Manipulative people are everywhere, they can be your friends, colleagues, relatives, or your boyfriend or girlfriend. "Psychological manipulation can be defined as the exercise of undue influence through mental distortion and emotional exploitation, with the intention to seize power, control, benefits, and privileges at the victim's expense", says Preston Ni on Psychology Today . Healthy social influence occurs as part of the give and takes of relationships, but in psychological manipulation, one person is used for the benefit of another. The manipulator deliberately creates an imbalance of power and exploits the victim to serve his or her agenda.
"When you are being manipulated, your rights or interests are often compromised and are not important to the other person," points out famous evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins in his book Behavioural Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach. According to best-selling author Dr. Isaiah Hanke l, manipulative people "want to control you, they want to change you, not to better your life, but to validate their lives and to keep you from outgrowing them." "Once you let manipulative people in your life, they can be extremely hard to get rid of. They'll flip flop on issues, act slippery when you try to hold them accountable, and promise help that never comes", he adds.
This doesn't mean all the manipulative people are bad or they have an agenda like Frank Underwood from The House of Cards. There are people who learn manipulative behavior when growing up, as a survival technique to get noticed within their family. Many such persons fail to recognize their interactions as manipulative but consider manipulation to be a normal way of behaving to get others to respond in ways that avoid conflict or ensures internal happiness, as several studies say .
It is generally hard to identify a manipulative person. But psychologist points out the following as some of the common characteristics of a manipulative person:
- They know how to detect your weaknesses, and use them against you.
- They convince you to give up something in order to serve their self-centered interests.
- Once a manipulator succeeds in taking advantage of you, they will likely repeat the exploitation until you put a stop to it
- They will often say, they are unloved, victimized, etc. in an effort to gain your sympathy and to get you to do things for them.
- Their kindness is conditional, as they might be sweet and kind to you if you do certain things well enough, but all heck breaks loose if you dare do it wrong or question them.
- They make you feel inadequate or judged. No matter what you do, this person can always find something wrong.
- They constantly lead you to apologize by blaming you for something that you did not do or making you feel responsible for a situation.
- They will always misinterpret anything you have said in the worst possible way to keep them in a position of power.
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