Psycho-manipulation in politics and society…

First, you start by throwing a really ridiculous request at someone—a request they will most likely reject. You then come back shortly thereafter and ask for something much less ridiculous—the thing you actually wanted in the first place. This trick may also sound counter-intuitive, but the idea behind it is that the person will feel bad for refusing your first request, even though it was unreasonable, so when you ask for something reasonable they will feel obliged to help out this time.

See: Cialdini, R.B., Vincent, J.E., Lewis, S.K., Catalan,J., Wheeler, D., & Darby, B.L., Reciprocal Concessions Procedure for Inducing Compliance: The door-in the face Technique. JPSP, 1975,31,206-215.

The reverse of the door in the face technique is instead of starting with a large request, start with something really small. Once someone has committed to helping you, or agreeing to something, they are now more likely to agree to a bigger request. By getting people to express support for things such as social issues and the environment—which is a fairly simple request. It is found that once they are persuaded to express their agreement to supporting the say, the environment, they were much easier to convince when it came to buying products that supported social programs and other such things. However, don’t start with one request and immediately assail them with another. Much has been learned from the marketing phenomenon.

It has also been proven that when someone is tired they are more susceptible to everything someone may say, whether it is a statement or a request. The reason for this is that when people are tired it isn’t just their physical body, their mental energy levels drop as well. When you ask a request of someone who is tired, you probably won’t get a definite response, but probably an “I’ll do it tomorrow,” because they don’t want to deal with decisions at the moment. The next day, they are likely to follow through because people tend to keep their word; it’s natural psychologically to want to follow through with something you said you would do. a.k.a. brainwashing – 11th hour and last minute legislation programming?

One of the more positive ways to influence others is to give them the illusion that you really understand how they feel, that you have real empathy for them. One of the most effective ways to do this is by paraphrasing what they say and repeating it back to them, also known as reflective listening, an a key way of manipulating your audience. If you listen to what they say, and rephrase it as a question to confirm that you understood it, they are going to be more comfortable talking with you. They are also going to have a better perspective of you and be more likely to listen to what you have to say, because you gave them the illusion that you care about them.

Then there is the mental ‘reverse osmosis’ filtration process. a.k.a. deprogramming.