There are a lot of manipulation techniques out there, from guilt-tripping to fear-mongering to emotional manipulation.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t realize we’re being manipulated until it’s too late, by which point we’ve already fallen into the trap.
The best course of action?
Find out as much about the psychology of manipulation as you can beforehand. That way, you won’t be caught off guard if someone tries to pull psychological tricks on you.
Are you ready to be a manipulator’s worst nightmare?
If someone uses these nine psychological tricks, they’re trying to manipulate you.
1) Emotional Manipulation
I’d say the most popular manipulation technique on this list is probably emotional manipulation—the term has become very popular in recent years—so let’s start there.
If someone is manipulating you, it means they’re trying to make you question your perception of reality. While this sounds like something you’d notice, the truth is that emotional manipulation can be incredibly subtle.
For example, someone might tell you that they simply don’t remember upsetting you the day before and that you probably made a mistake. Since memory is inherently changeable, you might start to question whether you just mixed things up, whether you just misremembered, or whether you’ve gone crazy.
One common emotional manipulation strategy is to invalidate your feelings.
“Come on, it’s not that big of a deal, just move on.”
“I said I’m sorry, what more do you want?! Oh my God, you’re so difficult.”
These may not seem like psychological tricks at first glance, but that’s what makes them all the more powerful.
Remember that your feelings and concerns are always valid and that someone who truly cares about you will do their best to reassure you rather than belittle your feelings.
2) Guilt
Guilt is another well-known manipulation trick – perhaps even more sinister than manipulation because it relies on your kindness and love for the person in question.
“It’s your fault I’m so down. I need you, but no, you have to be busy all day. Busy with what? What’s more important than me?”
“If you don’t come, it’s okay not to get out of bed. There’s no point.”
“I helped you through all the tough times, and you can’t even answer the phone?”
When someone guilt trips you, they’re essentially blaming you for their feelings or actions. If they did something bad, it’s because of you. If they feel sad, it’s your fault. If you’re not available 24/7, it means you don’t love them.
The problem is, that most of us are filled with love for the people closest to us, and we would never want to intentionally hurt them. If we’re guilt-tripped and don’t realize it, we can easily give in.
But what happened? Now you know how guilt works, so you can be more resilient in dealing with it!
3) Fear Triggering
If your friend, partner, or family member has tried to trigger your guilt and it doesn’t quite work, they may resort to fear-triggering. This is an escalation of his need for emotional validation and attention and can lead to some scary or uncomfortable situations.
Fear-bombing works on exaggeration.
Your partner might threaten to hurt themselves if you leave them. Your father might keep exaggerating the risks of an upcoming surgery to receive more love and reassurance. Your boyfriend might tell you that if you don’t show up to his party, he won’t be able to count on you again in the future.
Fear-bombing is essentially forcing a sense of doom and danger into a situation that doesn’t need to be. This can be a very scary manipulation technique that is undoubtedly difficult to deal with.
4) Love Bombing
Moving on to the challenges of romance, love bombing is a trick that can seem incredibly enticing at first, which is what makes it so hard to recognize.
Let’s say you’ve just started dating someone new. His name is Dave. Dave is very sweet and charming, and he seems madly in love with you.
You’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks, but Dave has already decided that he wants to start a family with you. He thinks you’re the most beautiful person on earth. He showers you with lavish gifts, takes you on amazing dates, and keeps bombarding your phone with messages about his undying love for you.
After a month, Dave realizes that he’s not quite ready for a relationship. He’s not even sure about this whole dating thing. He might need to be alone for a while. Bye.
Yes, this is a classic case of love bombing. Love bombers use flattery, gifts, and grand declarations of love to get the other person into a relationship as quickly as possible.
They usually proceed to display controlling behaviors in the relationship itself, or they quickly move on to another relationship and break up with you.
5) Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbing can be described as the opposite of love bombing. It happens when the person you have feelings for keeps deceiving you, disappearing for days, then showing up out of nowhere and getting your hopes up again.
In other words, they’re extremely inconsistent in their affection for you. A love bomber will send you twenty messages a day and have a bouquet delivered to your door every week, while a breadcrumber will tell you how amazing you are and then leave you on reading for five days.
Because their affection is so private, you’re overjoyed every time they reach out to you, only to suffer crushing disappointment once they pull away again.
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The little bits of attention they keep throwing your way are breadcrumbs, and you’re the one picking them up off the floor.
No more of that. You deserve more than breadcrumbs. You deserve an entire bakery.
6) Triangulation
I was once arguing with my friend about something that happened between us. She said, “Look, even Tasha agrees with me. Right, Tasha?”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but by bringing Tasha into the conflict, my friend was using a psychological trick called triangulation. This is when a third person gets involved in an argument that should be between two people.
Triangulation effectively increases your odds of winning because you’re now arguing against more than one person. It becomes much harder to stick to your guns when you’re outnumbered, and you can easily succumb to peer pressure.
7) The Silent Treatment
Another common way to deal with disagreements is to give someone the silent treatment.
Unfortunately, the silent treatment—or complaining and being passive-aggressive while refusing to address the issue at hand and letting your partner figure it out on their own—has become so normalized that most people don’t think of it as a manipulative strategy.
But it is. The goal of the silent treatment is to make you feel confused, insecure, anxious, guilty, and stressed.
What’s more, it tilts the relationship dynamic in favor of the complainer because you now feel like you need to work harder to make up for something, even though you don’t even know what that “something” is.
8) Projection
I find projection very interesting. This technique—often unconscious—is about taking your feelings and projecting them onto someone else.
For example, your partner might be mad at you about something you did, but instead of confronting you about it in a respectful way, they’ll make false assumptions about your behavior and go on to ask you why you’re acting so upset.
They’ll then proceed to project their annoyance and anger in response to your supposedly negative feelings, even though you didn’t have any, to begin with.
One person I know keeps telling others to stop raising their voices when they’re the ones yelling. Similarly, someone might tell you to “just calm down” when you’re speaking in a completely normal tone of voice and they’re becoming increasingly upset.
9) Fake Kindness
As you can probably tell, fake kindness is all about flattery, favoritism, and pretending to be best friends.
Your coworker might keep giving you nice compliments, but what they want is for you to keep covering their shifts.
Your friend might nag you when you’re a little sick, picking up your groceries and asking how you’re doing ten times a day, but their real goal is to show up for you so they can use that act of kindness against you in the future if need be.
Just like the other psychological tricks mentioned above, fake kindness is an attempt to manipulate you. And while some people don’t realize they’re doing it, that doesn’t make these manipulation techniques any less harmful.
But now that you know these nine psychological tricks, you can catch manipulators off guard and stop them from playing you.
