
rational faculties have not worked as they should have.
This is what is reported by the victims of certain deceptions, by
those who have fallen into a sect, by those who "inexplicably" performed
acts that contrasted with his values and beliefs.
Psychology defines these occurrences as altered states of
consciousness. In fact, it often insinuates that the manipulator has
succeeded in its intentions thanks to the use of hypnotic techniques: is this
case really true?
To clarify this point, we can start by stating that by neurological
consciousness we mean a state of vigilance of the mind.
Our ordinary state of consciousness is very complex, in the sense
that we are not in the presence of a group of isolated psychological
functions but in a system, or an interacting, dynamic configuration of
psychological components, some of which are extremely complex (e.g.
sexual needs, social adjustment mechanisms etc.).
Let us now examine what happens in hypnosis.
In the first phase, the inductive phase, a first change in the state of
consciousness occurs. On the EEG (Electroencephalogram) we can find an
accentuated presence of alpha waves typical of states of relaxation and
detachment from external reality. Subsequently, with the deepening of the
attention inside there is a predominance of the slower theta waves that
characterize the real trance.
Milton Erickson, American psychiatrist, probably the greatest
hypnotherapist of the 1900s, is the author of the conception of the
unconscious as something that is completely distinct and separate from the
conscious mind and that has creative ability. Jeffrey Zeig, psychotherapist
and his student, has made an inventory of the most common physiological
reactions to the state of hypnosis which are: tendency and economize one's
effort in active and reactive movements, relaxation involving heartbeat,
breathing and muscle areas, tendency to give essential and short answers,
decrease in the perception of the external world.
Psychic changes are given by accentuated attention span and
superior imaginative power; the subject narrows the field of internal
perceptions and focuses his attention only on some elements obtaining
clearer and more vivid emotional and mental images compared to the
waking state.
Under these conditions, is it possible that a subject is induced to
perform actions that contrast with his desires and convictions?
Milton Erickson's studies, along with those of many others
(Rowland, Lowenfeld, Shilder, Young, etc.) have amply shown that this
does not happen.
It seems that the only risk of hypnosis is relegated to some
peculiarities of stage hypnosis and in particular to back pains of the
volunteers who are suspended between two chairs during the show.
By contrast, the subjects who participated in Erickson's experiments
were more likely to do reprehensible actions when awake than in a
modified state of consciousness. So, if hypnosis has nothing to do with it,
what other techniques can be more suitable for manipulative purposes?

Complementarity and guidance strategies

Scholars such as Gregory Bateson, anthropologist, sociologist and
cybernetic scholar, Humberto Maturana biologist and philosopher and
Francisco Varela, neurobiologist and epistemologist, have proposed that
cognition, being the process of knowledge, should be described in terms of
the interactions of an organism with its environment.
Neuroscience studies have confirmed these intuitions by proposing a
systemic mind structure, with an active role in building a model of reality
that can be shared with one's own kind. It is precisely in this need for
sharing - as social beings - that manipulation can infiltrate.
Already from the first studies of systemic psychology it is evident
that every process of building sense of a human being takes place in relation
with other humans following a pattern that can be symmetrical or
complementary. Symmetrical: no one has the power to tell others what to
do, think, act. The roles are interchangeable.
Examples of symmetrical relationships are those between
teammates, work colleagues, husband and wife (although not always, to tell
the truth). Complementary: here there is someone who has the discretion to
tell others how they should behave in a certain area, and the roles are not
interchangeable. Typical cases are those of the doctor-patient relationship,
head-collaborator, teacher-student and so on.
Taking the lead of a relationship therefore means being able to
create a top / down complementarity that the other - implicitly or explicitly
- ends up accepting, thus effectively delegating to those who lead the
definition of the field of experience in which both are inserted, with related
roles, behaviors and assumptions. If we think of the example given at the
outset, is becoming clear that the successful swindler had previously
managed to accredit himself with the goldsmith as a reliable and wealthy
person, to whom it was logical to do a favor such as that requested.
Hence the most obvious question: through what phases and
behaviors is it possible to ask oneself towards another person, already at the
first meeting, as reliable and credible individuals?
Historically, the first answers to this question did not come from
psychology, but from two apparently very distant areas: the American sales
manuals of the 1960s - which put black and white the most effective tricks
to get the order signed of purchase - and Ethology, the science of animal
behavior dynamics that Konrad Lorenz had started to formulate since the
1930s. In Ethology the study of hierarchies is particularly important.
Individuals are classified as "alpha" if dominant, "beta" if subordinate;
"omega" is rarely used to indicate the last individual of a herd in
hierarchical order, the one subordinate to all the others. The hierarchical
abbreviations do not indicate permanent status: each individual is alpha or
beta not in himself, but always with respect to the other in front of him. And
the way roles are defined is based on behavioral patterns of mutual
interaction.
Although the American vendors probably ignored Lorenz's work,
they had come to similar conclusions through experience in the field: the
excellent seller was thanks to the ability to take the lead in the sales
situation using, rather than verbal language, appropriate behavioral patterns.
The psychologist Albert Mehrabian in the 70s conducted a series of
experiments that led him to quantify the incidence of non-verbal factors in
the effectiveness of influencing communication: over 90 percent.
Immediately afterwards, to code everything into operational
schemes, what often came to be, even in a not entirely justified way, is
considered the model of professional manipulation par excellence: the NLP
- Neuro Linguistic Programming. In reality, NLP was born as a linguistic
support for learning and psychotherapy, but its effectiveness and
manageability soon made it available also for less immaculate purposes.
Originally conceived by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, NLP
schematizes the control process in four steps: Calibration - Mirroring and
Tracing - Report - Guide. Let's see them in order. In the calibration phase,
those who want to take the lead observe and study the other's body patterns
(gestures, postures, mimicry, use of the voice), and detect what their
cognitive patterns may be. In mirroring, it reproduces the observed body
patterns on itself. In fact, ethology shows that this helps to configure a
symmetrical relationship of trust "we are equal". In the tracing, the
manipulator begins to propose new interactions by inserting them into the
cognitive schemes previously detected.
The subliminal message is "I think like you, you can follow me". In
this phase, a typical move of the manipulator is early tracing, that is,
showing positive feelings towards the other who - if offered in a credible
way - will produce reciprocity. It was for example demonstrated, with
confidence, manipulating process produces an automatic response of
engagement confirmed even by endocrine system. The rapport phase is
marked by the establishment of a good emotional climate between the two
participants: a sort of virtual empathy where jokes, opinions and non-verbal
notes are exchanged. Finally, the complementary driving relationship (alpha
subject vs. beta subject) arrives as a logical consequence as soon as the
person who implemented the sequence advances his proposals.
It can be seen that, in the initial example of the jeweler, all the
fraudster's moves were designed in such a way as to fit perfectly into the
victim's cognitive schemes: retain a respectable customer, secure the sale,
guarantee safety, and conclude quickly. There was also no lack of
attestation of trust (Entrust the custody of the other "their" jewels).

Another element to underline is the concomitant action of the "role

in the pack": when a subject has entered an ethological condition of
subordination, his normal critical and rational faculties are automatically
clouded, as Stanley Milgram has shown with his famous experiment,
without that there is no need to resort to hypnotic techniques.
Defense strategies against manipulation
After the illusionists and the hypnotists on stage, the new mentalist
figure has been in vogue for some years, which gives a show by combining
the skills of the first two with an excellent knowledge of effective
communication. The most famous of these is the British Derren Brown, a
serious professional (also a law graduate) capable of amazing effects, such
as convincing an honest and fearful person to carry out a robbery (pretend
without his knowledge) or to pass off as a bank employee sheets of paper as
if they were banknotes. He too agrees to attribute most of the manipulative
effectiveness to the linguistic structures of NLP.
 Indeed, in his opinion, human beings seem to have been expressly
designed to be manipulated, and he provides numerous examples in this
regard even outside the professional context. This is undoubtedly an
element to reflect on: in the human and animal world, deception and
manipulation are so widespread and ingeniously elaborated that they
suspect their essential role in the evolutionary process.
If on the one hand, Mother Nature seems to reward the social
behaviors of loyalty and homologation to the group, on the other it seems to
do the same with those who are able to deceive other living beings to their
advantage. In all likelihood, we are faced with classic systemic polarities in
apparent competition, where in reality both phenomena have an important
function in limiting escalation mechanisms or ecologically unsustainable
closures. The fact that we accept that manipulation has a role in the world
does not, however, prevent us from humanly wishing that this evolutionary
function be exercised possibly far from us. How can you defend yourself,
at least a little? In addition to practicing in some way with the techniques
that someone else might want to subject us, so as, to eventually notice what
is happening, there are four useful tips that anyone can follow:

FOUR TIPS TO DEFEND YOURSELF FROM HANDLING

Get used to listening to your emotional nuances Belly sensations are

now fully legitimized by science, especially since the existence of an
extensive neural network was discovered in the intestinal area, more or less
complex, like the brain of a cat. The trouble is that you are often
accustomed to ignoring these signs based on "reason" or "common sense",
with sometimes disastrous results. As advised by Robert Cialdini,
psychologist expert in persuasive techniques: if something gives you the
feeling of being manipulated, take it for granted and go away. You will do
the analyzes later.
Develop self-awareness
That is, learning to observe and observe one's thoughts by
cultivating what is psychologically defined as metacognition. Train yourself
to act in a different perceptual position. In situation - or even seeing it in
memory - to act "as if" you were a third character who arrives, looks out
and observes the interaction between himself and the other. This invariably
retrieves new useful information.
Get it right
Manipulation is part of life, like colds or unfortunate occasions.
Insisting excessively on wanting to protect yourself, in addition to not
offering the total guarantee in any case, leads over time to a paranoid
approach to reality which in turn constitutes an excellent lever to be
manipulated by those who sell security. Much more useful instead to
increase one's resilience, that is, the subjective ability to take sporadic
blows without losing confidence and positivity in facing life.
Persuasion: conditioning others to achieve
their goals
Persuasion: a very important element of communication, which is
achieved with six different techniques
Persuasion is an enormously powerful weapon, and, in several
respects, it presents itself daily in our lives, exerting a profound influence. It
manifests itself when we make choices that vary from shampoo to use to
what to eat. How come those brands are chosen and not others?
Probably, because they were seen on TV, or suggested by someone
important to us, or everyone buys them, etc. Persuasion, therefore, or the art
of communication, the ancient Greeks defined it, is widely used by the mass
media, newspapers and television, to modify the ideas and behaviors of
others.
Persuasion: what is it?
Persuasion is an action aimed at influencing or conditioning others
to achieve their goals or objectives. These are very effective and convincing
mechanisms or methods that induce the interlocutor to totally embrace the
point of view of the person who is speaking.
It is a symbolic process in which the communicator tries to convince
other people to change their attitudes or behaviors, through the transmission
of a message. In fact, however, conditional messages change emotions,
ideas, behavior and are mainly used to change opinion. The interlocutors
are convinced to act autonomously, but in reality, they are influenced to
move in that way by external factors.
Persuasion can be explicit, if made by an intrusive seller or a
particularly captivating or more subtle, subtle commercial ad, when it is
carried out quietly or subliminally.

Cialdini and the art of persuasion

 Robert Cialdini is a psychologist and researcher at the University of
Arizona, who achieved international fame after publishing his book “The
science of persuasion”. This book is an exhaustive collection of studies,
tests, experiments and theories which explain the mechanisms by which we
end up saying yes.
Cialdini has identified 6 categories which include the main
persuasion techniques:

1.
Reciprocity.
It occurs when one gives something to someone, and the other
feels compelled to reciprocate in some way what he has received. This
rule of reciprocating something received is a rule that if not respected,
will face social sanctions and end up labelling a person as "ungrateful"
or "parasite". For example, if a free sample or gift of something is
offered and you don't accept it, you end up being designated as fools for
not accepting it. For Cialdini, exchanging leads to stimulating fair
acceptance, imposes debts that have not been requested and could lead
to unfair exchanges.

2.
Commitment and consistency.
Those who are not consistent over time in maintaining a certain
goal risk being labelled as unreliable or superficial.
For this reason, having a coherent image has a "reassuring"
function towards the viewer, because it does not force the other to carry
out a new evaluation that would lead to important emotional
repercussions. For example, a change of image of a brand causes a state
of confusion and accustomed to novelty

3.
Social proof.
It consists in the tendency to consider an action adequate when it
is carried out by many people. For this reason, to receive consents, even
from authoritative people, to lead to greater visibility and trust from the
public.
For example, in situations of uncertainty, there is a tendency to
look and see what others are doing and then make a choice, which will
go in the direction dictated by the greater assents received.

4.
The sympathy.
Often it occurs at the moment when to sell a product we refer to a
person familiar or known to make the product more attractive or
interesting. For example, in some cases the "chain" method is used with
which each person interested in the product is invited to give the name
of friends and acquaintances who are also interested in the purchase.
There are also some factors capable of producing a reaction of
sympathy, such as beauty, goodness, resemblance to someone, the same
clothes worn, etc. In this case, knowing that a person is “similar” to us,
facilitates the choice.

5.
The authority.
The claims made by authoritative people are highly persuasive.
There is a natural and deep-rooted sense of deference to authority which
translates into the subject's inability to counter the order of the "boss".
Being used to obedience is taught to us from birth and allows for
the stratification of society. Therefore, having acknowledged the
authority of authority, actions are carried out without questioning them,
although some behaviors may not be adequate for the purpose.

6.
Scarcity.
Or indeed the tendency to underestimate what is abundant, and to
overestimate what is scarce. Therefore, there is a tendency to optimize
the availability of resources of a given asset, if the availability of the
asset is presented as limited in time or poor in terms of quantity. For
 example, computer with limited calibration and below cost, it
immediately leads to the purchase of the product since it becomes an
opportunity not to be missed.

The five secrets of persuasive communication

Persuasion was defined by the great philosopher Aristotle as the art

of inducing people to perform actions that they would normally not do if we
did not ask them.
As I said in the previous chapters, the ability to persuade is of
considerable importance in daily life, both in the personal sphere and in the
professional sphere, often determining the success of our initiatives.
Who among us does not know at least one person with great
persuasive spirit? Persuasive subjects are those who are able to win the
consent of others in any circumstance, gaining their total approval and
convincing them to act in a certain way.
A question spontaneously arises: are you born or made persuasive?
Both options are correct. This dowry can be innate or learned through
specific training courses.
Almost every day we feel the need to convince those around us to
accept our point of view without hesitation or to welcome a request from
us. We started to experiment in this activity since we were children, refining
the most effective techniques "by hand", and still today we try to orient the
judgment of others in our favor, although aware of the growing difficulties.
The long experience in the business world has made me understand
that persuasion can bring enormous benefits on a communicative level: it is
a sort of magic formula that helps us manage interpersonal relationships,
positively influencing the opinions, attitudes and actions of others.

Below you will find 5 secrets that will allow you to attract, fascinate
and convince your interlocutors in a truly effective way. Let's see them
together!
 1. USE THE EXPLOSIVE EMPATHY + SINCERITY MIX
EMPATHY + ASSERTIVITY = PERSUASION, do you know
this winning equation?
The famous Aristotelian pathos theorized more than 2000 years ago,
and known in the modern name of empathy, today represents a crucial
factor in social relations. Being empathetic means putting yourself on the
same level as the interlocutor in order to understand how he sees and
experiences a given situation, or more generally, the world around him.
To exercise empathy, you need to listen with your heart as well as
with your mind, learn to read the emotions of others, put yourself in their
shoes.
Some people are naturally inclined to feel empathy and therefore
able to use it effectively; they predict how others will behave in a certain
circumstance by placing themselves on their wavelength, and consequently
they know how to express themselves.
When there is empathy, a spontaneous feeling of trust will inevitably
make its way.
The ability to transmit trust is a factor not to be underestimated for
its great importance on a psychological level.
Whoever proves truly sincere, showing that he has the problems of
his neighbor at heart, gives a different tone to the conversation, stimulates
the receptivity of the interlocutor and induces him to open up.
That's why the mix of empathy and sincerity will help you develop
your persuasive communication in the best way.
2. LISTEN CAREFULLY TO THOSE WHO SURROUND
YOU
"The good listener is a sort of magnet that magically calls others
to himself."
We generally prefer to speak rather than listen, convinced that the
people predisposed to listening are those who have nothing interesting to
say. Wrong observation! Think of a friend who pays no attention to what
you say. It's really frustrating, isn't it?
 Active listening is one of the most important aspects of
communication: effective persuasion arises precisely from the ability to
listen, which obviously does not mean remaining silent while others speak.
Active listening generates good private and working relationships,
improving them over time, helps us understand the thoughts and emotions
of our interlocutors, and keeps mutual attention high.
Active listening is a very complex task that requires concentration
and training, but at the same time it is a necessary condition for learning.
Furthermore, active listening is a confirmation gesture that increases the
self-esteem of the speaker; the lack of listening, on the other hand,
generates the opposite effect.
What can you do to show your interlocutor that you are really
listening to him? Here are some tips:
❖ Do not interrupt it;
❖ Do not complete his sentences;
❖ Do not offer too hasty advice;
❖ Take action at the most appropriate time.
3. KEEP THE ATTITUDE OF YOUR INTERLOCUTOR
HIGH
Attention can only be gained when there is interest.
LACK OF ATTENTION → INEFFECTIVE
COMMUNICATION → ZERO RESULTS
If you want your message to be heard, you need to arouse enough
interest in people to keep your attention alive. Obtaining a constant level of
interest is very difficult for one simple reason: several studies have shown
that the time frame in which we manage to stay focused on a certain topic is
quite limited.
How can you move to encourage others to listen to you? What can
you do to keep your interlocutor's attention awake? You have to make sure
they are interested in what you're saying, to prevent boredom from taking
over.
 If you have to make a request or give a speech it is essential that you
manage to get your message understood on the first attempt. The
preliminary phase, in fact, lays the foundations for the good or bad outcome
of the communication.
When you notice that your interlocutor's attention has dropped, try
to find out the reason. Is your speech boring? Did you miss something
important? Did you use too sectorial and therefore incomprehensible
language?
Here are some good moves that I tested first in the field:
❖ Start the discussion with a particular anecdote;
❖ Ask provocative questions;
❖ Propose a brainstorming session;
❖ Tell us about your personal experiences;
❖ Give concrete examples;
❖ Help yourself by showing pictures.

4. PAY ATTENTION TO BODY LANGUAGE

Make your body express the right message.
Why is non-verbal communication so important? The interactions
between human beings do not occur exclusively through speech and
listening. Even when we speak and listen, we express feelings and emotions
through body language, taking postures and making gestures that convey a
strong meaning. To communicate persuasively and give the right strength to
your speech, it is important to learn to read these signals.
Non-verbal behavior determines in a decisive way the impression
we have of others and what they have of us.
All experts in the sector agree that the interpretation of human
attitudes is based primarily on visual factors, followed by vocal factors and
only the content of the messages.
If the interlocutor finds consistency between your facial expressions
and the words you pronounce, he will be led to feel a greater feeling of trust
towards you, allowing himself to be influenced more easily.
 If, on the other hand, your expressions contradict your words, it will
tend to close and move away from you.

What are the negative signs of body language to avoid?

Don't cross your arms and don't cross your legs when you're sitting,
because it will seem that you want to be defensive.
Smile to the people you talk to, because a positive gesture will help
you achieve equally positive results.
Maintain direct eye contact with your partner, because you will
show interest and attention.

5. EXPLOIT THE POWER OF WORDS

Success can depend on the right words spoken at the right time.
Do you know the power that words have in everyday interactions?
Are you aware that some are effective and some less effective? Putting the
right words together is a subtle art that is often overlooked or neglected.
The construction of the speech and the terms used have a direct
effect on the outcome of the communication process and determine its
success or failure. Psycholinguistics studies precisely the effects that words
produce on the human mind and emotions.
Imagine that you want to communicate something to your
hypothetical interlocutor: you have an image in mind that you have to
translate into words. As an issuer, you send the message to the recipient,
who translates the words into an image again, to which he attributes a
personal meaning that may not be the same as yours. If the mental image
that your interlocutor has built is different from yours, the communication
process will be ineffective. This feedback will therefore help you
understand how to intervene to improve the content of the message.
My advice is to adopt an open communication style: it promotes
comparison, as it does not lay rigid rules and allows you to be more
flexible. Open communication will encourage others to adopt the same
point of view.
 Conclusions
Persuasive communication is the main ingredient of personal and
professional success, an expressive modality that blends assertiveness and
empathy together.
Knowing how to communicate persuasively means winning the
attention, interest and trust of the people in front of us.
Persuasion, studied by social psychology in the context of "attitude
studies", is defined as follows:
Persuasion is the power to modify attitudes or behaviors through
information.
Persuasion is therefore a communicative process that uses both
rational arguments and emotional stimuli to modify the recipient's attitude
towards the message.
In the field of social psychology, persuasion intersects with other
thematic areas.
Where does persuasion work?
❖ Persuasion occurs in an area in which both functional
aspects (communication), intentional aspects (social influence) and
dynamic aspects (attitudes) act.
❖ Persuasion is a communicative process that uses both
rational arguments and emotional stimuli to change the recipient's
attitude towards the message.
The key point
❖ Persuasion is a communicative process that uses both
rational arguments and emotional stimuli to modify the recipient's
attitude towards the message. In the Internet age, this process subjects
the human being to increased solicitations due to the multiplication of
the means and methods of communication (social media, IoT devices,
augmented reality, virtual reality, etc.).
With the digital information allowed by the Internet, every
individual can become an author, in fact authoritativeness is no longer a
pre-requisite to publish something and costs are no longer an obstacle.
❖ The prevailing way in which users read newspapers,
watch news programs or view web pages tends to avoid cognitive
efforts and relies on heuristic evaluations, that is, intuition-based
mental shortcuts.
❖ The heuristic evaluation method is often affected by
distortions of judgment (cognitive bias) of which the user is unaware.
What messages are we most likely to pay attention to? The ELM
model foresees that these are messages that are very personal.
Two types of people: two types of personalities
Psychological research has shown that there are stable individual
differences in coping with mental efforts. There are two types of people:
those who have a strong reluctance to engage in intellectually difficult
tasks, and those who derive pleasure from them. Empirical research has
shown that individuals with high NFC (Need for Cognition) are more
resistant to persuasive attempts by the media, advertising and the people
they frequent. There are two types of people: those who have a strong
reluctance to engage in intellectually difficult tasks, and those who derive
pleasure from them. Individuals who derive pleasure from cognitive
endeavors resist the persuasive attempts of the media, advertising and the
people they frequent more
How to build a persuasive message
The persuasive message construction combines several factors:
❖ Mere exposure: that is, the repetition of the exposure to the
message. It is known from the experiments of the psychologist Robert
Zajonc that repeated exposure to an image increases the unconscious
attraction towards it.
❖ Organization of the message: in order to be persuasive, the
organization of the message must favor the learning of a content, in
fact an opinion persists until the individual experiences a new
learning. Otherwise the previous content remains.
 ❖ Explanation of the conclusion: the conclusion of the
message must be explicit. It is true that an explicit conclusion is less
effective when the recipients are more intelligent, but implicit
conclusions may not be grasped by less intelligent recipients or less
willing to make cognitive efforts (for example with low " need for
cognition ").
❖ Unilateral or bilateral arguments: from experiments
conducted by the psychologist Carl Hovland, it emerged that the
presentation of a unilateral thesis is more effective towards subjects
with a low school level, while subjects with a higher degree of culture
are more persuaded by the presentation of alternative theses.
❖ Order of presentation of content: content retention is
influenced by memory, so the most important content must be placed
at the beginning of the message because the individual forms a pattern
that acts as a filter with respect to subsequent arguments ( primacy
effect ), while the arguments put at the end of the message are
influenced by the working memory and are remembered more easily
if you access (or make decisions) immediately after exposure to the
message (recency effect).
❖ Vibrance of the message: the vividness of an information
visual representations involving emotional factors. It is defined by
psychologists Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, in terms of concreteness,
ability to affect emotionally, to provoke images and to be perceived
close in a spatial, temporal or sensory sense. A vivid message,
compared to a pale one, is characterized by providing concrete
references and a colorful and direct language.
The credibility that nobody thinks about but that everyone
unconsciously builds
In addition to persuasion, there are two other factors that influence
the communication process: influence and manipulation. Usually people
think of influence as the prevalent factor in communication, as those who
credit the recent phenomenon of "social influencers" with superior
marketing effectiveness in social media say). But the factor that
increasingly conditions communication (commercial, political, social, etc.)
is undoubtedly manipulation (media).
Persuasion, Influence and Manipulation (often interlaced) make use
of the construction of Credibility to produce their effects, as shown in the
following conceptual map. Persuasion, Influence and Manipulation (often
interlaced) use the construction of Credibility to produce their effects
Information and persuasion on the Internet
The persuasion of social influencers
Social influencers are individuals who direct their fans to purchase
certain products through their action on social media. Somehow, they have
acquired a certain personal credibility and use it to persuade those who
follow them on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. This phenomenon hides
the growth, especially in the world of adolescents, of the phenomenon of
solitude and voluntary isolation from the real world.
Social influencers are individuals who have acquired some
credibility and use it to direct their fans towards the purchase of certain
products through their action on social media.
Before the advent of the Internet, traditional information was based
on the recognized authoritativeness of the sources, although this
requirement did not guarantee the reliability of the contents. In the Internet
Age, digital information is no longer based on the authority of sources (or
in any case much less), but on their independence. This is an advantage for
freedom of thought, but it can become a risk for the quality of information.
The information conveyed by technology gave rise in the 1990s to a
new branch of study, called captology, which deals with persuasion through
computers, the internet and all new ways of communicating on the Web
(Websites, Blogs, Social Media, etc.). The captology, created by
psychologist BJ Fogg, teaches how to design the new means of
communication so that they are persuasive and credible. For example, the
continuous proposition of the "like" button persuades us to make judgments
which are then used by the media to direct our subsequent research and
related targeted commercial offers.

How to defend yourself from captological persuasion

INSISTENCE : do not yield to the continuous requests of the

software. Software does not suffer from waste!
 ANONYMITY : digital anonymity is an illusion. In the event of
illegal online activities, law enforcement agencies always manage to
identify those responsible (also on the deep web). In the case of normal
social network activities, those who use nicknames are only taking
advantage of the Net to organize their own self, similarly to what each of us
does in the real social environment, that is, wearing a mask for each
environment.
MODALITIES : audio, video, simulations are certainly effective
and persuasive, but it is necessary to maintain the critical ability to evaluate
their actual content value.
Internet of Things : it will be difficult to escape the persuasiveness
of devices on which our health and safety depends: only a critical ever
vigilant spirit can control their solicitations.
Credibility theories
Over the past two decades, many online credibility studies have
been done at US universities. The models behind these studies are those of
the "persuasive communication".
Persuasion presupposes a "change of attitude" by the individual who
receives the persuasive messages.
Communication with good and complex subjects exerts a greater
impact on recipients with strong cognitive ability (vs. poor cognitive
ability), while simple communication produces a greater impact on
recipients with poor cognitive ability (vs. strong).
Captology: how digital devices are programmed to persuade us
The captology, in the intentions of its founder, the psychologist BJ
Fogg, is defined:
“The captology investigates the way in which people are motivated
or persuaded interaction with, rather than through the computer”
Therefore, captology deals with the human-computer interrelation
and not with the linguistic communication implemented through the
computer. Its purpose is to analyze how the interaction with a computer
changes the behavior of its user. The captology offers "advantages over
human persuaders" in urging certain user responses; they, according to
Fogg, are the following:
· Computer (software, website, apps, etc.) are much
more insistent than people: for example, many of you will have
downloaded the trial version of a software and have undergone
subsequent repeated requests for registration. The software is
designed to insist, relying on the fact that people, sooner or later,
give in. Instead, machines should not be imagined as if they were
people: machines are not bad for us when faced with refusal.
· Computer (software, website, apps, etc.) offer
greater anonymity: anonymity allows you to overcome the social
inhibitions that force people within the cage of their habits.
Anonymity can help people change for the better.
· Computers (software, website, apps, etc.) manage a
considerable volume of data: the ability of computers to manage
massive amounts of data and perform special statistical analyzes on
them makes them more persuasive than people.
· Computers (software, website, apps, etc.) use various
influencing strategies: can offer several ways of presenting
information that make them more effective than people, for
example audio, video, simulations, hyperlinks, etc.
· Computers (software, website, apps, etc.) can be
easily scalable: even when a human being is a good persuader it is
difficult to make sure that his ability is exploited on a large scale,
while computers can do it. For example, the election of Trump, who
as a person has a high persuasive ability, was made possible by the
diffusion of his messages through Twitter and by the choice of
targets implemented by Big Data.
· Computers (software, website, apps, etc.) arrive
where men do not arrive. Computer systems can be found in places
where people do not arrive. For example, the Internet of Things is
greatly increasing the presence of devices with persuasive functions
around us. From smartphones to smart cars, from smart houses to
 smart cities we will be increasingly surrounded by "intelligent
objects" that will try to direct our behaviors for various purposes: to
promote our health (walking pedometers, activity trackers, etc. ), to
promote our safety (automotive sensors ), improve our education
(online courses), ruin us economically (electronic lotteries, etc.).

All these devices, and the others to come, will be made more
persuasive by augmented and virtual reality technologies.
From smartphones to smart cars, from smart houses to smart cities
we will be increasingly surrounded by "intelligent objects" that will try to
direct our behavior
Two different mental paths for those who are informed on the Web
or use social media
Persuasion presupposes a "change of attitude" by the individual who
receives the persuasive messages.
Since we live in an environment full of persuasive reminders of all
kinds, each of us easily understands that we cannot think deeply about
every persuasive message we encounter. Mostly the opposite tendency
occurs, namely that of not paying attention to most messages. So what
messages are we most likely to pay attention to? The ELM expects these to
be messages that are of very personal importance. In fact, when the
recipient believes that the message is personally relevant it will be
motivated to a careful reflection on its contents. In addition to being
motivated, however, the individual must be able to process the message.
When the authors speak of cognitive ability, they refer not only to relatively
stable ability to understand (for example, the degree of intelligence), but
also to contingent conditions that affect the cognitive effort that people are
able to produce at that particular moment, as well as the degree of
comprehensibility of the message itself.
In particular, the ELM model of Cacioppo and Petty foresees that,
when a person carries out an evaluation, he follows two alternative routes: a
peripheral or heuristic route and a central or systematic route. The prevalent
way in which users view web pages tends to avoid cognitive efforts (the so-
called cognitive load) and relies on heuristic evaluations. As you can see in
the figure, a user can find himself surfing the web (exposure phase) without
a specific purpose (i.e. without motivation), but then stumbling across a
hyperlink (or in other ways) in web pages that awaken his interest.
Therefore, he may suddenly have to evaluate the credibility of what he has
encountered (evaluation phase). This model theorizes that, if you have both
a strong motivation and a strong competence, you will engage in a thorough
and systematic evaluation effort, otherwise the assessment of credibility
will be superficial, it will take into consideration above all the attractiveness
of the message rather than the its quality and will be heuristic in nature.
According to the ELM model, when a recipient is motivated and
capable of processing the information content of a communication, any
change in attitude is the result of the central processing path. On the
contrary, when he is not motivated or unable to allocate a certain cognitive
effort to the topic in question, any changes in attitude are the result of a
peripheral path.
Persuasion: the ELM (Elaboration Likelihood Model)
Bimodal evaluation process
The ELM model applied to the credibility assessment of websites.
Since we live in an environment full of persuasive reminders of all
kinds, each of us easily understands that we cannot think deeply about
every persuasive message we encounter. Mostly the opposite tendency
occurs, namely that of not paying attention to most messages. So what
messages are we most likely to pay attention to?
Conclusions (provisional): individuals with high NFC (Need for
Cognition) are more resistant to persuasive attempts by the media,
advertising and people who frequent
Persuasion is a communicative process that uses both rational
arguments and emotional stimuli to modify the recipient's attitude towards
the message. In addition to persuasion, there are two other factors that
influence the communication process: influence and manipulation.
Psychological research suggests that "individual" stable differences exist in
coping with mental efforts. There are two types of people: those who have a
strong reluctance to engage in intellectually difficult tasks, and those who
derive pleasure from them. Empirical research has shown that individuals
with high NFC (Need for Cognition) are more resistant to persuasive
attempts by the media, advertising and the people they frequent. From
smartphones to smart cars, from smart houses to smart cities we will be
increasingly surrounded by "intelligent objects" that will try to direct our
behavior for various purposes. Since we live in an environment full of
persuasive reminders of all kinds, each of us easily understands that we
cannot think deeply about every persuasive message we encounter. Mostly
the opposite tendency occurs, namely that of not paying attention to most
messages. So what messages are we most likely to pay attention to? This
seems to depend on our cognitive predisposition.
Rationality requires personal commitment!

Persuasion: "Nine weaknesses for mental manipulation"

How do scammers manipulate our minds? This is the main topic

dedicated to the "Nine human weaknesses" that persuaders can use to
"intort" and make us act "stupid" for their shady purposes.
After talking to you about DTR and how easy it is to "use
persuasion", I decided to go deeper into this topic. These tips will allow you
to defend yourself from "psycho-scams" if you know them …
Because today, they are increasingly frequent, in fact I would say
that today they are the majority of the deceptions to which we can go
against. With all the information we have available today it is possible to
make millions of people believe that playing scratch cards is an investment!
It is these daily scams that interest me and to which I think most of
us are unprepared. Because precise knowledge tools are needed to do this.
We need something that the school no longer gives us, that critical sense
that we have talked about several times.
Today we buy the snacks and we believe it is the cocoa in, but then
re-reading well written at home we see that are "flavored" and do not
contain any trace of that substance.
I know it may seem trivial to many, but you have no idea how many
people fall for these language tricks. But these same weaknesses can be
used even worse, to stir up peoples against each other or to manipulate our
political choices.
In short, we are immersed in a war of mental manipulation, and as I
said in the ANL, even if I do not like the war metaphors in this case, they
make a lot of the idea ... so as always call to talk and see together these
"human weaknesses":
1) Lack of certainties: some time ago I told you about how
human beings cannot help but give meaning to everything. And
when this is missing, they build it around, relying on the few clues
present. We suffer when we are in an ambiguous situation, for this
reason we cling to the first available meaning, even if it could be
counterproductive. The case of the DTR exploits this very void.
Likewise, much of human suffering stems from this ongoing
attempt to signify reality.
When he felt uncertain, ask questions in order to clarify what is
happening ... and always keep in mind your starting objectives. The
confusion and lack of meaning is the base of most of the techniques of
persuasion.
2) Everything is simple: the second weakness is the tendency
to believe that reality is simple and of only one type. There is only
one god there are only two ways of behaving, good and bad etc.
The division of the world into sub-parts is the famous divide and
rule.

All the bad guys in history have used this trick, pointing the finger
at someone and waging centenary wars. This concept includes all panacea,
the search for medicine that cures all ills or absolute technique etc.
3) Need for control would you have fully described in a
recent successful ANL, think about having control over themselves
and others is a mistake that can have serious effects. Despite this,
man naturally tends to control his environment, and this can be a
weak point.
As in the advertisements of some courses that say things like ... you
get full control of your thoughts and emotions ... obviously nonsense they
sell ... because they give the illusion of control, which is something that
scammers leave to you, when you decide everything, raise the antennas,
usually when they offer you something in the contract, you are two.
This need for control restrains us and makes us make bad decisions,
and this is what scam wizards know.
4) Search for pleasant and immediate sensations: This leads
us to do a lot of stupid things, from taking drugs and alcohol to
believing that a simple visualization where we feel good allows us
to get out of our mind setting. You know how I think about this
model of NLP, making people feel good is not enough to change
them, sometimes yes, but only in rare cases. There are many things
that give us good feelings but that can ruin our lives, such as
gambling, compulsive sex, and any other excess of something that
we like, but that in the long run can hurt us like being all day on
Facebook or something. In short, as the saying goes "too much
stinks".
5) Material goods as a certain source of income: it is
something remarkably like the second point, where you can get to
believe that playing a scratch card a day is a worthwhile
investment. We all know that with the promise of easy immediate
earnings, people have lost huge capital. Perhaps this principle
could simply be renamed as "human greed".
6) Love: everyone has the desire to feel loved and to love in
turn. This is perhaps one of the biggest weaknesses and at the same
time a strength. But those who cheat us know how important this
variable is, even better those who found sects and clubs like that
know it. Also taking advantage of the principle of belonging.
7) Being protagonists: being in the center of attention is
something that many people like. A characteristic of the ego that
you have been able to use for years, if you have had some
relationship in your life and you have had to engineer to get it, you
certainly had to make the other person feel important and most
likely the other person made you feel very important. This sense of
importance is a bit of an egoic drug. Today, to end up in a
 newspaper, some people commit heinous murders, and other stupid
things
8) Being positively valued: if we have the qualities, we like
it when they point it out to us. Even when these are completely
unknown, such as the famous deception of some aromatherapists
who, after they tell you that you have a particular energy and that
if you do not download it you will feel bad, so you have to do a lot
of courses to control it .
All self-styled psychics know this cold reading technique, where the
subject is flattered, exalting and first the intellectual qualities and then the
intuitive ones, "I see that she has a power that she does not fully use ... she
does not fully exploit her potential" ... and who does not it does? Beware of
free compliments, especially if aimed at some unknown skills ... such as
intuition and creativity.
9) The model of the world: if someone knows us and
through a series of questions, they can understand your model of
the world, in practice as you think, this could exploit it at will.
Like the salesman who noticing the colors of your favorite team in
your car, tells you that he is also a fan.
Fraudsters know that the biggest mistake they can make is to go
against others' beliefs. We like them to tell us things that we already think
of, so we can say, mm look this is like me, and at that moment they can
manipulate you. It is a kind of tracing guide, first they trace you to make
you lower your defenses and then they guide you, in one way or another to
do something. So, if someone makes too much of a big friend and "sounds
strange", stop for a second, it could be a scam that is based on this "human
weakness".
If you know NLP, have fun making it crazy with different changes
of voice, posture and even conviction, like: "Well I also think that those on
the left do not understand a bat", "Well look that maybe he misunderstood, I
am of left". Here with such a game you can not only understand if you are
in front of someone who does NOT want to give you, but you can also
understand that there is a reason why he wants to avoid going against your
"model of the world".
 Here Rampin made a detailed analysis of those weaknesses that are
most often leveraged. And these aspects in turn leverage negative emotions:
shame, fear, guilt, etc. But it is not said that they are only negative
emotions, as many thinks. It is useless to tell you that one of the tools that
can save us from scams is to know well the language and in general human
communication.

Persuasion: four ways to never make you say no

"Not brute force, but persuasion and faith are the true queens of this
world." - Thomas Carlyle.
Whether it's to seduce a woman, to convince your professor that you
deserve a 30 and praise for your university exam or to be able to conclude a
sale with a tough customer, persuasion is a fundamental tool, which you
should always keep handy in your toolbox.
I immediately want to clear the field of doubts: I am not interested,
and I despise the petty techniques often used by companies and advertisers
to sell us products or services of little value; this is not persuasion; it is
beautiful and good scam.
In my view, persuasion is the ability to convince our interlocutors of
the real value of our ideas, our positions and our work.
In short, persuading is not convincing who is in front of you what is
false, but rather making it clear and evident what is true:
· You may have studied months for your exam and
memorized every page of the book, but at the same time, you
cannot convince the professor about your real preparation.
· You may have in mind the brightest idea of this planet
for your work, yet you may not be able to present it in the
correct way to your colleagues or leaders.
· You can have a product or service that can truly
revolutionize the life of your customers, and at the same time
not be able to sell it because you are not able to transmit its real
value.
 Here, in all these cases, learning effective persuasion techniques can
be useful to achieve the results you deserve.
In this chapter I will tell you about 4 techniques that have proved
particularly useful for me, in the study, at work and beyond.

Technique 1: Why not?

I have told you before about the power of questions. A question can
make you rich, a question can give you back your lost motivation, a
question can help you turn a "No" into a "Yes".
A study has shown that asking the simple question "Why not?" Has
a high success rate in transforming a dry waste into a more accommodating
"Yes".
The goal of the "Why not?" it is in fact to transform a definitive
answer ("No") into a simple obstacle to overcome. Ask the question "Why
not?" it forces the interlocutor to have to provide, more or less logical,
objections which we can handle much more simply than direct refusal.
Furthermore, the weaker the objections, the more a cognitive
dissonance is created in the mind of our interlocutor, who in the desperate
search for coherence will end up meeting us. In short: if there is no valid
reason not to do something, why not do it?!

Technique 2: Bring it to your face!

The door technique ... in the face! When we want to obtain a certain
result from our interlocutor, we should make a request that we ourselves
consider too high and not very reasonable: this request will undoubtedly be
followed by a metaphorical door in the face, or a refusal; at this point we
should immediately follow the real request that we had in mind: compared
with the first, in fact, the new request will appear more modest and
reasonable.
This technique bases its effectiveness on the natural tendency of our
mind to make comparisons. If we provide the right comparison, no request
will appear excessive.
 Don't you feel like asking your boss for a disproportionate salary
increase?! Then use the door-to-face technique on yourself when setting a
goal:
"Aim for the moon, badly you go you will find yourself among the
stars."

Technique 3: One foot in the door

The third persuasion technique we are talking about and which
always takes inspiration from our "nice" door-to-door salesmen, is the "foot
in the door" technique. Unlike the "door to face" technique, the goal of this
third technique is to make a request so trivial and obvious that it is able to
snatch a first, but very important "Yes" from our interlocutor.
I am sure you have seen this technique applied dozens of times:
have you ever met those guys on the street who ask you if you have ever
read a book?! Or to answer yet another call from a call center operator
asking if you use the phone?! The goal of these idiotic questions is precisely
to snatch a "Yes" from us: it has in fact been shown that people who accept
a first small request tend to accept even more demanding subsequent
requests.
In my experience I have seen this technique often misused and
abused: but do you want to put the fun of neutralizing these babies with
their own weapons?! The next time they ask you if you've ever read a book,
ask them if they've ever seen a movie!

Technique 4: Give me a damn motivation!

Sometimes to convince someone all we have to provide is
motivation. However weak or trivial our motivation may seem, providing it
greatly increases our chances of success.
An example? In a 1978 study by Langer, the freshmen enrolled by
the Professor had to ask a simple question to their colleagues (unaware) in
the copy shop; here is the question used: "I need to use the copier before
you, because I have to make photocopies”. Although the motivation was
weak, surprisingly the students who used this question obtained a "Yes" in
90% of cases (in the other 10% of cases they had met Chuck Norris).
Tricks to interpret people's body language
Reading other people's body language is a complicated affair.
For example, if someone crosses their arms, you may assume they
are giving a close signal when they may simply be cold.
Having said that, when you try to understand what a person is really
thinking it helps to know which gestures and facial expressions one must
try to identify.
Because sometimes, a person's non-verbal manifestations don't
perfectly match what he's saying in words.
Below we have put together 19 tips, the result of scientific studies,
on the meaning of body language, taken from Psychology Today, published
research, and some fantastic books.
➢ Shrug is a universal sign of someone who doesn't know what's
going on.
According to Barbara and Allan Pease, authors of “Why do we lie
with our eyes and feel ashamed with our feet? Body language: the definitive
book on non-verbal communication", everyone shrugs. "It is a good
example of a universal gesture that is used to show that a person does not
know or understand what is being said," they write.
"It's a multiple gesture made up of three main parts," they continue.
"Palms of the hands exposed to show that nothing has been hidden in the
hands, shrug to protect the throat from an attack and raised eyebrows which
is a universal submissive greeting."
Job interview; keep an eye on your body language. Here is what it
reveals.
A famous study conducted in 1972 by Albert Mehrabian has shown
how, in a normal conversation, the verbal aspect has a minimum value (7%)
in making an effective message. On the other hand, facial expressions, body
movements and tone of voice are the masters. Of course, this also applies to
job interviews. Indeed, even more so in job interviews, given that in about
30 minutes the candidates' preparation and quality are assessed.
That's why body language is so important and it's important to know
its meanings. From the handshake to the gestures (examined by Travis
Bradberry in Emotional Intelligence 2.0) to the tone of voice (according to
what reported in the study “The sound of intellect : speech reveals a
thoughtful minds, increasing a job candidate's appeal”) up to eye contact
(with the survey published by researchers from Imperial College London in
the journal Royal Society Open Science).
➢ Open palms are an ancient manifestation of honesty.
When someone promises to tell the truth in a courtroom, he puts one
hand on a religious text and raises the other hand in the air, showing the
palm of anyone who is taking the oath.
This is because, always in the history of the West, an open palm is
associated with "truth, honesty, loyalty and submission".
"Just like a dog will expose his throat to show submission or
surrender to the winner," they write, "humans use their palms to show that
they are unarmed and therefore not a threat."
➢ The lack of wrinkles around the eyes suggests a
potentially fake smile.
It is not yet clear whether one can really understand if someone is
pretending to make that smile that scientists call the "Duchenne smile"
(from the name of the doctor who described it first). It is the expression we
take when we are experiencing really positive emotions.
At one point, the researchers believed it was almost impossible to
fake a genuine smile on command. The smile, they said, is judged by the
crow's feet around the eyes. When you smile with joy, they hug. When you
pretend, you don't squeeze.
If someone is trying to look happy, but is actually not happy, you
won't see wrinkles.
More recently, a study conducted by researchers at North-eastern
University found that people are very good at faking a Duchenne smile,
even when they don't feel particularly happy. We can safely say that if the
expression folds are not there, the person is probably not genuinely happy.
But just because there are wrinkles, that doesn't necessarily mean that the
person is.

12 signs to understand that someone is lying to you

People tend to show some tell-tale physical signs when they are
dishonest. Of course, one who agitates, sweats or breathes irregularly may
simply be nervous (or naturally tend to sweat and be short of breath). So,
take it easy before you think someone is lying based on physical clues only.
However, if you notice some of these alarm bells, consider them. They
could help you unmask a liar about it.

1. They jerk their heads.

If you see someone suddenly move their head when you ask them a
direct question, it may be that they are lying to you about something.
"The head will be pulled back or jerked back, tilted down, or bent,
or turned to one side." This will usually happen a moment before the person
has to answer the question.

2. The rhythm of their breathing changes.

When someone is lying to you, they may begin to breathe heavily, it
is a reflex action. When their breathing changes, their shoulders will rise
and their voice may become weak, he adds. Basically, they are short of
breath because their heart rate and blood flow changes. The body
experiences this type of change when one is nervous and feels tense - when
one lies.

3. They repeat words or phrases.

This is because they are trying to persuade, and convince themselves
of something, says Glass. "They are trying to corroborate the lie in their
head." For example, he or she might say, "I didn't do it ... I didn't do it ...",
over and over again. Repetition is also a way of taking time, so that you can
better collect your thoughts, he adds. When someone has not been honest
and you ask further questions, they often try to slow down in answering.
"They try to think what to say next."

4. They instinctively cover the most vulnerable parts of the

body.
This could include parts such as the throat, chest, neck, head or
abdomen. “I often saw this in courtrooms when I worked as a prosecutor
consultant. I can always guess when someone's deposition hits an accused's
nerve when I see him or her covering his throat with one hand, "says Glass.
"I never fully appreciated the potential use of this revealing behavior
until I joined the FBI as a Special Agent," he said.

5. They touch their mouths or cover it.

"A tell-tale sign of who is lying is that that person will automatically
put his hands on his mouth when he doesn't want to address a question or
answer a question."
When adults put their hands on their lips, it means that they are not
saying everything, and that they simply do not want to tell the truth, "he
says. "They are literally closing the communication"

6. Drag your feet.

This is the body that takes over. Dragging your feet tells us that the
potential liar is uncomfortable and nervous. It also shows that he or she
wants to abandon that situation; they want to leave.
This is one of the key ways to catch a liar. Look at their feet and you
will understand a lot.

7. They give too much information.

When someone goes for long and gives you too much information -
information that has not been requested and especially an excess of detail -
there is a high possibility that he or she is not telling the truth. Liars often
talk a lot because they hope that, with all their talking and apparent being
open, others will believe him.
 8. They tend to point the finger.
When a liar becomes hostile or defensive, he is trying to turn the
conversation against you. The liar will become hostile because you have
discovered his lies, which can lead him to often point the finger.

9. They struggle to speak.

If you have ever watched videos of interrogating a suspect who is
guilty, you will have often noticed that it becomes increasingly difficult for
him or her to speak. "This happens because the autonomic nervous system
decreases salivation in times of stress, which obviously dries the mucous
membranes of the mouth."
Other signs to look for include suddenly biting your lips or
twitching them.

10.
They stare at you without blinking
When people are lying, eye contact is likely to break, but the liar
may try to keep eye contact in an attempt to control and manipulate you.
“[Bernie] Madoff, like most scammers, stared at people longer than
normal, often without closing their eyes at regular intervals,” says Glass.
When people tell the truth they sometimes look around and can even look
away at times. Liars, on the other hand, will use a cold, steady gaze to
intimidate and control.
Also pay attention to those who open and close their eyes quickly.

11.
They start to sweat.
When people lie, they tend to get nervous and feel uncomfortable.
And when you are nervous and uncomfortable, you tend to sweat.
Sweat droplets may develop on the upper lip or forehead. This is
because their autonomic nervous system is working harder.

12.
They fidget.
 Some people simply can't stand still. Others become agitated only
when they become nervous. If the person you are talking to always tends to
move too much or has a good reason to be worried, then pay no attention to
the excitement. In any case, the agitation can also be the sign that someone
is an inexperienced liar (the good ones are able to control their nerves).
Raised eyebrows are often a sign of discomfort
In the same way that a smile makes expression lines around the
eyes, according to University of Massachusetts professor Susan Krauss
Whitbourne in Psychology Today, concern, surprise or fear can lead people
to raise their eyebrows from embarrassment.
So, if someone compliments you on your hairstyle or how you dress
with your eyebrows raised, it may not be sincere.
➢ A pointing finger with a clenched hand is an attempt to
establish dominance.
If someone closes his hand into a fist and points his finger, he is
trying to show himself dominant, although it does not always work.
The hand-closed-with-finger-pointing is a fist in which the pointing
finger is used as a symbolic stick with which the speaker speaks
figuratively to his listeners leading them into submission.
At the subconscious level it evokes negative feelings in others
because it precedes a direct right, a primordial move that many primates
used in a physical attack.
If others mirror your body language, the conversation is probably
going well.
When two people get along, their positions and movements are
mirrored. When your best friend crosses his legs, you do too. If you went
out with someone and the date is going well, you will both be making the
same awkward hand movements.
This is so because we mirror ourselves when we feel a connection.
But if they look you in the eye for too long, they may lie
 In an attempt to avoid looking elusive, some liars will intentionally
stare you in the eye a little too long, so as to make you a little
uncomfortable.
They can also stay very still and not blink.
Meyer is CEO of Calibrate, a company that trains executives and
government officials in analyzing deceptive behavior. During the seminar
he listed a dozen behaviors to watch, but four are the basic ones of body
language.
➢ The uncertain shrug.
The uncertain shrug needs no explanation. Indicates doubt while
someone is trying to tell a convincing (and false) story.
➢ Failing to hold micro-expressions.
Micro-expressions are more difficult to recognize. They consist of
minimal movements on a person's face that indicate passing emotions. For
example, when questioned, a liar could momentarily show contempt for a
person being talked about.
➢ The "pleasure of deception".
"Pleasure to deceive" is the definition when someone smiles
inappropriately for the seriousness of the situation he is being questioned
about. However, it is important to recognize whether people smile when
they are truly happy. We already know the signs: small wrinkles around the
eyes, symmetrical smile and upturned corners of the mouth.
➢ Say no while nodding your head.
Say no while you say yes with your head is another sign that
someone might be lying. If someone is asked if he stole something, for
example, he might say, "Obviously not," while nodding his head
simultaneously. In this case, he is inadvertently telling the truth with body
language.
Before employing these techniques to recognize lies, it is important
to follow the guidelines: understanding what normal behavior for a person
is to notice when it has an unusual attitude. For this reason, he says, make
sure you are in a quiet room with visible escape routes and ask simple
questions like "How are you?", and "How are the kids?".
Eye contact shows interest - both positive and negative.
When you look someone in the eye, this generates a state of
excitement in the body.
How this excitement is interpreted, however, depends on the parties
involved and the circumstances.
Being stared at by a stranger who appears large or threatening can
be seen as a threat and provoke a fearful response ... But the gaze of a
potential sexual partner causes an excitement that can be interpreted
positively - as a sexual invitation.
Attraction or repulsion, interest or indifference. The eyes can
communicate our mood and our disposition towards other people. For this,
eye contact has great power. Knowing how to manage it can come in handy
when we fix the gaze of a girl on a bus or that of a potential employer
during an interview.
➢ An expansive pose signals power and success.
How people pose is a great clue to how they feel.
If someone leans and lies down, they probably feel powerful and in
control of the situation. In fact, research has found that even blind born
people raise their arms up high forming a V when they win a race.
The attraction is not communicated by a single gesture, but by a
sequence
Neuropsychologist Marsha Lucas suggests one to pay attention to:
“After making eye contact, she looks down a little, picks up her hair or
smoothest it and then looks up at you, still holding her chin in down".
There are many ways to easily increase your sex appeal. Take a dog
for a walk; playing good music, telling a joke.
Unfortunately, there are at least as many to sabotage him, for
example put a photo in which sprawled or with his arms crossed in the site
for online dating.
 Below, we have brought together all too common behaviors and
characteristics that can make it difficult to have an appointment; and only a
few have to do with your physical appearance.
➢ Lack of sleep.
After sleeping little we can look much less attractive.
In 2010, Swedish and Dutch researchers took photos of people who
had slept at least eight hours the previous night and people who hadn't slept
for 31 hours. Those who had not slept were judged less healthy and less
attractive.
Three years later, the researchers delved into the topic, and other
participants judged the people portrayed in the photos with different
criteria.
In general, they said that people who hadn't slept had "drooping
eyelids, red eyes, dark circles and pale skin." They even seemed sadder than
their more rested counterparts.
➢ Be bad.
In a 2014 Chinese study, the researchers pointed men and women to
photos of other people who all had neutral expressions.
Some of the photos were accompanied by the words "dignified" and
"honest"; others as "bad" and "evil"; still others were without information.
Participants ended up judging people who were described as bad
and evil as less attractive.
➢ Closed body language.
Power pose is a controversial topic within the scientific community.
A 2010 study found that expanding one's body can make you feel more
powerful and confident in if same, but one of the authors said recently that
the effects are not real.
However, a 2016 study conducted by researchers from the
University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, the University of
Texas at Austin and Northwestern University suggests that taking a position
like "power pose" may make you more attractive; while a contracted body
language will have the opposite effect.
In an experiment in this study, the researchers had created profiles
for men and women on a dating app that relied on GPS. In a set of profiles,
men and women were portrayed in contracted positions, for example with
their arms crossed or their shoulders curved.
In another set of profiles, the same men and women were portrayed
in more expansive positions, such as raising their V-shaped arms or
reaching for something.
The results showed that participants were more likely to choose
people in an expansive posture rather than contracted for an appointment.
And it turned out that men in contracted positions were particularly
disadvantaged.
➢ Stress.
Relax - you may look better.
A 2010 study by researchers in Finland, South Africa, Britain,
Latvia and Estonia found that Latvian women with high levels of the stress
hormone cortisol were perceived by Latvian heterosexual men as less
attractive.
Although men did not know the cortisol level of women (only
researchers knew them), it seemed to influence their perceived charm.
According to the researchers, it is possible that a low level of cortisol (and
stress) indicates health and fertility.
➢ Appearing very happy and too proud.
While happiness is generally considered attractive in women, girls
usually don't look for overly smiling guys.
On the contrary, while pride is traditionally considered attractive in
men, boys do not seem to prefer girls who appear proud.
In 2011, researchers from the University of British Columbia
conducted experiments on over 1,000 adults in North America, showing
them pictures of members of the opposite sex and asking them how
attractive people were in the photos.
The results showed that men rated women more attractive when
they looked happy and less attractive when they showed pride. Women, on
the other hand, found men who showed pride more attractive and those who
seemed happy less attractive.
It is unclear, however, whether these discoveries about charm are
applicable to different cultures. In a statement, the researchers said the
results likely reflect traditional Western values and gender rules; for
example, the idea that a man should appear "strong and silent" while a
woman "submissive and vulnerable".
➢ Do not have a sense of humor.
A 2009 study by researchers at the University of California in San
Diego found that not being witty - and even having an average sense of
humor - is considered less attractive than having a great sense of humor.
The study also found that it was not a gender issue - little sense of
humor is considered equally unattractive in men and women.
➢ Laziness.
The result of a series of experiments, published by researchers from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the State University of New York
in Binghamton in 2004, showed that perceived charm was connected to
traits such as availability.
In one experiment, the researchers asked students on a six-week
archaeology course to evaluate each other according to various personality
characteristics, and according to charm, at the beginning and end of the
course.
When the researchers analyzed the results, they found that even
students rated as attractive at the beginning of the course were ultimately
rated below average when their classmates perceived them as lazy
(uncooperative and slacker).
➢ If your smell is too similar or too different from that of
a potential partner.
 Science suggests that we humans seek out companions who are not
genetically neither too similar nor too different from us; and sometimes we
do these assessments based on body smell. In a 2006 study, conducted by
researchers at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, for example,
heterosexual couples were hired to answer questions about how attracted
they felt to their partner and how many other people they had had sex with
in the course of the relationship. At the same time, the researchers
examined the participants DNA. In particular, they wanted to compare their
major histocompatibility complex, which are genes of the immune system.
The researchers found that the more similar a couple's MHPs were,
the less attracted the participants were to their partners and the more likely
they had had sex outside the relationship.
At the same time, the study also found that we avoid people with a
smell that is too different from ours.
➢ Dishonesty.
If you are tempted to lie to look cooler, do not do it.
Research suggests that dishonesty is one of the main reasons for
separation for both men and women. For a 2006 study conducted at the
University of Western Ontario, participants had to read comments about
men and women who were described as intelligent or stupid, dependent or
independent, and honest and dishonest. Participants then judged the people
described based on several criteria, including how much they liked and how
charming they were. Honesty was discovered to be the only characteristic
of the three that substantially influenced judgments of charm and liking.
➢ Smoking and drinking too much.
In a 2016 study, the researchers recruited more than 200
heterosexual women in Belgium to show them photographs and biographies
of young men.
Men whose biographies indicated that they smoked frequently were
considered less charming than non-smokers and occasional smokers -
especially if a long-term relationship was considered.
 As for drinking, occasional drinkers were judged more attractive
than non-drinkers and frequent drinkers, considering both short- and long-
term relationships.
➢ Don't be humble.
Immodesty can kill romance - at least according to a 2014 study by
researchers from Hope College and the University of North Texas. During
two experiments, the researchers had about 200 students, mostly
heterosexual, read descriptions and personality assessments of a
hypothetical fellow student. The descriptions were varied - in some it was
written, “I am a fairly good student, but not a nerd.”. The others say, “I'm
smart, but I don't like attracting attention.". In others, "I am a really good
and very intelligent student, but certainly not a nerd or nerd: I think it
comes naturally to me."
When the students appeared very humble, their classmates were
more likely to want to start a relationship with them.
➢ Discordant political preferences.
When the staff becomes political.
A 2016 study published by researchers from the University of
California of Merced and California State University from Stanislaus
suggests that our political views influence our appeal criteria. For the
study, conducted during the 2012 election campaign, around 850 US adults
indicated whether they identified themselves more with Democrats or with
Republicans. Then, the participants looked at a photo and a short biography
of a person of the opposite gender. In some cases, the biography indicated
whether the person supported Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. Democratic
women were found to find the portrayed man much more attractive if he
was an Obama supporter and much less attractive if he supported Romney.
Men also found the woman much less attractive when she supported the
opposite party. But they didn't consider her much more attractive if she
supported the same party.
Obviously, it's not about changing your political views to appear
more attractive to others. It is only proof of the myriad of factors that define
our sentimental preferences.
 ➢ Crossed legs are usually a sign of endurance and low
receptivity and are a negative sign in a negotiation.
On two thousand negotiations videotaped by Gerard I. Nierenberg
and Henry H. Calero, authors of “How to Read a Person Like a Book”,
there was no agreement when one of the negotiators had the legs crossed.
"Psychologically the crossed legs indicate that a person is mentally,
emotionally and physically closed," writes psychologist Travis Bradberry -
which could mean that he will give less during a negotiation.
Strange psychological mechanisms that
explain why we sometimes act absurdly
Do you think you know why you think and act in a certain way?
You are probably wrong. Decades of psychological research suggest that
people behave in mysterious and absurd ways, which leave even themselves
perplexed.
We sifted through the conversation on Quora (a social network on
which users can post questions and answers) on: "What are some of the
most shocking things about social psychology?" and we came up with the
most fascinating discoveries. (Some don't really fall into the field of social
psychology, but we thought it appropriate to include them).
Read on and find out why we judge other opinions while we
consider ourselves victims of circumstances; because people in power eat
more disorderly and because we would be more likely to get an electric
shock than to sit alone for more than 15 minutes (really!).

1. Herd effect: we often adapt the opinion of the majority,

even when the majority is clearly wrong.
People often get to do amazing things just to conform to the
majority opinion. In the 1950s, Asch had planned an experiment in which
participants saw three lines and were asked which one was the longest. One
line was obviously longer than the others.
With each repetition of the experiment, a single participant was
surrounded by a group of accomplices, who unanimously claimed that one
of the shortest lines was actually the longest. Well, at least once three
quarters of the participants lined up with the rest of the group.
In 2005 the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Gregory Berns replicated
the experiment and obtained similar results. Bern also scanned the
participants brains during the experiment and thus determined that the
pressure group is actually the cause of the change in perception of reality
that occurs in people, while dissenting from the group causes people to feel
emotionally uncomfortable.
 2. We don't always realize that the environment has a huge
impact on our behavior
According to a research, in countries where driving licenses have a
box that must be crossed to deny consent to organ donation, the consent rate
is significantly higher than in countries where there is a box to tick to say to
say "Yes".
Making a decision is difficult so people often resort to the default
option.

3. The beam and the straw: we are much more severe with
others than with ourselves.
The "fundamental attribution error", also known as "correspondence
bias", explains our tendency to believe that other people's mistakes are the
result of personality defects, while our mistakes are the result of
circumstantial factors.
So, if someone hits us on the sidewalk, we take it for granted that he
is an idiot, rather than thinking that he can go in a hurry so as not to miss
his son's school play. But if we hit someone on the sidewalk, we know we
are good people and that we simply hurry to not miss a meeting.
The phenomenon is an elementary part of how we think and process
information and how we experience what surrounds us.

4. We hate sitting alone so much that many of us would

rather be subjected to electric shock.
A Quora user reported a 2014 study that found that sitting alone
without stimulation for 10-20 minutes is more painful for some people than
receiving electric shock. An incredible 64% of men have inflicted at least
one shock during the time they should have simply spent thinking. Fifteen
percent of women did the same.
This happened despite the fact that, in an earlier part of the study,
the men had said that the shock was something so annoying that they would
pay to avoid the experience.
 The study authors wrote that "it may be particularly difficult to
direct our thoughts to pleasant things and keep them there," which is why
many people try to control their thoughts through techniques such as
meditation. "Without this training, people prefer to do rather than think,
even if what they do is so unpleasant that they would normally pay for not
doing it."

5. We can easily be tricked into paying more than we want.

Basically, we all tend to take the bait effect.

6. When we feel powerful, we are more greedy, rude and

overbearing.
Kevin Coe puts the spotlight on a study that examines how power
affects behavior.
The researchers divided the participants into groups of three and
named some people as leaders, who are expected to score others based on
how much they contribute. What comes out, when the experimenter appears
with a plate with five biscuits, is that those named leaders are more likely to
take a second biscuit and chew it with their mouths open, dirtying the table
with crumbs.
In a meta-analysis of multiple studies like these, the researchers
argue that "power also triggers more pernicious forms of aggression" such
as sexual harassment, in cultures where women are subordinated to men, or
crimes against minorities.

7. We rely too heavily on the first "piece" of information

we hear when making a decision.
Imagine someone asking if Gandhi was 100 years older when he
died; now imagine someone asking if Gandhi was younger than 20 when he
died. If in both cases you tried to estimate how old Gandhi was when he
died, you will tend to give a higher estimate in the first case since the
anchor (100) was higher.
Even experts can still fall victim to the effect without realizing it. In
a 1987 research, the experimenters sent a group of undergraduates and
volunteer realtors to visit a property for sale and then later show them the
market value. Some participants saw a higher price than others.
Obviously when the participants were asked to estimate the value of
the property and the purchase price, those who had seen a higher price
provided higher numbers. Interesting is how real estate agents were
generally less sensitive than undergraduates to the fact that the market value
seen had influenced their estimates.

8. It is easier to behave unethically when you are part of a

"pack" that guarantees anonymity.
Dylan James refers to "de individualization" and specifically to a
brilliant 1976 study of that phenomenon, described in detail in Scientific
American.
The researchers wanted to know under what conditions children
who turned around for trick or treat would get extra candy. On Halloween,
the investigators lurked in the Seattle homes and opened the doors to the
children. Halfway through the experiment, the experimenter asked the
children for their names and where they lived. For the other half, he asked
for nothing. In both cases, the experimenter told the children that they could
take only one candy from the plate, and then went away to do something.
As a result, children tended to take extra candy if they were part of an
anonymous group, while they tended not to do it if they revealed their name
or went around the houses alone.
The lesson here seems to be that when we are in a group, we tend to
be less inhibited and to act in a less socially acceptable way.

9. We pay attention only to what we are paying attention to

at that moment.
The invisible gorilla experiments
We are not observers at all as we think we are. We don't pay
attention to most of our surroundings because we are too focused on what
catches our attention at any given moment.
Schwekendiek cites a classic experiment known as "the gorilla test".
For the experiment, psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
created a short film in which a team dressed in white and one dressed in
black pass the basketball. Participants are asked to count the number of
passes made by both whites and blacks. Halfway through the video, a
woman dressed as a gorilla crosses the field, beating her chest and then
disappears from the screen. It is on the screen for a total of 9 seconds.
About half of the thousands of people who watched the video don't
notice the gorilla, presumably because they are so focused on counting ball
passes. Obviously when asked if they would notice the gorilla in this
situation almost everyone said yes.

10.
We like someone more after we have done
him a favor.
James Saker emphasizes the psychological phenomenon known as
the "Ben Franklin Effect". Apparently, Franklin asked one of his detractors
to borrow a book from his library; the man felt flattered and soon became
his friend. The moral of the story is: ask someone to do you a favor and
they will like you more, rather than less than you might have thought.
Researchers tested this theory in 1969 and found confirmation.
For the experiment, some volunteers would participate in a study
where they could win money.
A third of the volunteers were approached by the secretary who
explained to them that the psychology department had paid for the study
and that the funds were running out, thus asking the volunteers to return the
payment. Another third was approached by the investigator who told him
that he himself had paid for the study and the funds were running out,
asking them to return the payment. At the last third the money was left.
The results showed that the volunteers who had to return the money
liked the experimenter more than those who kept the money.

11.
Our unwavering self-motivation can be
undermined by external and unrelated influencers.
 Self-determination theory is a framework used by psychology to
understand human motivation. The theory was developed by Edward L.
Deci and Richard M. Ryan, and has since been expanded by other
researchers. According to research by Deci and Ryan, when you perform an
intrinsically interesting activity and are then rewarded for it, the intrinsic
motivation (do something because we like it) can, in some cases, then
decrease. Think of receiving a monetary bonus for reaching your goals on
the job and feeling less inclined to work hard immediately afterwards.
Nicolas Connault writes that this idea is often unpopular "because it
essentially means you cannot directly control someone's motivation". And
he adds: "Although this effect has been extremely well researched and is
also cross-cultural, most people simply don't accept it because it seems too
counterintuitive."
➢ Contracted jaw, tight neck or frowning face show
stress.
All of these are "limbic responses" associated with the limbic
system in the brain. "Emotion, detection and reaction to threats, as well as
ensuring our survival, are all heavy responsibilities of the limbic system,"
writes former FBI law enforcement agent Joe Navarro.
“The bus leaves without us, and we clench our jaws, rub our necks.
We are asked to work another weekend and the orbits of our eyes narrow as
our chin drops. " Humans have shown unease in this way for millions of
years, Navarro says.
The bad news is that nobody is totally immune to anxiety. There are
those who suffer more and less, but stress and worries affect everyone
indiscriminately. In Europe, according to data released by the EPA
(European Association of Psychiatry), the number of anxiety sufferers
would be 61 million, including eight in Italy. The good news, however, is
that there are tools to fight it. Numerous researches show that a variety of
activities, hobbies, are able to reduce anxiety levels in people.
If people repeatedly touch their face or hands, they are probably
nervous
Navarro told Business Insider that we have evolved to show
nervousness without having to use words. Some of the most common
manifestations of our anxiety? Touch our face and rub the skin on our
hands. Both can be soothing behaviors when you feel uncomfortable.
"It's funny how often we touch each other under stress," said
Navarro.
If they laugh with you, they probably like you!
If someone is receptive to your mood, they are probably interested
in you. Evolutionary psychologists say that humor - and the positive
reception of humor - play a fundamental role in human development. They
serve as a way to signal desire for a relationship, both platonic and
romantic.
➢ The expansive and authoritative positions show an
attitude of leadership.
Whether they are innate or learned, there are a number of signs and
behaviors that people use when they feel they are leaders, or at least try to
convince others that they are leaders. These include maintaining an upright
posture, walking with decision, drumming the fingers and other gestures
with the palms of the hands down, and generally open and expansive body
positions.
During the holidays it is best to avoid any discussion, at least when
possible. But if it were really impossible, then you might want to use some
scientific argument that proves you right.
It would seem, in fact, that if you want to convince someone that
your explanation - of whatever it is - is the best possible, you should stick to
some useless (though accurate) information that comes from a secondary
connected scientific field.
The motivation is simple: people consider an explanation more
credible when you can attach additional information from a respected field
of study to it.
And although it is a new result, it is only one of the many cognitive
distortions that we have in favor of certain types of explanations.
In particular, we tend to believe that longer explanations are better
than short ones and we prefer explanations that highlight a goal or a reason
why things happen, even if these things don't actually help us understand
the phenomenon.
Like the authors of this most recent document, other researchers
before them have shown that we prefer psychology explanations that
contain “logically irrelevant neuro-scientific information”: it is something
known as the “seductive recall effect”.
As former Tech Insider correspondent Drake Baer said, writing
about a previous study on the same topic, “if you're trying to explain why
someone did something, you can count on the neurobabble (the jargon used
by neuroscientists) to make it sound more convincing”.
All those references to the brain sound like they could really explain
the ways in which our head works, although neuroscience is still a field we
know little about.
Explanations that refer to what happens in the brain are believed to
be most convincing.
But so far researchers have not known whether this strategy for
winning in debates was limited to the use of neuroscience to "explain"
psychology, or whether it can be used to explain other areas of science as
well.
The Upenn team theorized that people might generally prefer
arguments that refer to the most basic sciences, even if those references do
not contribute to the explanation.
They call this type of argument a reductive explanation "since it
reduces a science to more fundamental parts).
To test this theory, researchers created a hierarchy of sciences in
increasing order of importance: social sciences, psychology, neuroscience,
biology, chemistry and ultimately physics.
They recruited college students and people on "Amazon Mechanical
Turk " and presented them with a survey designed to understand if
unnecessary reductive information would push them to consider the "best"
explanations.
 In any case, the researchers offered four possible explanations for a
scientific concept: a good explanation, a good explanation that also includes
additional reductive information, a bad explanation and a bad explanation
that includes reductive information.
What would have happened if Trump's opponents had used
"unnecessary information to support their arguments”?
As a general rule, their hypotheses have not been successful - people
think that explanations that have useless information containing details
about a more "fundamental" science are usually better.
Good explanations count and have been voted better than bad
explanations (even if bad explanations had reductive information).
Adding unnecessary reductive information really made a difference
when researchers added neuroscience to an explanation of psychological
science.
Participants trusted psychology less and - in the exception to the
general rule - did not believe that adding psychological explanations to the
social sciences could make those explanations more credible (although
these results in particular were not statistically relevant).
The study participants actually considered the most rigorous and
prestigious neuroscience of the sciences considered as more fundamental by
researchers (biology, chemistry and physics).
This may explain the great effect that neuro-scientific explanation
has when added to psychological science explanations.
Those summoned by Mechanical Turk felt that the explanations
with reductive information were better than the students believed. That
information made a big difference to them, but it was less significant for the
students.
Different groups of people will end up evaluating information in
different ways, and none of these groups of people can accurately represent
how the whole population evaluates information.
People who are more inclined to logical reasoning have better
managed to evaluate the explanation carefully (giving less credit to
reductive information).
Researchers believe this could mean that philosophers who have
studied logic are less susceptible to this cognitive distortion.
People who knew more about science were also more able to
recognize a good explanation from a bad one.
So, the next time you read an explanation of something, check to see
if the author is adding unnecessary information to support his argument,
making you more inclined to believe it for all the wrong reasons.
And if you can convince someone of something, you can check if
adding a little detail from the scientific background helps you to bring the
discussion to your side. The only thing tries to rely on a science other than
psychology.
➢ An agitated leg signals an agitated inner state.
The legs are the largest area of our body, so when they move, it's
hard for others to miss it. A trembling leg signals anxiety, irritation, or both.
➢ A smile mentioned along with direct eye contact could
be an attempt at seduction.

Riggio's research suggests that there is a specific type of smile when

trying to act seductively.
Typically, they show a positive interest with a slight smile that
accompanies direct eye contact, then slowly look away, but always keeping
the smile.
It is interesting to note that the seductive smile could be
accompanied by submissive behavior (tilting the head downwards), or by
dominant behavior - looking away with pride and slowness.
If the inner corners of the eyebrows don't move up and inward,
people are probably not as sad as they seem
Psychologist Paul Ekman uses the term "reliable muscles" for face
muscles that cannot be contracted voluntarily.
 Psychologist Matthew Hertstein, explained how to apply Ekman's
research: “If you observe a person who expresses sadness both verbally and
with his face, but the inner corners of the eyebrows do not move down and
towards the inside, it might not be sad at all. He is unable to contract those
muscles voluntarily despite his best efforts.”
If one side of their face is more active than the other side, people
may be faking their feelings.
Hertstein writes: “The vast majority of facial expressions of
emotions are bilateral, that is, they occur equally on both sides of the face ...
The next time you tell a joke, look to see if the listener's smile is
symmetrical when he laughs.”
Obvious signals for interpreting and
understanding Body Language
How to read body language, that is, that part of non-verbal
communication that accompanies, strengthens and often changes the
meaning of a message transmitted verbally?
Stay with us, you will learn to interpret every minimal gesture of the
body and facial mimic thanks to this complete analysis of 70 signals.
In fact, this part of communication is very important in human
relationships, both those that take place in the workplace and those that take
place in private life.
In particular, it assumes a relevant part in the relationship between
man and woman, in that the language of the female body is different from
the language of the male body.
To better carry out the interpretation of body language, help can
come from proxemics, a discipline that precisely studies distances within
proximity relationships.
Would you ever have thought that flirting could be the subject of a
scientific discipline?

This chapter is intended to be nothing more than a practical guide to

reading body language, signs of attraction and, more generally, to non-
verbal language: if you are nodding your head and sitting with your body
leaning forward, it is very likely that you are interested in the topic, so read
on.

1.
How to understand body language.
The first thing to say, when it comes to non-verbal communication,
is that it is very difficult to decipher because body language is not an exact
science. However, there are some signs that, in a fairly certain way, can be
associated with a specific meaning.
 For convenience, scholars usually group body language signals into
groups and subgroups that refer to the parts of the body to which they
belong; we too, in our practical guide to body languages, will resort to this
type of subdivision. The parts of the body that we will analyze are the
following: eyes, mouth, head, arms, hands, handshakes, legs and feet,
personal space.
If you are moving your head quickly you are probably quite
impatient to know how to read body language and so…. here we go.

1.1. Eyes.
The eyes have a huge importance in our body language: just think
that the human being is capable of making eye contact with another human
being even 30/40 meters away.
There is also a close relationship between the eyes and the brain:
looking to the right is typical of someone who is in a creative phase, while
looking to the left usually has to do with memory. Here is a possible reading
of some signals that we send to others (or that others send to us) through the
eyes:
➢ Looking to the right indicates creating, manufacturing
with the imagination (also in the sense of lying); if below it can
mean that the person is drawing from his inner sensations or that he
has feelings;
➢ Looking left means using memory, remembering,
recovering facts; if upwards, they indicate security and certainty;
➢ Direct eye contact when speaking indicates honesty,
but it can also be flaunted by liars who know they are lying; while
listening it indicates interest, attention, sometimes physical
attraction;
➢ Eyes widening is also a signal of sexual interest;
➢ Rubbing your eyes or an eye indicates amazement,
disbelief, disturbance, in some cases boredom or need to sleep;
 ➢ Rolling one's eyes can mean resignation and / or
frustration;
➢ Dilating the pupils may in some cases indicate
excitement or desire;
➢ Blinking can indicate excitement or agitation; if the
eyes are fixed this can indicate concentration or, when turned
towards someone, hostility;
➢ Raising the eyebrows (or just one eyebrow)
corresponds to a friendly greeting when the action is short-lived
(flash eyebrow); if the eyebrows remain raised longer this indicates
surprise, fear, perplexity;
➢ Winking indicates complicity.

1.2. Mouth
The mouth is associated with many body languages cues, whether or
not there is verbal communication. Smiling is undoubtedly one of the first
signs of openness to others, but there are many types of smile, some of
which may also indicate refusal.
Let's find out the meaning of various signals associated with this
part of our body:
➢ Smiling only with the mouth indicates a false, not
sincere smile;
➢ Smiling through gritted teeth means rejection, dislike
or distrust;
➢ Smiling asymmetrically, with only one part of the
face, indicates sarcasm or contrast;
➢ Protruding the lower lip indicates that you are irritated
or moved (about to cry);
➢ Laughing with your mouth open indicates,
accompanying the laughter with body movements, that we feel
comfortable;
➢ Biting one's lips indicates nervousness or tension (in
some cases, however, nibbling one's lips can also be a sexual
 invitation);
➢ Teeth grinding indicates worry, anxiety, fear;
➢ Chewing a pen or pencil has a self-reassuring function
like sucking your thumb and in some cases smoking a cigarette;
➢ Putting the tongue in the center of the mouth indicates
refusal, it is in fact the gesture we make when we put something we
don't like in our mouth;
➢ Covering your mouth with one or two hands is an
unconscious gesture of self-regulation that indicates shock,
amazement, sometimes embarrassment, as it is as if we wanted to
block words so as not to express something wrong;
Nail biting is the result of a situation of stress, anxiety and
frustration, for some it represents a form of aggression towards oneself.
1.3. Head
The head tends to determine the general direction of the body, but it
is also a very vulnerable part as it contains the brain. Since it rests on a very
flexible structure (the neck) the head can move in practically all directions
and all these movements are associated with the meanings of body
language:
➢ Nodding your head means that you agree with our
interlocutor, but if you do it too slowly it could actually be a sign of
falsehood, too fast of impatience;
➢ Raising the head upwards indicates pride, arrogance
but in some cases also courage, vigilance;
➢ Tilting the head to one side indicates submission, the
exposure of the neck is a sign of confidence;
➢ Leaning your head forward communicates interest,
positivity, if instead downwards it can indicate reproach or
disapproval;
➢ Shaking your head, especially if vigorously, indicates
disagreement;
➢ Bowing your head on your chest indicates shame,
abandonment, defeat.
 1.4. Arms
The arms are fairly reliable indicators of a person's mood: clenching
the arms for example indicates defense, while opening the arms, keeping
the palms open forward, communicates safety and openness.
We see other signs that you can communicate through the body
language associated with the arms, also in combination with other parts of
the body:
➢ Crossing arms and legs is a sign of defense, if the fists
are also closed of hostility;
➢ Girding one arm with the other, a typical gesture of
women, indicates nervousness or self-protection;
➢ Bringing your arms behind your back with folded
hands, typical of men, indicates strength, authority, self-confidence;
➢ Resting an arm on the table with an object on the
opposite side can indicate nervousness, as well as scratching an arm
or shoulder with the opposite hand;
➢ Holding the arm in front of the body, especially if with
the hand close to the genitals, indicates defense, self-protection (it is
typical of women who hold the shoulder bag on the front as if they
want to create an additional barrier).

1.5. Language of hands

The body language that involves the hands is really wide, also
because they tend to interact with many other parts of the body; moreover,
the manual gestures only partially respond to a voluntary action, most of the
time they are involuntary movements, such as touching one's nose.
Examples of conscious signals are making the okay with the thumb
up or greeting; sometimes we also use our hands voluntarily to
communicate, for example, the size of an object. Here are the possible
interpretations of some signals with the hands:
➢ Raising the open palm upwards is a sign of
submission, honesty and peace given that "you have no weapon in
your hand";
 ➢ Raising the hands in front of the face with the fingers
open is a defensive position, sometimes offensive as well as
bringing the hands or fists downwards;
➢ Put your hand on the heart indicates sincerity,
willingness to be believed;
➢ Pointing the finger at a person is a signal of threat,
aggression; if the finger is pointed upwards, it is typical of a person
who wants to add emphasis to what he is saying;
➢ Moving the index from one side to the other
communicates refusal;
➢ Resting the tips of the fingers of one hand on those of
the other hand forming a triangle is typical of someone who is
reflecting or explaining something complex; moving your fingertips
on each other as if imitating a spider on a mirror increases
concentration and reflection;
➢ Moving the palms of the hands facing downwards and
downwards corresponds to the urge to keep calm (a gesture often
used by teachers to keep a class at bay);
➢ Rubbing your hands together indicates a positive
expectation, savoring a win or a pleasant result in advance;
➢ Touching or scratching your nose with your hands
while speaking indicates that you are lying or exaggerating the
content of information.
➢ Covering your ears with your hands is a gesture of
refusal, instead pulling the earlobe can indicate indecision;
➢ Caressing your chin with your hands, a rare gesture in
women but frequent in men, indicates that you are thinking about
something; if the hand supports the chin it means that we are
pondering what to do about something, but if the action is prolonged
it can also indicate tiredness, boredom;
➢ Scratching the neck usually indicates doubt, disbelief;
➢ Squeezing the wrist with one hand can indicate
anxiety, worry, especially if the wrist is rotated inside the hand
several times.
➢ Putting your hands in your pockets indicates
disinterest, boredom, refusal to take action.
 1.6. Handshakes
The firmness of a handshake once reserved only for men, but now
also extended to women, is not a reliable indicator of firmness of character
but many believe it is. However, the handshake is able to say many things
about us and our relationship with others:
➢ Handshake with palm down indicates dominance,
willingness to take over;
➢ Handshake with the palm upwards communicates
openness, hospitality;
➢ Two-handed handshake in some cases indicates
honesty, reliability, affection, in others paternalism or attempt to
control the person in front of you (even when the second encircles
the opposite arm);
➢ Vigorous handshake indicates enthusiasm, attempt to
transfer energy to others;
➢ Weak handshake is not necessarily related to a
submissive character, it often depends on other factors such as
mood, gender membership, age, profession (musicians or surgeons
may have delicate handshakes because the hands they are their work
tool therefore to be treated with caution);
➢ Firm handshake also in this case avoid associating
with a strong character, it could instead be an attempt to mask one's
weakness or wrong intentions such as the will to hide or do harm.

1.7. Legs and feet

Legs and feet can provide good clues to feelings and moods, as long
as you can decipher the signs.
However, always keep in mind that the position of the legs also
affects gender (males usually tend to keep the legs more open than women),
education and age (the elderly both for joint problems and for education
tend to keep narrower legs when seated only):
➢ Crossed legs when seated indicate prudence,
confidentiality (in some cases if you also show disinterest), those
open availability, openness;
 ➢ Parallel legs with knees well closed when seated are
typical female attitude indicating good manners or fear;
➢ Pointing the knees towards someone with crossed legs
indicates interest in that person;
➢ Closing the cross legs keeping the legs independent is
a secure posture that denotes an open, unconventional character; if,
on the other hand, the legs are surrounded by the arms, the position
indicates self-protection;
➢ Legs open when seated (especially in males) indicate
arrogance, self-confidence, in some cases generalized sexual interest
(the knees not only pointed towards a single subject but towards a
wider audience);
➢ Legs entwined while seated (in the female) may
indicate sexual interest as the inner part of the thigh is exposed or
insecurity, seeking protection (especially if with the hands placed on
the inside);
➢ Clenching your knees with your hands while sitting
with your legs parallel indicates a defensive attitude, or that you are
uncomfortable.

1.8. Personal space in body language

The study of personal space, that is, of the distance that people take
from each other, is called proxemics. Proxemics is one of the most
important aspects of body language and its interpretation.
In general, personal space is defined as the amount of space that
people find comfortable between themselves and others; this amount of
space or distance obviously depends on many factors related to education,
culture, situation and type of relationship.
In Western culture there are 5 areas of personal space:
➢ Small intimate space (distance 0-15 cm), it is the space
reserved for lovers, those who do not have an intimate relationship
are unlikely to exceed 6 cm from each other;
➢ Intimate space (distance 15-45cm) typical of those
who have intimate relationships but also of close friends, or by
 those who play sports together with other people (in some cases
such as on public transport or in very crowded places you can reach
these levels of distance with unknown people, but without the space
becoming intimate);
➢ Personal space (45-120 cm) is that reserved for family
and close friends;
➢ Social space (1.2-3.6 m) concerns the sphere of our
social and professional relationships, where there is interaction but
no physical contact between people except in some cases
handshakes, pats on the shoulders;
➢ Public space (over 3.6m) is the minimum distance we
take from others when we don't want to interact (when someone
violates this space this creates confusion and discomfort if an
interaction is not established immediately).

2.
Body language in intimate relationships.
How can you tell if a man is interested in a woman or vice versa?
Again, proxemics may help.
In fact, when two people of the opposite sex are flirting, their body
language changes to send precise signals to the partner: it is what we
commonly call courtship.
Here therefore, through the interpretation of the language of the
female body and of the male body language it is possible to understand
whether there is a mutual interest or not. The most common female signs of
interest in a male are:
➢ Make eye contact and then look away (especially if
repeated several times);
➢ Widen your eyes;
➢ Blinking;
➢ Dilate the pupil (also indicates excitement);
➢ Lower your head slightly to one side showing your
neck;
➢ Smiling repeatedly;
 ➢ Moisten or part lips;
➢ Curl your lips as if to kiss or pout;
➢ Straighten or touch your hair;
➢ Show the inner wrist or forearm (erogenous zones
such as the neck);
➢ Straighten posture (especially the chest);
➢ Touching the thighs or other sexually attractive part of
the body;
➢ Lean forward towards the person of interest;
➢ Point the foot or knee towards the partner;
➢ Move your foot left and right (or out and in the shoe);
➢ Synchronize gestures and positions with your partner
as in the mirror (mirroring).
The male interest in a woman (or in general towards all women as
the male is by nature less selective) manifests itself through these signals of
non-verbal communication giving life to this type of male language in
courtship:
➢ Take an upright position with your chest out and your
belly in;
➢ Spread the legs (standing or sitting) to increase the
size;
➢ Put your thumbs in the belt loops with your fingers
facing the genital area (cowboy position);
➢ Speak out loud or make other gestures like wiggling
your head or pounding your chest to get attention;
➢ Inspect the room with your eyes (looking for prey or
to measure opponents);
➢ Adjust clothes (e.g. tie, collar or cuffs).
➢ Both in the case of the female body language and the
male body language, of course, always be very careful not to draw
hasty conclusions on the basis of a single signal: it is always better
to rely on a set of coherent signals to avoid getting dazzled and
blunder!
 The 5 Keys to Successful Non-Verbal Communication

Your body says at least as much as your mouth.

Clear and effective communication is essential during a
presentation, whether it is a room full of managers, a conference auditorium
or a class full of students. The information we convey verbally is vital, but
how we present it can make a difference in what will remain in the memory
of our audience. To awaken the attention in our audience and help our
listeners to remember what we have told them, an indispensable tool will
help us: body language or non-verbal communication.
Let's see how!
Australian researchers, considered to be among the world's leading
language experts, Allan and Barbara Pease, have defined that 83% of
communication is non-verbal. We therefore cannot think of doing without
it if we want to communicate successfully. Ideally also looking for the
union of non-verbal communication with the appropriate persuasion
strategies.
To better understand how verbal and non-verbal communication can
affect the audience, it is useful to see the results of a research carried out in
4 different American universities. The research involved 80 students
divided into 4 classes, one per university. In each of these classes 4 different
teachers were sent as "special guests" to present the same topic.
Two of the teachers presented the topic with effective non-verbal
communication, while the other two used poor non-verbal communication.
Non-verbal communication includes several elements to consider,
below you will find the most important ones and how they were put into
practice by the various instructors and the result obtained with the students.

1.
Eye contact. The effective non-verbal teacher tried
to establish eye contact with each student throughout the
presentation; the teacher with poor non-verbal language has
 always kept his gaze fixed on the Power Point slides he was
projecting, looking only sporadically at the students.
2.
Change in tone of voice. The effective non-verbal
teacher varied her tone of voice during the presentation trying
to emphasize the highlights; the teacher with poor non-verbal
language maintained a medium and calm tone of voice
throughout the presentation.
3.
Location in the room. The effective non-verbal
teacher used a pointer for Power Point slides, moving up and
down the room; the teacher with poor non-verbal language
remained standing behind the desk using the mouse to navigate
the Power Point.
4.
Facial expressions and posture. The effective non-
verbal teacher used a variety of enthusiastic facial expressions;
the teacher with poor non-verbal language maintained a
moderate and flat facial expression.
5.
Hand gestures. The effective non-verbal teacher
moved his hands showing his palms several times in the
audience, the teacher with poor non-verbal language kept his
hands on the desk for the whole time of the presentation.
After the presentations, each class took the same test concerning the
topics just dealt with. The classes that followed the presentation of the
teacher who used non-verbal communication effectively scored on average
30% higher. The students also had very interesting comments regarding the
different presentations: Classes with effective non-verbal communication:
• "Except that he seemed to know what he was talking about,
I wouldn't have trusted him or listened to him."
• (Teacher comment) "Body language, in general, can
certainly say a lot about the knowledge of an interlocutor on the
subject."
 • Sometimes when teachers are talking, I can't pay attention
because I'm bored, but I listened to this carefully.
Classes with poor non-verbal communication:
• I got easily distracted and started scribbling on my paper. I
listened to the first half of the presentation, but I don't remember
anything about the second half.
• I tried to be careful, but at some point, my head wandered
about, I tried to focus on the Power Point slides ... but that didn't work
either.
• The next time you have to make a presentation for a client or
at a conference, remember: you are saying with your body at least
what you are saying with your voice.
Emotional manipulation: what it is and how
it works
Affective manipulation: a subtle art of controlling people: definition
and functioning
In the world there are different forms of manipulation; from
advertising to marketing, to political leaders who manage to obtain the
consent of their constituents unconditionally. Then there is extortion, insults
up to blackmail. Bullying is also a manipulative attitude if we want to.
These are tactics implemented, mainly for "economic" purposes or
of mere power, to subject a person to his will. To achieve this goal there is
also emotional manipulation, where the manipulator is a person to whom
one is emotionally tied. In this sense, one can decline up to emotional
manipulation.
This type of conditioning is extremely widespread, often
underestimated and "under diagnosed". Emotional manipulation works very
well in emotional interpersonal relationships: sentimental relationships,
friendships, family and work relationships. However, often associated with
emotional dependence, it is always a form of psychological violence. There
are two actors that come into play in these dynamics: the executioner -
understood as the manipulator - and the victim, the one who is subjugated.
Awareness is required to recognize this subtle form of psychological
abuse. That is to understand in detail what emotional manipulation is, how
it manifests itself and how it works.

What is affective manipulation?

Our behavior is not influenced exclusively by television or politics,
indeed, the best manipulators (or worst, depending on the point of view) we
have them by our side, in everyday life. It can be a friend, a son, a parent, a
companion, we ourselves could be the manipulators. So, what is emotional
manipulation? A behavioral form in which a person submits to his will by
leveraging his feelings.
 How does emotional manipulation work?
The goal of the manipulator is, very trivially, to get what he wants.
Sometimes its purpose can coincide with material interests, even if - who
suffers from such a pathology - almost always aims at a completely
different goal, namely the possession, influence and total control of a
person or more people. These are the purposes on which emotional
manipulation is based. The main function is the emotional lever put in place
towards those who intend to submit to their will.
The methods that the manipulator puts in place are different and can
lead to a wide variety of behaviors. However, at their basis there are well-
defined strategies through which it is possible to create a sick relationship,
within which the targeted subject is in a state of unconscious submission.
Emotional manipulation works when the perpetrator (manipulator)
leverages the emotions it engenders in the victim's soul.
One of the main feelings used is guilt. To achieve this, we resort to
the technique of victimization, through which the manipulator manages to
transform himself into a victim by placing the role of executioner on the
other side. In this case, the exaltation of the consequences suffered by the
"victim" (manipulator) due to the actions of others occurs.

How to identify a manipulator

To identify the manipulator, the right weapon is to observe its

behaviors and scrutinize the emotions that arise from it. Manipulators are
passive attackers. What does it mean? That they almost never attack
directly but that, on the contrary, assume subtle attitudes to silently
insinuate a certain influence into the victim. Silence, nervousness,
indifference is some of the symptoms of the passive-aggressive modality.
Lies are another specialty of the manipulators, who, in order to deny
their mistakes, influence the victim by questioning their abilities,
convincing them not to remember well or paradoxically that they have
manipulated the circumstances to achieve their purpose.
 Another strategy is that of false support. The manipulator acts in
such a way as to appear as the first of the supporters, the first of the friends,
a person who can be trusted. The total confidence that is had towards him
leads the victim to lower his defenses, and this is precisely the right
moment to hit her.

7 Signs That Reveal That You Are A Victim of Emotional

Manipulation

Emotional manipulation is a phenomenon that happens much more

often than you imagine. You have probably been involved in it several times
even if you didn't realize it.
Maybe you are an emotional manipulator yourself…. if so, be
humble to recognize it by reading this section and change your attitude to
improve your life and that of those who trust you.
There are people who do emotional manipulation consciously,
others unconsciously.
The former knows exactly what to say or do to push the right
buttons and get what they want from you.
It is therefore essential to be able to discern the behavior of an
emotional manipulator in order to avoid its emotional trauma and the
damage (even permanent) that it brings.

Here are 7 signs that reveal that you are a victim of emotional
manipulation:

1.
Makes you feel guilty for his transgressions.
An emotional manipulator is always a master at making you feel
guilty. He will find any way (to exclude himself) to put responsibility for
his actions on others. The situations can be the most varied, if they are late
for a meeting it is because you have not been clear with the timetable, if all
the job interviews go wrong it is because its potential is not actually
understood.
The ultimate goal is that you give up your energy by asking for an
absurd sorry .

2.
He is always the victim.
This point is demonstrated by the previous point. The fact of never
taking on one's responsibilities leads this person to be (according to him) a
sacrificial victim of every situation.

3.
His Actions do not correspond to words.
Those who practice emotional manipulation are masters of
language. He will make you a lot of promises and use flattering words to
bring you a feeling of trust and security. In this way you will follow him
with every promise he makes to you when in reality his actions will never
support the promises made. And guess whose responsibility it will be? Of
you who didn't believe in him….

4.
He says many lies.
Emotional manipulation leads the person who "practices" it to tell a
lot of lies in order to have your approval. He says so many that he then goes
to harness himself in his own invented stories.
All this will lead to a lack of trust on your part and therefore to the
points above of victimization and making you feel guilty ...

5.
Often leverages pain.
If you are a victim of emotional manipulation, the person in
question will probably build something even more serious and frightening if
they feel that something bad has happened in the neighbourhood where you
live or in the city.
If he hears bad news on the news, he reinvents it and amplifies it
with the sole purpose of bringing you to its low frequencies and feeling
(unconsciously) in tune with you.
Purpose? Bring attention to yourself.

6.
Makes you believe you are negotiating.

If you are a victim of emotional manipulation you may believe that

the person is negotiating with you. I am not only talking about money but
also about feelings even if it is absurd to talk about negotiation... but it is so.
To make you understand, I'll give you an example with money.
Imagine that the person in question asks you for a loan of 100 euros. You
say no because you can't afford them right now. Then he casually tells you
that 50 would be fine anyway and you accept. The point is that from the
beginning he wanted 50 and he knows very well that if he asked for 50 right
away you would probably have refused….
Now you can say: yes, but maybe it's not an emotional
manipulation, it's a situation that often presents itself. Try to say no even to
the 50 and see how he reacts: if the reaction is that you don't understand
him, that you don't want to help him ... in short, if it brings you to guilt...
BINGO

7.
He is a trusted forger.

The emotional manipulator requires your trust in order to deceive

you. He needs your sympathy but first of all he needs your trust. The most
effective and quickest way to do this is to insist and prove that he trusts you.
He will not stop at anything just to convince you that you are the most
important person for him. This way it will be easy for you to return this
trust and if you don't, he knows that you may feel guilty (eventually he will
take care of it).
The sad fact is that if you combine all the points that we talked
about in this post you may notice that everything he said or did to you is
just a great texture to take you exactly where he wants.
"Trust is good, NOT trusting is better"
How to react?
Meanwhile, start trusting yourself 100%. Be aware of your
intuitions and listen to them. Increase your self-esteem. Work on yourself
by keeping yourself high in energy and these people will NEVER happen in
your life. But if you attract them it is because on a vibrational and
emotional level you are down, and you could really get out of it very badly.
From now on, be incredibly careful, your happiness comes first of
all (and of all).
Emotional counter-manipulation techniques
It is disturbing to think but ... we have all been victims of emotional
manipulation at least once in our lives. Maternal pressures, guilt feelings
that lead to say some yes, too ... Even more disturbing fact is that there are
people who, every day and for years, have been victims of manipulators
who use proven techniques refined with time and experience.
Who is the manipulator? We don't necessarily have to associate
emotional manipulation with narcissistic, antisocial, histrionic or borderline
disorder, anyone can take on the role of the manipulator.
A mom who pries on her daughter's guilt feelings for a profit is also
implementing a manipulation technique. Here, the manipulator can be a
brother, a trusted friend or a much-loved mom, we don't just talk about
couple relationships.
Emotional manipulation in relationships: a matter of power,
expectations and control
A relationship, whether as a couple, friendship or parent-child,
should be based on mutual respect, exchange and trust.
The problem is that sometimes, a component of this relationship
assumes emotional abuse behaviors that become chronic over time giving
rise to harmful consequences: worries, generalized anxiety, fear of
abandonment, guilt, feeling of inadequacy, low self-esteem..., all this can
cause it a single wrong relationship.
No manipulator will ever admit being the cause of these ailments,
indeed he will advise those affected to seek treatment without ever
questioning themselves. The only way to defend yourself from the attacks
of an emotional manipulator is to keep your distance or counter manipulate.
The same parent-child relationship often focuses on manipulation
and emotional blackmail because our educational model is based on
parental authority and sees the role of the subordinate child. When family
relationships are toxic, there is no clear evolution and there is a tendency to
maintain unhealthy balances; in this way, even as an adult, the child will
always be seen by the parent as “subordinate”. It is really sad to see a child
who has not felt loved where he can go to redeem that love. It is crazy to
observe the dysfunctional mechanisms that can be triggered in a family and
it is even more terrifying to see where some couples who hurt each other in
the name of love can go.
Unfortunately, manipulation is sometimes justified or even not
recognized. We live in a critical period where, only today we begin to shed
light on couple dynamics and on what is personal autonomy and emotional
manipulation.
In this perspective, I invite you to read my article entitled “The
insurmountable border between ‘taking care’ and ‘controlling’”, you will
notice that many of the relationships you carry out are not based on
unconditional love but on expectations, power and control.
A relationship for two should be born and consolidated without rigid
claims, without recurring patterns and above all be based on the pillars of
acceptance and respect.

The fog technique

According to the French psychotherapist Isabelle Nazare-Aga, if it

is not possible to distance oneself from one's emotional manipulator, it is
possible to implement a counter manipulation tactic that the author defines
as "fog technique”.
The fog technique consists in using a random, vague and almost
inaccurate communication, so as not to engage in the verbal exchange with
the manipulator at all.
The aim is to confuse the manipulator who no longer obtains his
nourishment (his gain starts from the feeling of power he feels in every
exchange, which he senses whenever he triggers feelings of anger or
despair in you) will be led to give up socket or move away.
The counter manipulation technique aims to create distance in the
bond without sending too direct signals.
 The fog tactic focuses on superficial communication where the
victim protects himself by answering each question in a disenchanted way,
as if he was indifferent to the contents expressed by the manipulator who
consequently will no longer feel important and will lose the feeling of
power that in general it is powered by the victim.
The emotional counter manipulation can therefore be described as a
one-way communication where the manipulator sends messages /
provocations / criticisms / accusations and the victim responds without
aggression and vehemence, slipping any manipulative attempt, any
accusation or word.
In this way, the interlocutor (the victim) will not take the blows but
will put in place a passive resistance capable of bringing about a
spontaneous removal of the manipulator.
Very often the victims of emotional manipulation tend to start an
arm wrestle with the manipulator: nothing more wrong! The clashes, the
challenges, the competitions, the knock-and-answer, are all dynamics that
feed the desire of the manipulator. If an arm wrestling instigates, the fog
technique defuses subtly and intelligently.
The fog technique is easier to describe than to implement. In the
dialogue with the manipulator (when this plays the role of a mother or an
ex-husband with whom children are shared) there is a strong emotional
load. The interlocutor will have to learn to weigh each word well and to
dose the information given.
Communication with the manipulator, when the interlocutor has no
control and awareness, is nothing more than a labyrinthine path where the
manipulator sow’s confusion and uncertainties. Here, the victim's task is to
reverse this scenario and do it on tiptoe, without being caught with your
hands in the bag.
To implement the fog technique successfully, I recommend you:
Give the manipulator as little information as possible about your life
by employing vague communication.
Here is a practical example.
Manipulator: “How did the job interview / appointment go?”
 Victim: “I don't know, I don't want to pronounce myself ... this time
I want to be superstitious”.
Mitigate your reactions. Manipulators are famous for seasoning
stories or inventing facts out of the blue. If it gives you sensational news,
mitigate your reactions in this regard and always check the facts without
starting in fourth. Here is a practical example.
Manipulator: “Do you know that Sara has a lover?” or “The
professors criticized your child's education.”
Victim: “How strange, I never would have said that.”
Don't flatter yourself too much if he starts complimenting you or
makes sudden manifestations of love, love bombing is a very effective and
very dangerous emotional manipulation technique. Flattery, compliments
and those attitudes that make you feel important, can only mean that the
manipulator wants to tighten your grip on you. For all the information I
invite you to read my article on the Love bombing of the emotional
manipulator.
Check your emotions and pay attention to the tone of voice you use,
as well as the looks or the mimicry.
Minimize his accusations without being offended. This is difficult to
do. If the manipulator accuses you of being unfaithful, superficial, stupid ...
pretend to be amazed at his reaction and minimize your critical behavior by
truncating the topic soon.
If you are cornered, they suggest you adopt a healthy and protective
"no contact". The no contact creates distances in a less indiscreet way but
allows you to recreate and reorganize your life based on what is really
important for your well-being. If he asks you a vague question, be confused
and ask the manipulator to clarify what he means.
If you want to keep up with an emotional manipulator, in addition to
the fog technique there is another thing you can do: work on your self-
esteem and your internal operating core. In practice, recognize your value
and work to identify what your goals and needs are.
Many times, we reach a point when, we become emotional
manipulators. Every time we act / talk in a premeditated way thinking that
those close to us understand for themselves what we need for example.
Nobody is in your head and if you need something you should ask it
rather than throw arrows and hope that the prey will bite your bait, right?
By doing so you are literally trying to manipulate the will of others,
you are trying to install a sort of sense of guilt that in theory should be able
to make the interlocutor act according to your plans.
But it doesn't work that way. Or at least, it doesn't work if you're
trying to build healthy, genuine and profitable relationships for both parties.
But in this chapter, we will not only talk about the simple emotional
manipulation that can take place behind home walls, at work or among
acquaintances. Today we are also talking about emotional manipulation
from the stage, the manipulation of those who intend to sell you something
to solve your apparent problem.
We will talk about all those who earn money by speculating on the
naivety and suffering of people.
This manipulation is not very different from the first one. In both
cases one of the parties claims control. When you understand how one
works, you also understand the other.

The wolf discovered by sheep

The first thing that an emotional manipulator invites you to do is dig

into your past to bring out the unsolved in your life. Because for him it is
obvious, you have a problem and it is certain that you have something
unsolved. Always!
This is the first move that the wolf, in question is called to make.
And the wolf is right about one thing: each of us, if he delves into
the past, is capable of finding some stains to clean. But the question is: are
we sure we want to entrust this task to him?
What if we hire ourselves to do it?
 Basically: be careful to show your injuries because blood attracts
sharks. I'm not saying don't open up to others, this isn't.
But don't do it with anyone. Are you able to recognize those who
want to exploit your pain for their benefit from those who feel the sincere
need to be close to you?!?
If you rely on the outside for your redemption, you are creating
dependence. In short, a psychologist, a coach, a serious trainer, would make
you face the problem in the opposite way.
It would make you walk towards yourself to seek and find
resources.
The world is full of those who want to help you in exchange for
money, isn't it? But it is one thing to purge the plumber's sink, one thing is
to entrust the purge of our soul to those who then want to control it.
If you meet the Buddha on the street, kill him! The truth we are
looking for is enclosed in this sentence.
You have fewer resources than others, you have no problems other
than others have.
You are a human being, special as such, and if you surrender control
of your purification to the outside, to religion, to the wolf or to anyone, you
are getting yourself into a dead-end cell.
Buddha is the Sanskrit word that stands for what you call conscious,
miraculously aware. Responding, perceiving, arching eyebrows, blinking,
moving hands and feet, all this is your miraculously aware nature.
And this nature is the mind.
And the mind is the Buddha.
And the Buddha is the way. And the way is Zen
... and I would also add: when you cling to the outside you are
unaware, incapable of controlling your emotions and willing to do anything
to follow the man or woman you have redefined as a temporary Messiah.
Basically: a potted person who has forgotten that all that glitters are
not gold, and that real gold already carries it in you, and you don't need
anyone to sell it to you!
Around my mom is said help yourself that God helps you. Nobody
will come to save you if you do not save yourself ... but many will come to
ask you for money in exchange for purifying services.
I am not saying that it is bad to take courses oriented towards our
personal and spiritual growth. I am only saying that a Master, the one who
teaches with the heart in his hand, does not create dependence between you
and him.
There is no hierarchy. The true Master does not put himself behind
the chair. He directly sets her chair on fire!
A Master does not create followers, followers, invaded. Create other
Masters. Teaching means reminding others of something they know as well
as you do.
We are all students, practitioners and teachers. Consequently,
learning only means finding out what you already know.
Nobody is essential apart you – Nesli.
And this is the most used strategy to make weak minds fall into the
emotional trap: what the eye sees, and the ear hears, the mind believes.
It is an illusionist game. A wolf does not need to tell you anything
because he knows it will have no effect on you. Rather, it will show you
details in a seemingly random but random way they have nothing.
The unconscious mind is always alert, and the wolf knows it well.
For example: emotional manipulation by exploiting sacred images is
widespread and I am sure I will not tell you anything new about this.
Since we were young, we have been unconsciously indoctrinated to
be afraid and respect towards some figures of a certain thickness.
And here are saints, crucifixes, fake relics and sacred
representations, if used properly, manage to recall from our unconscious
sensations of reverence and trust.
Spiritual Masters grow like mushrooms in this millennium, but the
reality is that the only Master remains Love ... and Love has no tariffs and
does not issue receipts.
Love gives freely, it does not ask. Therefore, do not believe those
who in defense of Love and for Love want to draw from your pockets or
exploit your resources.
He killed them with their love.
This is how it goes every day, in every part of the world.
Recognize and STOP emotional handling
Emotional manipulation manifests itself in those relationships where
emotional involvement is obviously expected, such as romantic
relationships, work relationships, friendships and family ties. The bartender
you meet by chance at the motorway service station can never emotionally
manipulate you, and vice versa you cannot do it yourself. You don't know
each other, and no emotional bond binds you.
Emotional manipulation occurs when one party tries to gain control
over the relationship and wants the other to confirm the veracity of his
view. The other submits to this game, then feeds this addiction out of fear of
contradicting the manipulator, out of fear of being wrong, out of fear that
the relationship between them may crack or break. And this is true both if
we are talking about home emotional manipulation, and if we are talking
about emotional manipulation from the stage.
The victim of the manipulator accepts the vision that is imposed on
her despite knowing that it does not correspond to the reality of the facts.
The hatchet out of fear, because he wants to avoid discussing, because it
fears the consequences of a quarrel, because they cannot stand the other's
disapproval, because he is afraid of being abandoned, doubts of its opinion
and if the same, so it has a low self-esteem. And, in the specific case of the
aforementioned wolf, the victim agrees to be manipulated because he does
not want to give up the idealized image that has become of the other. It
would be an unbearable defeat, especially if this idealization had revealed it
to others too. She can't accept the fact that she's been duped!

There are two things to do if we find ourselves in a situation like

this:

1.
Understand and accept that the relationship you are
experiencing is not healthy at all.
2.
 Understanding and accepting that if this relationship
has evolved is our responsibility, we have a self-esteem
problem or suffer from emotional dependence

Once these two things have been clarified within us, we are ready to
give a boost to the insane relationship: we either adjust it or break it.
Whatever happens, we don't care because the only thing that matters now is
our well-being. It seems absurd but there are people who are afraid of being
well, right?
Once we are aware that we are the victim of emotional manipulation
and we take on our responsibilities, we have only one question to ask
ourselves in order to solve it and win it out:
WHAT DO I REALLY WANT FOR MY LIFE?
Once you have found the answer to this question, you just have to
be honest with yourself. At any moment you are allowing or not allowing
your freedom to express itself.
Can you visualize your life in a week? In a month? In a year? What
relationships do you want in your image of tomorrow? What relationships
will you want to live with others? Will you be the one to lead your life or
will someone decide what you should do, be or have? With your mind you
have the power to create the relationships you desire.
Inner freedom is your only goal and between you and Love there
must be no intermediaries. You don't need Masters who teach you who you
are, who tell you who and how to be. You are the Master. Break off
relationships that don't make you believe this, feed relationships that
enhance your light.
Hypnosis techniques
It is related to voodoo rituals but has nothing "demonic" about it. It
seems halfway between magic and science, but it is a much less mysterious
phenomenon than we think. Because is an alteration of consciousness that
happens to us every day when we are absorbed.
A maneuver carried out with mysterious artifices to manipulate the
will of others ... A method to investigate a person's unconscious and
understand its secrets ... A technique capable of miraculously curing all
sorts of diseases ...
In one way or another, there is widespread belief that hypnosis is a
kind of magic. Applied to the phenomena of possession, to the voodoo and
shamanic rituals (with which it is actually related), hypnosis is often
relegated, with diffidence, among the "pseudo sciences".
Natural Phenomenon . Yet this practice has nothing strange or
disturbing. In reality it is a normal experience that we face every day. For
example, when we watch a movie or read an exciting novel, when we listen
to a conference that involves us or a music that fascinates us, or when we
dream with our eyes open. Whenever we are focused, absorbed, enraptured,
enchanted by something that catalyzes our attention to the point where they
ignore what happens to us around and to lose the sense of time, we are, in
fact, "hypnotized".
The effects of hypnosis are seen in the brain
That is to say that we are in a state of alteration of perceptions and
consciousness. A condition that has its own utility: it allows us to mobilize
and make usable resources that would otherwise be inaccessible, with the
result - for example - of improving a performance or facilitating the
restoration of balance and well-being.
Some concrete examples: there are artists who enter this state to
produce their works, and actors (especially if they practice the famous
"Stanislavskij method") who use it to identify themselves with a character
or to involve spectators more. So, what does hypnosis have to do with
magic?
 A "spectacular" debut . A hypnosis gives an aura of mystery was,
already from the start, what is considered his "discoverer": Franz Anton
Mesmer, a controversial figure who lived between the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Influenced by the discoveries of his time (in particular
electricity and magnetism, that is, invisible forces acting on bodies),
Mesmer theorized the presence of a vital fluid in all living beings, baptizing
it "animal magnetism" in analogy with the invisible force that attracts two
magnetized objects.
During his experiments, Mesmer resorted to complicated rituals
(from the application of magnets on the various parts of the body to the
laying on of hands to radiate beneficial energy), managing to provoke states
of "artificial sleepwalking" as well as convulsions in some people,
temporary fainting and paralysis. At other times the "mesmerized" spoke
and answered his questions, only to completely forget what had happened.
In short, these were often spectacular effects, which earned him a certain
fame in the noble and upper-bourgeois circles of the late eighteenth century.
Hypnosis of the early years was therefore very different from the "modern":
direct, authoritarian and facing suggestible people (who came for the more
used to "doing the show").

Hypnosis: the myths to dispel

PRETEND, OTHERWISE RUINS ALL! It is from this kind of

experience that the so-called "stage hypnosis" originated, a form of
entertainment that has enjoyed moderate success.
Usually it happens like this: the hypnotist invites a volunteer into the
audience, looks him straight in the eye, speaking in a monotonous and
repetitive way, until the unfortunate person lowers his eyelids and falls into
a trance. At that point, the subject seems to be at the mercy of the
hypnotist's commands (often absurd or embarrassing). In reality, the people
involved in these performances are accomplices of the hypnotist or
spectators who are playing. In fact, by choosing at random from the public,
the hypnotist would run the risk of failing, because very suggestible people
are rare.
 "When I say I ..." Giucas Casella during a performance. The so-
called "stage hypnosis" almost always makes use of accomplices or
complacent conductors. |
It could also be denounced for abusive exercise of the medical
profession: in Italy hypnosis is allowed only to doctors and psychologists,
because if practiced outside a controlled context on certain subjects
(precisely the most suggestible!). It can have psychopathological
consequences.
Crimes and offenses.
Another myth to dispel is "robbery hypnosis". According to experts,
those episodes that periodically occupy the newspapers and in which
ambiguous characters (usually Indian or Arab) hypnotize people to rob
them are nothing more than urban legends. It is not possible, in fact, to send
a person into a trance without his consent. In cases of this type, more than
hypnosis one should speak of a skillful manipulation, for example through
the "confusion technique" (see box in the previous pages). The victims
often do not understand that they have been deceived, so they prefer
(unconsciously or not) to believe that they have been hypnotized. Equally
impossible are crimes committed under the influence of hypnotic
commands, as sometimes seen in the cinema. In fact, a person cannot be
forced to behave contrary to his moral principles, let alone commit crimes.
The pendulum is one of the tools used for hypnotic induction: by
directing attention to an annoying task for the eyes, the resistance to
abandoning oneself is eased.

Regressions and false memories.

Remaining in the legal sphere, it is also to dispel the belief that

hypnosis can allow to recall forgotten events ... useful events, for example,
to reconstruct the scenario of a crime or to formulate accusations against
someone. The phenomenon of “hypermnesia”, the strengthening of
memories (even this much exploited in the cinema), is actually
controversial.
 An association, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, has even
sprung up in the US to defend the victims of false memories (usually
alleged rapists). It is not said, in fact, that what is recalled under hypnosis
corresponds to real events, because memories are always spoiled by the
imagination.
An individual, without being aware of it, can insert only imagined
scenes, and be convinced of having really lived them. This also explains
the "past life regressions" obtained under hypnosis: they would be nothing
more than immersions in suggestive fantasies.

Therapeutic hypnosis.

Cleared the field of myths, legends and improper uses, what

remains?
It remains a less theatrical and more respectful instrument of the
individual: the so-called "new hypnosis", introduced in the last century by
the Californian psychiatrist Milton Erickson, which gave rise to the most
accredited guidelines of psychotherapy existing today.
Theoretical bases.
The goal of hypnosis is to access the individual unconscious, to
"place" in which collects the experiences and information obtained in the
course of life (of which we often have no awareness). The unconscious is
conventionally located by scholars in the right hemisphere of the brain. It is
believed, in fact, that the left hemisphere is the seat of the analytical, logical
and rational abilities, those which are dominant in waking conditions. The
right hemisphere, active especially during sleep, is instead the seat of
creativity, imagination and intuition, and gives an overview.
During hypnosis, the therapist speaks to this right side, which is
presumed to be directly connected to the limbic-hypothalamic system, the
bridge of communication between the mind and the body: the hypothalamus
is in fact connected to the pituitary, which can convert nerve impulses in
hormonal messages. Therefore, hypnosis can "encourage" the self-healing
mechanisms that each of us has, and also give access to resources that we
are not aware of. "It is very important," said Erickson, "that people know
that their unconscious is much more intelligent than they are."

But how do you hypnotize?

Hypnosis is not a difficult operation if the subject collaborates. The

first step is to encourage a detachment from reality.
The hypnotist, with a monotonous voice and repeating words and
concepts several times, invites the person to relax and focus attention on an
object (once it could have been the pendulum, today it is often a part of the
body: “Your arm becomes more and more heavier ‘or’ more and more
hot“).
This measure helps the person to isolate himself from the external
reality and to turn his attention inwards until he experiences a sense of
detachment from the body and a deep impression of peace (one feels “lulled
into emptiness”).
At this point the hypnotized potentially becomes anything. The
concept of time vanishes and the hypnotist himself loses his identity,
becoming only a voice (Erickson’s famous phrase: “My voice will
accompany you ...”).
Join trance .
Through hypnosis the “trance” is induced, a particular condition
between sleep and wakefulness recognizable by some signals. The person is
usually motionless, sitting or lying down. Breathing is loose, as is heart
rate. The eyes are closed or narrowed; if they are open, they are almost free
of blinking (e.g. of the eyelid closing reflex).
The voice has a different tone, the speech is slowed down.
Swallowing is rare. The response to external (even painful) stimuli is
reduced. The search for trance is typical of many cultures: some come to us
with the repetition of a few words (the Tibetan monks), others with
monotonous and regular rhythms (African tribal dances but also western
discos).
 Therapeutic intervention.
Once induced trance, the hypnotist has before him a person no
longer imprisoned in rigid patterns of reality and accepts therefore outside
messages without the usual process of analysis and criticism. In this phase
the hypnotist can offer the patient useful suggestions (for example "on an
airplane you will be relaxed," or "cigarettes will from now on have a bad
taste"). There are no standard techniques or scripts to act: Erickson himself
invited his students to give vent to their imagination, being inspired by the
subject. Can everyone be hypnotized? In theory, yes, but some people are
known to be particularly refractory: in general, those who exercise
continuous control over themselves (in other words, those who struggle to
"let go"), those who voluntarily oppose or those who pose unconsciously of
the "resistances".
Hypnosis without trance.
To get around "rational" resistances, trance is not strictly necessary.
Hypnosis without trance is a persuasive language that goes beyond logical-
critical abilities.
This communication mode is also called "right hemisphere
language" and makes extensive use of images, metaphors, aphorisms, word
games, ironic lines and positive linguistic forms (for the right hemisphere
there is no negation: the message “not being afraid” has the opposite effect;
much better “you can have courage“). These same communication
strategies are also used by good speakers and skilled salespeople.
Hypnosis: It is a procedure in which the patient experiences changes
in sensations, perceptions, thoughts and behavior. Everything begins with
an induction procedure among the many available. This initial phase
includes suggestions for relaxation, well-being and calm.
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is a psychological phenomenon whose history goes back
to that of the human species. Primitive men already used it in the practice of
religious and medical rites to increase faith in mysticism and magic. The
peculiar characteristics of this psychological manifestation have surrounded
it with an aura of supernaturality and unreality.
 Hypnotic psychotherapy, however, is not only a mere administration
of suggestions, but a real re-education of the patient's adaptation to life and
to the integration of his personality in it.

Regressive hypnosis

Regressive hypnosis is an experimental technique that allows you to

research the causes of current conflicts in the remote world of dreams and
trance. In regressive hypnosis, the patient is given the opportunity to go
back in time by recovering contents similar to previous existences, in which
he can search for the symbolic roots of his current conflicts. Not all people
can take advantage of regressive hypnosis, as about 20% of patients are not
suitable.
The goal of regressive hypnosis is to resolve conflicts and
discomforts and recover biological and spiritual resources that allow the
subject to evolve. Using this technique within a psychotherapeutic path it is
possible to treat anxiety, panic, depression, eating disorders and obsessions.
However, patients suffering from an acute major depression,
psychoses, minors, pregnant women and those who use anticonvulsant
drugs cannot be treated.
Psychotherapy with the help of regressive hypnosis involves a
profound psychological and spiritual commitment for the patient and for the
therapist, in fact the meetings tend to be fortnightly. As far as duration is
concerned, psychotherapy with regressive hypnosis lasts for about ten
meetings.

Erickson hypnosis

According to Milton Hyland Erickson, the famous psychiatrist

founder of modern or Ericksonian hypnosis, hypnosis is a natural condition
that occurs spontaneously in the different moments of everyday life. By
being interested in naturalistic methods Erickson came to use hypnosis in a
creative way, that is, no longer through standard rituals, but through a
particular communicative style associated with a "relational communicative
situation".
The hypnotic process of Ericksonian hypnosis has been schematized
by the author himself in three phases:

1.
The preparation.
Knowledge phase between the patient and the therapist. The main
objective is the formation of a solid relationship between the two, which is
based on trust, mutual respect and understanding. In this first phase the
therapist collects information related to the patient's experiences and
knowledge, the mental structures of reference and the belief systems are
investigated. The expectation that the patient has regarding the resolution of
the problem is fundamental, in fact positive expectations lead to an easier
suspension and modification of the reference structures that force him to a
self-limiting situation.

2.
The therapeutic trance.
Period in which the patient's patterns are temporarily altered with
the aim of increasing his receptivity to other models of mental functioning
that contribute to the resolution of problems. The main physiological
indicators that signal the state of trance are catalepsy, body immobility,
changed voice quality, closing of the eyes, relaxed facial features, lack or
delay of reflexes, slowed respiratory and heart rate and others. In this
regard, Erickson identifies a trance induction paradigm consisting of five
stages:
➢ Attention fixation.
➢ Depotentiation of the usual reference schemes and beliefs.
➢ Unconscious search.
➢ Unconscious process.
➢ Hypnotic response.
 3.
Evaluation and ratification of the therapeutic change
obtained.
It is the moment when the therapist communicates to the patient
what are the alterations of the sensory and perceptual functioning. The
patient becomes so aware of the changes that hypnosis has reported in
relation to his person.
Recognizing the value of hypnosis is necessary to prevent old
behaviors or thought patterns from invalidating the progress made.

Hypnosis techniques

To induce hypnosis, it is necessary that the psychotherapist know

and be able to choose among the various techniques the one most suited to
the needs of his patient. Each person has his own mental functioning, so the
specialist, aware and endowed with his own knowledge, will look for the
best and personalized way to induce the hypnotic state to the person in front
of him.
To induce a hypnotic state, it is necessary first to explain to the
patient what awaits him, dispelling any prejudices or fears. In this way the
patient will be able to approach this psychotherapeutic technique with
greater freedom of thought and trust towards the therapist. He will feel at
ease and whoever hypnotizes him will know how to transmit great
confidence in his ability to enter a trance. It will be necessary to maintain
the state of trance until the work is finished.
The different hypnosis techniques available to therapists are chosen
according to the nature of the problem and the hypnotic capacity of the
subject. A good hypnotist stands out because he is able to exploit the
characteristics of the person in front of him, which is why it is very
important to know a large number of hypnosis techniques. The main
techniques of hypnosis are:
➢ Metaphorical hypnosis.
➢ Fast Phobias Technique.
 ➢ Suggestions.
➢ Visualization.
➢ Regression.
➢ Progression.
➢ Affect bridge.
➢ Restructuring.
➢ Anchoring.

Self-hypnosis

Self-hypnosis is nothing more than a form of self-induced hypnosis.

Self-hypnosis techniques are all based on a single concept, that is,
concentration on a single idea, word or image.
In fact, Dr. Herbert Benson, in his book "Relaxation Response",
underlines how the state of relaxation based on concentration on a single
idea induces very easily to a self-induced state of trance. Also, for self-
hypnosis there are different induction techniques, among these the simplest
and at the same time used is precisely that of Benson.
This method involves 7 steps:
➢ Choose the object of concentration;
➢ Sitting with your eyes closed in a quiet place;
➢ Relax the muscles and focus on the breath;
➢ Think silently about the initially chosen object;
➢ Continue like this for 10/20 minutes;
➢ If the meditation object is lost, return the thought to it;
➢ Once the set time has elapsed, open your eyes again.

Hypnotic psychotherapy
 As previously stated, hypnotic psychotherapy is not a mere
administration of suggestions, but a real re-education of the patient's
adaptation to life and the integration of his personality in it. For a long time
and still today there are many prejudices related to hypnosis and the
psychotherapy that uses it, but fortunately scientific research is shedding
light on the qualities of this technique and is documenting its scientific
results. Attention, to have therefore a positive vision it must be clear that
hypnotic psychotherapy is not a mere administration of suggestions, but a
real re-education of the patient's adaptation to life and the integration of his
personality in it.
The areas of application of hypnotic psychotherapy are numerous,
among which the main ones are:
➢ The psychological area: anxiety, mood and depression
disorders, eating disorders, sexual disorders, tics, stuttering, chronic
pain, addictions (play, smoking, alcohol, etc.).
➢ The medical field: cardiovascular, dermatology,
asthma, disorders of the urogenital system and digestive tract,
palliative care and pain therapy.
➢ The area of personal creativity: stimulating and giving
greater freedom to vent personal creativity, such as in ipnosipedia or
in sport, to improve physical abilities in athletic performance.
How many times in fifteen years of clinical and psychotherapeutic
work have I heard myself ask this question: What is hypnosis and how does
it work?
Hypnosis was the first therapeutic technique that I learned and, over
time, year after year, it has continued to surprise me for the infinite ways of
healing it can open.
Contact with the imaginary, which also finds a solid neuroscientific
reference, is in fact one of the royal ways of access to the unconscious,
where the numinous beginning that Jung has shown us lies and the doors of
the timeless that heals us open.
Yet the mystery of hypnosis is as simple as the act of closing the
eyes that a child makes when he plays and imagines, it is as natural as the
deepest functioning of our brain.
 Hypnosis is a physiological state, which we enter, even without
realizing it every day, several times a day.
When we are absorbed in watching a movie or we are immersed in
our thoughts so much that we no longer notice anything that happens
around us, when we are in love and we seem to be walking one meter above
the ground, we are in hypnosis.
Thus, the expectations of a mysterious act, of something that,
overcoming our rational barriers, allows us to solve any type of problem
such as the desire for magic, meet the simplicity of a physiological
transition to a brain functioning other than waking, all-natural entry into a
state of consciousness that cures.
Current neurophysiological research is investing many resources in
the study and application of hypnosis: after more than a century and a half
of history, thus, hypnosis has found in the neuroscientific data relating to
neuroplasticity, objective bases of efficacy and applicability also in
medicine, now replicated by hundreds of studies.
The word hypnosis derives from the Greek Hypnos, sleep, but more
than with sleep, hypnosis has to do with the relaxation of the mind and body
associated with a certain type of brain wave, alpha and theta.
Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness characterized by
focused attention and high suggestibility that allows messages to reach the
unconscious mind with greater ease. This pro-change condition can be used
to overcome habits, increase self-esteem or improve aspects of us that we
believe are harmful or unwanted.
When we are in hypnosis phenomena may occur during the normal
waking are not possible because during the so-called trance of the
subconscious mind resources become a real mental reprogramming.
How does hypnosis work?
To understand how hypnosis works it is important to have a clear
distinction between conscious and unconscious mind.
The conscious mind manages to retain a limited amount of
information, serves to analyze and solve problems, helps to make decisions
and exercise the power of the will.
 The unconscious mind, on the other hand, can be compared to a
huge database in which memories and emotions are stored permanently.
Unlike the conscious mind, the information capacity it can process per
second is very high.
It is now known that it is the unconscious mind that controls all
bodily functions: respiration, heartbeat, blink of the eyes, immune system,
muscle, etc. Accessing the unconscious part and communicating with it in
the most appropriate way means having access to the internal autonomous
programmer responsible for mental, behavioral and emotional patterns as
well as the physiological state of our body.
This unconscious mind is more powerful than the rational part. The
unconscious, if we may say so, always has the last word on everything.
If with our conscious part we want to lose weight or get rich or quit
smoking, but our unconscious is not going in that direction or aligned with
that goal, it won't follow us.
These are just a few examples that show how our unconscious
decides on all aspects of our life. Therefore, it is essential to know how to
communicate correctly with the unconscious.
To access and interact with the unconscious mind it is necessary to
cross the so-called critical threshold, which we can imagine as the door
between the two minds, conscious and unconscious.
This critical threshold represents a determining factor in the
activation of the resources of the unconscious mind, because it has the
power to accept or reject new information.
Usually the critical threshold is like a barrier that tends to reject
messages that contrast with the old "programming" and this is the reason
why many attempts at change supported by willpower alone do not work.
It is here that hypnosis can play a fundamental role because during
the so-called trance the critical threshold is temporarily bypassed, and it is
therefore possible to communicate to the unconscious mind the most
appropriate messages to favor the desired changes.
Medical applications of hypnosis are increasingly growing: use of
hypnosis in the treatment of chronic pain, in cancer treatment, in
substitution of anesthesia during surgery, childbirth or during dental
treatments.
This is not magic; it is simply the effect obtained through the use of
the resources of the subconscious or unconscious mind and through the
activation of the body's self-healing power.
The good news is that hypnosis can be learned and experienced even
in the inner space of one's uniqueness. This is how we can practice self-
hypnosis.
As in induced hypnosis, in fact, even though self-hypnosis, it is
possible to reach a particular state of consciousness, the trance, through
which, by self-imparting ad hoc suggestions, one acts on one's unconscious
in a more direct and effective way.
Self-hypnosis is nothing more than a procedure in which guided by
specific tracks and when we become experts only from our own
imagination, we enter into a trance, we communicate with our unconscious,
we can give it precise instructions and finally we get out of the trance.
Self-hypnosis allows you to make the most of the innate abilities of
our brain, to finally use not only the 5-7% that we usually use of it, but the
much greater potential that it contains globally.
Our mind is able to do extraordinary things and thanks to self-
hypnosis it is possible to exploit its abilities in an optimal and ever-
increasing way.
We can say that in this way we can achieve things that we never
thought we would achieve. And this happens for the activation of the
unconscious power which finally works in the same direction as our
consciousness.
Hypnotizing is easy, and those who say otherwise don't know
hypnosis. To hypnotize you don't need any particular ability, no power or
magical attribute. The only quality required is the desire to learn basic
techniques and above all to try them many times, on different people, until
you are absolutely confident. The trust in if same and a great passion, are
the essential requirements to get into the game and begin to hypnotize. The
study, practice and experience will train and consolidate hypnotic
techniques and the approach with the client over time.
Hypnosis can be done anywhere, at home, in a studio, outdoors, in
the confusion of a pub, on the street. Hypnotizing does not require any
particular tool, only the use of the voice. Hypnosis can also be done for fun,
and the street or a pub are the places of choice for hypnosis of this type.
In the tranquility of a study, hypnosis will have other purposes, and
will be destined to change the behaviors or beliefs that you no longer wish
to have, or to regression to probe some aspect of the personality influenced
by an event from the past.
In these cases, hypnosis is aimed at an important goal of change, but
the techniques for hypnotizing the client can be the same as those used in
another context.
During the years I have practiced hypnosis, I have found that the
number of people who find this discipline fascinating is very large, so you
can always find people willing to experience what it feels like to be
hypnotized. There are also many who would like to start hypnotizing, but
do not find a meeting point in which to experience.
Hypnotize
Hypnotizing is simple, but it's not always safe. There are a number
of people with mental disorders who are better off not hypnotizing, so if
you want to try these techniques, you need to know that there is a
possibility that you will not know how to recognize one of these people,
and that not even the person in question knows to have certain problems.
There is also the possibility that the person in hypnosis, even during
a simple progressive relaxation, touches some sensitive point, hidden in
depth, and exposed by hypnosis.
Although these cases are rare, they can happen, so my advice is to
have an expert person guide you at least in the first steps. You will face the
various situations with more peace of mind, any errors in the application of
hypnotic techniques will be corrected immediately and will not become
defects.
 A hypnotic technique

In any case, a very simple hypnotic relaxation technique, to be used

to begin hypnotizing, is the one I propose below. It can last from twenty to
forty minutes, depending on your desire to speak and how the person you
are hypnotizing responds to suggestions. Some people struggle a lot even
with this simple exercise, so it takes a little longer to bring them into a state
of pleasant hypnosis.
Begin to hypnotize as if you were conversing, in a very pleasant
way, simply suggesting that the person relax. What you say has relative
importance, it can be a phrase like “Well, how about if you relax completely
now, from the tip of your head to the tip of your feet?”. The induction starts
from here, from now on we must carefully observe the reactions of the
subject and use them to amplify his reactions.
When you see that the person begins to relax, continue by
concentrating on his breathing. Just tell her to focus on the breath, to feel
like the air score in the lungs and suggest that she not think about "Nothing
but the breath".
Observe it to see its reactions, observe the progress of the breath and
go to its rhythm, as soon as you see a slowdown suggest an amplification of
this slowdown with a brief suggestion "Well, the breath is always slower,
regular, deep".
Point out to the person that you are hypnotizing something about
him. If he is sitting with his eyes closed say "and while you sit there with
your eyes closed and breathe slowly and have your hands completely
abandoned on your legs, you continued to relax more and more deeply,
from the tip of your head to the tip of your feet".
If the person has not yet closed their eyes, suggest that they do so
"and when you close your eyes you will relax even more deeply", or "close
your eyes, otherwise they will remain open" (fantastic suggestion and
highly effective, if given at the right time).
Go ahead and suggest that the person relax even more with each
breath he or she takes, "and the noises you hear around the room relax you
more and more," and the sound of my voice relaxes you more and more
regardless of what it says ".
Suggest closing the eyes " and your eyelids are so relaxed that you
can't open them, the more you try to open them, the more they remain
closed".
At this point you can deepen the state of relaxation, and you can do
it simply by counting "and now I am going to count from twenty to one
very slowly, and with each number I say you relax twice the previous time".
After the count you can begin to give some suggestions, closing the
cycle of suggestions with a post-hypnotic suggestion like this "and the next
time we do hypnosis together, it will be ten times easier and ten times
deeper". You can also use the visualizations to describe a pleasant scenario,
which you know will be appreciated by the person in hypnosis. In this case,
avoid describing sea scenes to those who hate the sea or mountains to those
who suffer from vertigo, you would get a very unpleasant effect.
Hypnotizing a person requires great respect for him.
Reorientation
Return the person to the waking state by saying that you will count
from one to three, or from one to five, and that on reaching three or five, the
person in question will open his or her eyes "fully awake".
This type of hypnosis works very well to make those who have
trouble falling asleep sleep, and if you do it with this purpose, suggest that
"this night you will sleep peacefully all night having wonderful dreams"
and if the person is already relaxed and there now it is suitable, you can
simply say "and when I say five you will fall asleep in a beneficial and deep
sleep that will last without interruption all night and from which you will
wake up in the morning completely rested".
Make sure that the person you hypnotize in this way is sitting on an
armchair or chair with armrests or lying down.
Considerations
The variability of the answers provided by people during hypnosis is
remarkable, so hypnotizing is never the same thing as the previous time.
Many people will go into hypnosis in less than a minute if you do the right
things.
With these people hypnosis is simple, an elementary fact.
With other people, however, you will have to insist more, because
they are too nervous or too afraid of hypnosis to let themselves go
completely. Sometimes you need to insist more than one session to get an
acceptable result.
Insisting is always the rule, you don't have to give up the first time a
person doesn't get hypnotized.
Some rules
The hypnotist, regardless of the technique used, must rely solely on
the answers provided by the subject, which dictate the time of induction.
Hypnotizing is not just action, but above all observation. Noticing the
appearance of trance marks is critical to being able to amplify them during
induction, and sometimes these marks only appear for brief moments.
Among the signs that can be easily recognized during an induction, there
are slowing of the breath, eyelid fluttering, fixity of the figure, relaxation of
the neck muscles, light muscle movements of the fingers, or other
involuntary signals. Other signs of trance, such as warming of the
epidermis, cannot be perceived by sight, but are easily detectable by touch.
The presence of trance signals is not always perceived in the same
way by the person in trance. In some cases, the person does not believe he
has been in hypnosis, simply because he has remained conscious, while his
expectation was to lose consciousness of himself. In these cases, some
effort can be made to convince the customer of the contrary, and often help
is given by the results that appear after the session. A quick change in habits
or a physiological response is the best persuader in this case.
When the subject has his eyes closed and shows no visible sign of
hypnosis, it is not said that it is not. For this reason, the state of trance must
always be tested. However, there are also people who are apparently
unresponsive, even to hypnotic tests, who despite everything get the desired
results. In case of doubt on the subject's responses, it is better to continue
hypnotizing and ending the entire hypnotic induction, giving the necessary
suggestions. In this case, the subject's responses to suggestions may surprise
you more than he.
Check for hypnosis
The simplest tests to verify the state of hypnosis are those that
concern catalepsy. The best test is that of closing the eyes, which often turns
into eyelid fluttering, that is, a rapid, almost frenetic, very characteristic
blinking of the eyelids.
When doing hypnosis, one must never assume, nor take anything for
granted and above all do not get ideas a priori: the chances of being proved
wrong are very high.
If hypnosis doesn't come the first session, the second or third will.
Those who want to do hypnosis must take into account a certain series of
missed inductions, which over time will decrease until they almost
disappear.
Hypnotizing is not only a matter of technique, but also of
experience, and with experience the inductions will become shorter and
deeper. However, it must be remembered that:
Everyone can be hypnotized, but nobody can hypnotize
everyone.
When a client does not go into a trance, there has been no failure
either by the hypnotic operator or by the client. Sometimes hypnosis is a
reaction that does not take off, regardless of the hypnotist's ability and the
good disposition of the subject. In these cases, one only has to change the
approach, choose a different path from the one that has not led to anywhere.
Sometimes progressive relaxation occurs where Elman's induction
has failed.
In any case, never allow a lack of induction to generate insecurity on
your skills or techniques. The hypnotist must have an unlimited and sincere
trust in if same and in what he does. If he pretends, eventually he is
discovered.