You send people signals all day, without paying attention to them. The way you move your eyes, the way you shake a hand and so on. There are things you can do to send subconscious signals using body language that make people like you better, or at least give you the benefit of the doubt. Whenever I discuss techniques like these there are always one or two people who feel uncomfortable with ‘influencing’ someone with psychological tricks.
Manipulation is not negative
- Influencing is changing someone’s behavior or mind
- Manipulation is intentionally influencing
When you hear the word manipulation, you may immediately think of negative things. Please don’t.
Manipulation is not bad. People with bad intentions are bad.
Example 1: Manipulative sneaky person
Bad people are bad. Bad people who manipulate are problematic. An example of this:
- Mean Girl wants to reduce the social standing of Sweet Classmate
- She tells the other classmate this person did something horrible
- The class likes Sweet Classmate less
- Sweet Classmate feels sad now
Example 2: Friendly manipulation
Manipulation can make everyone in a situation better off.
- Party Person is an experienced manipulator
- Party Person bumps into another person
- Party Person smiles disarmingly and apologizes, even though the other person was wrong
- Party Person doesn’t get into a fight and has a great night
The problem with the Mean Girl example is not the manipulation, the problem is bad intentions and lying.
My request: Have good intentions
I’m assuming you will use these tricks with good intentions. Please do so.