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A very effective person I know would gaslight people in meetings to think his ideas were actually theirs.
by flyinglizard 6y ago
A very effective person I know would gaslight people in meetings to think his ideas were actually theirs.
- corty 6y agoThat is a common technique taught in rhetoric and management courses. People are quite fond of their own ideas and implicitly devalue the ideas of others. Therefore, if you don't care about owning an idea but care about getting it done, just talk the leader or the whole group into thinking it was theirs. It is actually quite easy, because most people are sufficiently vain to accept this without resistance.
- davidgerard 6y agoIt's amazing how much you can get done if you don't worry about taking the credit.
- bsenftner 6y agoAnd then the selfless employee is not promoted.
- alpaca128 6y agoThat is not what gaslighting means.
- flyinglizard 6y agoYou must have missed the update
- delecti 6y agoThat's not the form that gaslighting usually takes, but it does seem pretty similar to what's usually involved. And based on the definition on wikipedia: > Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment Other than the goal being "seeds of doubt", manipulating someone into thinking something untrue is really not far from gaslighting.
- alpaca128 6y agoFrom the same article: > The goal of gaslighting is to gradually undermine the victim's confidence in their own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or reality from delusion, thereby rendering the individual or group pathologically dependent on the gaslighter for their thinking and feelings. Is the described behaviour manipulative? Sure. But compared to everything I know of gaslighting and the intents behind it I don't see much similarity, not with more context than a single sentence at least. Did the manager do it to help people's careers? Did he try to lure them into a satanic cult? There's a wide range of unknowns.
- delecti 6y agoThat's what I said though. The goal may be different, but the process is the same. And while it's not what it originally meant, using gaslighting to mean "manipulating someone into thinking something untrue" is probably pretty common.
- darkerside 6y agoIntention does matter to be fair. It's murder versus manslaughter.
- corty 6y agoI would also add that in gaslighting, the victim is unwilling and unknowing. In the described manipulation, the victim is willing to be manipulated and often even knows that it is being manipulated. So while gaslighting needs quite some effort to convince the victim of something, this injection of an idea is helped by the victims' will to own the idea and deceive others and themselves to that end.