Methods of psychological influence - techniques for influencing people

There are situations when a person feels insecure in communicating with others, or he lacks the knowledge and skills of how to convey his will to his interlocutor. In such cases, effective methods of psychological influence on the interlocutor help. This article describes in detail how to influence people using psychology and what not to do.

Psychological influence helps to assert oneself in society

The psychological impact is

People who live together or are often in each other's company somehow exert an influence based on their own self-interest.

Psychological influence on a person can be called a set of ways that in a certain way influence the psyche of the interlocutor. These methods of influence involve several components:

• determining the character of the interlocutor;
• knowledge of reactions in stressful situations;
• behavioral features.

A person who uses influence techniques in communication can do it unconsciously or intentionally. People working in different fields may be interested in ensuring that consumers make a profitable decision.

Methods of influencing a person

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Sometimes people can feel themselves being affected psychologically. The most common example found in everyday life is the personnel of marketing, trade, as well as politics and even in the legal environment, when a person is forced to comply with laws. Psychological methods of influencing people imply the ability to control the psycho-emotional level, turning off consciousness and the use of a certain technique.

Methods of influencing a person are the use of one or more methods at once:

1. Attack on mental state. The technique involves actively influencing the interlocutor, alternating several actions: violent gestures, verbosity, constant change of body positions.
2. Modeling behavior. The process of influence involves immobility of the manipulator, inaction and the use of unambiguous phrases or words. The method has an effect similar to hypnosis. The interlocutor begins to have a number of specific thoughts, his opinion becomes imposed by a manipulator, and his behavior becomes typical for a specific situation.
3. Impact. A means of influencing through the use of ambiguous phrases and thoughtful posture. People develop ambiguous images, which is why they are forced to make a choice in favor of the manipulator.
4. Mental pressure. The manipulator can control through an affirmative and commanding form of speech, the absence of objections, and a stable body position. A belittling effect is formed. This type of influence is often applicable in the military system.

The influence on the subconscious occurs daily from different areas of life.

Imitation

This is a type of psychological influence that is more applicable in pedagogy. The mechanism influences the process of personality development. A person has a desire to copy the behavior of the manipulator, his actions, speech, movements, etc. If the manipulator corresponds to the ideal in the imagination of the person under the influence, then the desire to imitate will be constant.

Infection

This is a form of influence when an emotional state is transferred from one person to another. For example, when an irritated individual spoils the mood of others. The impact of such an image can convey positive and negative emotions. This method is considered the oldest and most effective among large social groups. Success can be achieved most quickly in a poorly united team. A person conveys his thoughts, mood, and beliefs to the crowd precisely through emotions.

Belief

The main principle of the method is to be able to influence the mind of the interlocutor. This technique is unsuccessful with poorly developed personalities, since arguments often lead to nothing if the person is not intellectually developed enough. To gain the trust of your interlocutor, you need to remember the truthfulness of your speech. The trick of influence lies not only in expressing beliefs, but also in argumentation and proof of them.

Note! Persuasion is based on being able to influence a person's judgment.

The manipulator’s task is to change the interlocutor’s opinion, so the conversation should be started by the one who is interested.

Suggestion

This method of influence is not emotional. The manipulator must direct his gaze and intonation of voice at the interlocutor, choose the right words and show authority. People in pedagogical specialties often use this method with teenage students.

With the help of this type of influence, you can force a person to change his beliefs, type of thinking, and force him to perform some kind of role. The peculiarity of suggestion is that a person does not change the ability to think, but shows a willingness to accept someone else’s opinion.

Parents and teachers often resort to suggestion

Emotional impact

A person’s disposition during a conversation often reveals his emotional state. Several signs that a person has fallen under the influence of his interlocutor:

• When meeting an interlocutor, he shows joy so that he subsequently experiences positive emotions from the sight of the manipulator.
• While laughing, people look at the person they like.
• The use of negative particles at the beginning of a conversation immediately programs in the interlocutor’s mind a reluctance to do something. For example, to the phrase “Would you like to have some coffee?” the interlocutor is more likely to refuse.
• Don't apologize unnecessarily.

Other ways of influence

How to influence a person psychologically using some details of behavior during a conversation? You can learn to influence people by remembering a few techniques:

• Periodically address your interlocutor by name.
• Copying intonation, gestures and facial expressions during communication ensures the interlocutor's favor.
• In order for the interlocutor to begin to have a positive attitude, it is necessary to maintain eye contact. It is important to note to yourself what color your eyes are.
• It is necessary to master the art of flattery - it should be, but not excessive.
• Make sure to keep your voice calm during a controversial conversation. Subsequently, the interlocutor will feel a sense of guilt, this indicates that he was wrong.

Important! If you let your interlocutor speak out without interrupting, you can subsequently use the information you hear to your advantage.

Many people are unaware that they are using influence techniques

Mechanisms of belief transformation

The effectiveness of psychological influence also depends on specific mechanisms for transforming people’s beliefs, stereotypes and attitudes.

The mechanism of faith transformation. Beliefs are significant, stable motives for people’s actions, which, as a rule, have an ideological basis and are manifested in their actions, deeds and behavior. Thus, each country cultivates so-called “eternal values”, such as love for one’s country and all its representatives, love of peace, trust in its leaders, pride in them, etc., supposedly without any political orientation. It bears fruit. Therefore, people's actions are often based mainly on the internal acceptance of these "eternal values", as well as on a sense of duty and responsibility, pride in their country, personal vanity and the desire to demonstrate their abilities as a representative of this state.

However, the reality of a country and the relationships between people in it can often change. At the same time, according to the laws of cognitive dissonance, established beliefs are subject to fluctuation. Therefore, targeted psychological influence from the outside helps to weaken, neutralize or replace them with the opposite.

The mechanism of transformation of stereotypes. Stereotypes are schematized representations of facts of reality, widespread in certain social and ethnic groups and thus leading to extremely simplified (as a rule, inadequate to reality) assessments and judgments of representatives of these groups. They are formed as a result of repeated semantic and emotional emphasis of people’s consciousness on certain phenomena and events, their repeated perception and imprinting in memory.

Stereotypes usually reflect not the essence (depth), but the appearance, the most striking, most characteristic phenomenon or event. Any assessment of the latter that corresponds to the stereotype is usually accepted without evidence and is considered the most correct, while any other is questioned. It is important to note that stereotypes in individual, group and social consciousness are formed not only by the surrounding reality, but also by the experiences, opinions and judgments of other people.

Therefore, stereotypes can become the object of psychological influence. Their transformation is both a condition for the effectiveness of such influence and a condition for changing people’s behavior. For example, the state forms a stereotype of people’s positive attitude towards the political leadership of their country. But the opposition forces within it are always trying to change it.

Mechanism of attitude change. Attitude is a state of internal readiness (inclination) of a person for a certain manifestation of feelings, intellectual, cognitive and volitional activity, dynamics and nature of communication, objective and practical activity, etc., which corresponds to his needs.

As a rule, the formation of an attitude is preceded by people's awareness of a certain need and the conditions under which this need can be satisfied. A targeted psychological effect creates a situation in which an existing need is satisfied by providing people with specific information presented in a certain way. Thanks to this, views are formed, fixed, replaced or changed in people's minds.

The criterion for the effectiveness of persuasive influence is persuasion. This is a deep confidence in the truth of assimilated ideas, terms, concepts, images. This allows you to make unambiguous decisions and implement them without hesitation, to take a firm position when assessing certain facts and phenomena. Through faith, we shape people's attitudes and determine their behavior in specific situations. An important feature of faith is its depth. This is directly related to people’s previous education, their consciousness, life experience and ability to analyze the phenomena of the surrounding reality.

Impact goals

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Regardless of which group of people needs to be influenced, the goals of influence belong to one of the groups:

• indoctrination to other people to satisfy one's own benefit;
• assertion of authority among others;
• modeling standards of behavior and concepts;
• internalizing a sense of significance;
• self-realization.

Most often, the practice of manipulating other people is due to selfish views. When a person sees that his interlocutor is emotionally inferior to him, a desire arises to subjugate him to his will, albeit unconsciously. Some want to be listened to, others want some actions to be performed for them, others try to establish themselves with the opposite sex (especially among girls). Someone may use emotional influence with good intentions, but more often the reason lies in selfishness. In any case, the manipulator’s hidden motive in sum involves asserting his own importance in the eyes of people.

These goals are divided into intentional and unintentional. The first include those when the manipulator tries to assert himself, force someone to perform some actions for him, or pursues a selfish goal. A person can have an unintended influence simply by being in the room. Others begin to copy his behavior, succumb to his beliefs, and suddenly lean toward his point of view. Such an ability can manifest itself spontaneously without any malicious intent.

Most manipulators pursue their own interests

Means of communication.

Means of communication are ways of encoding, processing and decoding information transmitted during communication. All means of communication are divided into two groups: verbal (speech) and nonverbal (non-speech).

Verbal communication is carried out using words. Speech is the process of using language to communicate between people. Language is a system of signs that serves as a means of human communication, mental activity, and a way of expressing a person’s self-awareness. Speech can be monologue or dialogic. Of particular importance is the communicative function of speech, which has three sides:

• informational (legibility, understandability, meaningfulness of statements)
• expressive (emotional speech)
• effective (the speaker’s desire to subordinate the actions and actions of the person communicating with him to his desires and intentions).

Nonverbal communication - information is transmitted using non-verbal signs. A sign is any material object that acts as an indication and designation and is used to acquire, store, process and transmit information.

Nonverbal elements of communication:

1) Postures, gestures, facial expressions (general motor skills that reflect a person’s emotional reactions) 2) Paralinguistics or prosody (pronunciation features, voice timbre, pitch, volume, speech rate, pauses between words, etc.) 3) Proxemics (special area dealing with the norms of space and time for organizing communication) 4) Visual communication - eye contact (a specific sign system that takes place in visual communication) Classification of means of communication . 1. Speech: Monologue speech (story, report, commands, speech); dialogical speech (free dialogue, conversation) 2. Non-speech (gestures, facial expressions, actions, codes and symbols, objects)

Manipulation errors

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It is not always possible to use methods of influencing people correctly. Some common mistakes reveal people's motives, and methods of influence become ineffective:

1. The first mistake is that the interlocutor notices that he is being manipulated. This is possible if the interlocutor himself has a similar communication skill, or if the manipulator has overdone it. In some areas, communication involves manipulation, for example, in a work environment between a boss and a subordinate, in a family environment between parents and children.
2. The manipulator did not take into account the influence of additional factors. Any psychological influence can work or not under the influence of various factors: the interlocutor knows the technique of protection from psychological influence, the interlocutor is distracted by his thoughts, or any other reasons. A technique may sometimes not work, but this does not mean that it is ineffective in general.
3. The manipulator hopes to influence a person’s subconscious and forgets about his logical thinking. If a technique can work on a subconscious level, then a sufficiently developed logic can seize on a detail and cause doubt, which is why the psychological impact may not be successful.

Methods of influence are divided into methods: emotional and physical. Each is more effective among different groups of people and for achieving different goals. The manipulator's goals themselves may be intentional or not; in practice, in most cases, the manipulator pursues selfish motives. You can learn the technique of influence at a psychologist’s appointment or on your own, using a practice course based on manuals or audio books.