How Manipulation Works

A MATTER OF MANIPULATION

Manipulation is, no doubt, dangerous in the world of today.

It’s important to be able to identify it so that you can stop it in its tracks.

You can be manipulated:

• At work, by your manager or coworkers;
• In business relationships, by partners or suppliers;
• In relationships or friendships, through emotion or even bullying;
• By politicians, the media or others, with false numbers;
• By any type of person that wants to drive you to a specific type of action;

Although manipulation is easy in practice, it’s hard to master if not properly explained. Among other reasons, because other courses don’t talk about all possible types of manipulation (emotional, numerical, psychological, etc).

In fact, you’ll be lucky if they cover more than one type.

Let’s face it. No course can cover all possible types of manipulation.

That was, until this course came out.

LIKE ALL OTHER COURSES. UNLIKE ANY OTHER COURSE.

Unlike other courses on persuasion and manipulation, this one is extremely comprehensive. With this course, I am to cover all possible types of manipulation.

There are countless types of techniques, including:

• Making the other side feel comfortable with you, so they drop their guard;
• Obfuscate or change the actual facts to make something seem better or worse;
• Compare something to better or worse things to change its value just due to the comparison;
• … and many other techniques;

In this short course, we have only one goal: to cover the different types of manipulation. How people manipulate using emotion, using the target’s identity, using the facts, and so on.

In order to achieve this, we split manipulation into the following types:

• Consistency Manipulation (get someone to state something or do something favorable, and they will keep aligned with that);
• Emotional Manipulation (emotional blackmail, bullying someone, or making them feel different emotions);
• Effort Manipulation (change the perceived effort of something and you change how frequently people do it);
• Standard Manipulation (measure different things by different criteria, and they seem of different value);
• Pressure Manipulation (pressure the other side through intimidation, deadlines, or others, and they rush to action);
• Identification Manipulation (make the other side feel heard or understood and their drop their guard);
• Fact Manipulation (hide facts, change facts or simplify facts and you change something’s value);
• Context Manipulation (change what something is compared to, or emphasize specific characteristics, and you change its value);
• Labeling Manipulation (attribute something a simplistic name or label, and you change its value);

By the end of this course, you will know all about these types of manipulation, as well as how to fight them.

THE PERFECT COURSE… FOR WHOM?

This course is targeted, naturally, at any type of student that wants to learn more about how manipulation is performed, or how to stop it.

More specifically, the ideal student for this course is someone who:

• Wants to know how to question the numbers and labels provided by politicians or news outlets;
• Doesn’t want to be emotionally manipulated or even bullied by people at work (possibly, their bosses);
• Wants to be able to know when people are faking numbers or using double standards, in work or life;
• Wants to know when others are changing the options just to make something seem better in comparison;
• Wants to be able to fight emotional manipulation or emotional blackmail by friends or coworkers;
• Wants to learn how to not be pressured into taking action by people that are very present or intense;
• Doesn’t want to fall into traps when other make something seem too easy or too good to be true;

LET ME TELL YOU… EVERYTHING

Some people – including me – love to know what they’re getting in a package.

And by this, I mean, EVERYTHING that is in the package.

So, here is a list of everything that this course covers:

• The nine main types of manipulation you can fall prey to (consistency manipulation, emotional manipulation, effort manipulation, standard manipulation, pressure manipulation, identification manipulation, fact manipulation, context manipulation and labeling manipulation;
• How the psychological principle of consistency works, and how people use it to force others to act in alignment with what they have said or done before;
• The persuasion technique of active choice – forcing someone to state something in the first person, such as “I will do this” or “I will buy” in order to force them to keep aligned with their statement later;
• The persuasion principle of escalation of commitment. By asking for small favors or small agreements, you can then ask for bigger and bigger ones later;
• Why getting someone to take action on something makes them more likely to value it. For example, the IKEA effect – you will like more a piece of furniture if you’ve put in effort towards assembling it yourself;
• How habits are a form of consistency. What you do once, twice ends up becoming ingrained in you;
• The psychological principle of rationalisation – how people make emotional decisions, and then later try and justify them with logic;
• How emotional manipulation works, by forcing the other side to feel a specific emotion, or feel guilty for their actions against you, such as emotional blackmaill;
• How hype and desire work by building up something in a person’s mind, regardless of its actual value in reality;
• How the concept of twisting the knife works, by making someone visualize the nightmare scenario of something to later drive them to action;
• How bullying and emotional blackmail work, taking negative actions and forcing the person to feel responsible for them;
• How fear and panic work. If you “press someone’s buttons”, you can easily drive them to action emotionally;
• Why emotional manipulation relies on the victim identifying with the person’s reactions, and how the key in avoiding it is to eliminate those trained reactions;
• The psychological concept of perceived effort – why, when something seems easier to do, people are more likely to do it – and how this effort can be changed;
• How “low-effort words” such as “quick”, “simple” and “easy” can be used to make something seem less effortful;
• How reducing the number of available options makes people take action more easily (the paradox of choice);
• How preempting doubt and negative situations can drive people to action (tackle their objection before they even have it and they are more likely to do something);
• The concept of implementation intention (asking someone “How would you do this?” or “What would it take?” makes them visualize it, which makes it less effort, and makes them more likely to do it);
• How inserting structure and/or progress into a process makes people more likely to finish it (“You are at step 3 of 4”);
• How standard manipulation works by having different standards for different people or elements;
• How standards can be made different by hiding the criteria used in the first place;
• How standards can be manipulated by making exceptions for specific people;
• How motivated reasoning works (we do more diligence on the things we don’t like, and vice-versa);
• How unexpected rigidity changes standards (on paper, the requirements are the same, but unofficially, there are different things that different people must comply with);
• How standard manipulation relies on hiding the criteria used in the first place, and the key to disarming it is through transparency, and forcing comparisons between cases;
• How pressuring the other person using your presence and intensity is a dangerous type of manipulation;
• How intimidation in specific works, by pressuring the other person so much you prevent them from even talking or contesting you;
• How urgency works by forcing you to make an unprepared decision, using, for example, deadlines, or limiting the availability of something (in reality or just in your perception);
• How bluffing and escalation dominance work – the other side takes action repeatedly as to never give you an opportunity;
• How identification manipulation works, through the other side pretending to have something in common with you to make you more influenceable;
• How empathy works, showing understanding of the other side, but also how it can be manipulated to make you feel understood and be more influenceable;
• How affect labeling works, decreasing the intensity of your emotions by addressing them verbally, and stopping you from feeling emotions intensely;
• How mirroring works, making someone feel subconsciously understood, which leads them to trust the other side more and be more influenceable;
• How common ground works – mentioning tastes or life experiences in common with others to make them trust you more and be more influenceable;
• Why the biological principle of caring about others makes us tend to be nice to others who understand us – or pretend to – and makes us open to manipulation;
• How fact manipulation works through simplifying, hiding or just lying about facts;
• How statistics can be misleading by changing axes, comparisons, timeframes or others;
• How lack of transparency about competing or contradictory information can make fake facts seem more real, and why comparison with other elements is crucial to avoid this type of manipulation;
• How context manipulation works – by changing what you compare something to, you change its perceived value;
• How you can choose what you contrast something to in order to change the value of something ($20 book vs. $10 ones is expensive, vs. $70 ones is cheap);
• How you can change the option set you place yourself in to change your value and manipulate the other side (for example, as a professional, comparing yourself to other teams, to other people in the same team, to other people in the same position in the past, or other comparisons);
• How the peak-end effect works – by having one highlight and ending on a high note, people forget about negative or boring parts of a presentation;
• Why context manipulation relies on us subconsciously accepting the options we’re given instead of contesting them;
• How labeling manipulation works – by giving something a specific name, even if simplistic or negative, it tends to stick, and spreads easily;
• How bullying works by using negative labels – labeling someone a “failure”, or “loser”, or similar, and making it spread;
• How stereotypes are a type of labeling manipulation – labeling a large quantity of people with simplistic names;
• How the presence or absence of a name can humanize or de-humanize someone, making them a “true person” or a nameless stranger;
• How scientific-sounding words can be used to make something seem of higher authority, without actually changing anything in it (saying “a theory” instead of “a thought”, or using words in product names such as “quantum”, “exponential”, “atomic” or similar);

MY INVITATION TO YOU

Remember that you always have a 30-day money-back guarantee, so there is no risk for you.

Also, I suggest you make use of the free preview videos to make sure the course really is a fit. I don’t want you to waste your money.

If you think this course is a fit and can take your knowledge of how to protect yourself from manipulation to the next level… it would be a pleasure to have you as a student.

See on the other side!

OTHER VERSIONS OF THIS COURSE

This course is part of the “How Manipulation Works” family, which contains multiple courses for different verticals, including:

• How Manipulation Works (base course);
• How Manipulation Works in Asset Management;
• How Manipulation Works in the Corporate World/Careers;
• How Manipulation Works in Executive Relations;
• How Manipulation Works in Asset Management;
• How Manipulation Works in Marketing;
• How Manipulation Works in Politics;
• How Manipulation Works in Research;
• How Manipulation Works in Sales;
• How Manipulation Works in Startups;
• How Manipulation Works Masterclass (9-in-1 Course Bundle);

OTHER COURSES BY VASCO

If you’re interested in persuasion/manipulation courses, it may be of use for you to explore some of my other courses, including:

• Ultimate Persuasion Psychology;
• Social Skills for Executive Presence;
• Negotiating Your Salary (course series – 6 different courses);
• Dealing with Difficult People (course series – 8 different courses);
• Conflict Resolution (course series – 9 different courses);