Good Day Readers, Today we will be discussing the next Topic of Dark Psychology which is “Emotional Manipulation “.

In this chapter, we will work from the small-scale, short-term forms and scenarios of Manipulation and move up to the most insidious, Long-Term examples of Dark Psychology utilizing human emotions.

Short-Term Manipulation

As we have illustrated in the Last Chapter, the Example of a Street Beggar telling an Emotional story to get few Bucks from a Stranger is one of the simplest forms of Emotional Manipulation.

The Abuser has a short-term Goal and plays upon one of the people`s most common social Tendencies in order to get what he wants. And then the interaction is over.

This is a Tactic that can be repeated over and over with somewhat similar results, involving a lot of different people simply because the universal human emotion of guilt and the tendency of Empathy between Human beings are relatively constant across a population. The only Requirement for Success in such a situation is for the story to be believed by the targets, and that elicits the desired Emotional Response.

Numerous situations reflect this same type of mode of short-term manipulation for the sake of simple, short-term goals, often in the form of money. 

Emotional reactions can be amped up or down, perhaps through the involvement of other people being affected, like children. A person who comes to a stranger`s door asking for help might mention that his children are sitting in a car without dinner might work to elicit a stronger emotional response.

Other much more malicious intents might prey upon emotional responses, but the consequences of success on the part of the manipulator are much more catastrophic.

For Example, the serial killer Ted Bundy was famous for eliciting the help of young, naïve women through mixture of charm and conjuring feelings of pity, mixed with a sense of urgency. He did this by wearing a cast and, in the prime moment when the victim was in view, he would fumble with a pile of books or something else as if he was trying to get them in his car and was having trouble doing it by himself.

This young women would notice this and go over and offer to help, seeing that this man was having trouble. it didn`t hurt that Bundy was a good-looking man, and women were often immediately enamored of him when they saw them. This immediate charm mixed with pity and a willingness to help someone in need was the perfect setting for Bundy to move in on the opportunity, usually knocking the victim unconscious before loading them in the car toward their doom.

Long-Term Manipulation

When we move into the Long-Term Practice of Emotional Manipulation Tactics, we start to zero in on the necessity for the abuser to establish trust and love before enacting his manipulative intents. This could happen on the scale of a one-night stand, or the manipulator could put a plan into action that will last weeks, months, or even years.

His goals might be anything From Money to Emotional Support for his own troubled and Needy mind. On top of the Tactics of deceit as demonstrated in the Short-Term situation, the abuser must be able to take on a completely different personality if the intent is to lure the Target into a potential relationship, Romantic or otherwise.

The Manipulator`s intent must remain hidden, so he must conjure an alternative intention which will serve as the motivating factor for the interaction and subsequent relationship. Those personality types of Dark Triad become particularly skilled in this area out of necessity and a complete lack of compassion or remorse for having duped a victim and hurt Emotionally.

The abusers on the spectrum of deviant personalities, who regularly employ emotionally manipulative Tactics in order to get what they want from people, Range in intelligence from the highly intelligent, meticulous planner to the simple-minded, anomalistically motivated abuser.

Each person on this spectrum of abusers is looking for something or a group of rewards, which correspond to some need or desire. One may be purely motivated by Emotional siphoning and control, and another by the challenge of the game. 

Some abusers harbor feelings of hatred and Frustration and wish to inflict harm on a Target because the one Responsible for his pain is either dead or unavailable in some way.

Emotional Manipulation often becomes a necessity for someone who has not developed normally, perhaps emotionally or in the arena of social skills and, therefore, cannot form healthy relationships in “normal” ways.

Those abusers who manage Long-Term emotional manipulation usually have some degree of prowess in the form of social skills or a high degree of intelligence, even if the underlying capacity for Empathy, compassion, and relatability are completely lacking.

They know that what they have to work with personally is not going to get them where they need to be, so the compulsion to manipulate and entice another person through fabricated feelings is so strong that they practice and learn to put the time and effort into their craft so that they are essentially “Experts” in their fields. 

There are also those who Practice manipulation without employing study or research in order to hone these skills. These skills are part of a personality that is devoid of any capacity even to recognize that their behaviors are deviant and hurtful. These are natural manipulators who find themselves susceptible to actively turn toward criminal activity out of Frustration or Anger.

They are the hired Killers, the Employees of those criminal actions that skip the manipulation component entirely and take what they want by force.

What Emotional Manipulation skills they acquire are taught to them through experience or a specific Teacher to utilize these skills for their specific tasks, but this will not go very far (Long-Term) simply because of being completely unnatural and their anathema to their innate natures.

The Final Topic under Emotional Manipulation is the Long-Term Emotional Corrosion of an abuser whose mentality changes over time through some kind of Long-Term Influence. These Abusers often bring others down with them in the form of immediate family members or close friends.

These are the Domestic Abuse cases where a couple seemed to have a perfectly normal and happy relationship until something changed in the dynamic or Lifestyle, and the relationship began to degrade. Influential Factors might include things like gradual addiction to alcohol, being laid off at work, other forms of shared financial difficulty, a Traumatic experience that is not processed in a way that is healthy or is faced with denial, or a sudden betrayal of trust that prompts Long-lasting Grudges and Resentment.

All of these factors may contribute to the formation of a relentless emotional cycle of manipulation and abuse, where the abuser turns all of those negative feelings and begins to project them outward, either as a weapon or as a way to avoid dealing with them himself.

In a Previous Example, we talked about the tactic of stringing along a victim while the abuser turns to other sources of comfort or other endeavors while keeping just enough contact in place so that the victim believes he will come back and that the estrangement is just temporary.

After this Experiment, the abuser might Realize that this Tactic actually adds to the level of attachment and desperation in the victim, thereby offering him a degree of control, which is often quite intoxicating. The abuser will continue this cycle as he sees how far he can go without prompting the victim to give up on the hope and attachment she feels.

An alternative situation is that of the Jealous Lover who plays mind games and demeans the victim into a place where they do not feel they deserve to have interaction with any other human beings at all, thus securing an environment of control over the victim for the abuser. The abuser will degrade the victim`s self-confidence and sense of self-worth until they are no more than husks of the person they used to be.

When the Abuser can reach this point, he has successfuly formed in his mind the ideal victim because she has completely lost the will to fight for herself or stand up for her mental well-being.

Emotionally manipulative tactics become much easier, and the abuser will only lose more and more of whatever sense of guilt or conscience he might have had once, as this way of life and dominance become easier and more like routine. He might employ tactics of Yelling and Intimidation to maintain this sense of control he might punish the victim for what he calls infractions whenever the victim ventures out of his established expectations of her.

This type of situation and state of emotional degradation does not happen overnight, as we`ve discussed. This form of Long-Term abuse is a situation that gains gradual traction and momentum until it seems the train cannot be stopped.

It is often baffling to friends and loved ones when a marriage or relationship that once seemed healthy goes downhill this way, but it is important to remember that no one is immune to something like this happening to them.

In each situation, there is a complex set of factors and events that gradually contribute to the destruction of people`s emotional strength and eventual degradation of the bond of love and trust and respect often follows. 

We will discuss the “Importance of Self-esteem” in the next chapter.