There have been a lot of lies and misconceptions floating around recently thanks to the election,
but a term that was only known in some clinical psychology circles has started to become more
mainstream. Gaslighting. Unfortunately, much like the term fake news, it's being diluted by overuse
and is starting to mean just about any form of lying. But it’s actually a far more elaborate,
complicated, and deliberate system of lying for a purpose. So let’s go
about properly identifying this phenomenon before we effectively lose this word too.
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So first, let’s just talk about good old plain lying. Everybody Lies. As House famously said
in… just about every episode, everybody lies. It’s just a matter of about what,
and I would add, how often. Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up.
Far and away the biggest reason people lie is out of fear – usually fear of getting into trouble.
And while a lot of this could be as simple as lying to your parents about which friends you were
actually hanging out with, or telling your teacher that your dog ate your homework – side note that
actually happened to me and I showed my teacher the shredded remains. Some of it can have some
serious consequences. Lying on the stand during a trial can be prosecuted as perjury. Lying to the
police during questioning could be obstruction. If you’re the person in trouble, the police
usually expect you to lie, so they developed a way around that… enter the lie detector, or polygraph.
The most hated machine on the planet. Why? Because we all know it doesn’t work – but for some reason,
we still rely on it when it’s given to other people. And when someone doesn’t want to take it,
we immediately assume that they’re guilty. Why is that? Well mostly, because a) the
police WANT you to believe that the lie detector works, especially if you’re the one about to be
questioned and b) the media, tv shows and movies like cop dramas or daytime talk shows needs a deus
ex machina in order to get the truth out of the bad guy. Lately some of them have been switching
over to “truth serums” which were ruled completely unconstitutional in 1963 in the US, because of the
whole altered mind and giving a confession while under the influence thing. If you’d like to see
how well truth serums actually work, you probably have one the best ones in your kitchen – alcohol.
But lie detectors are still a little hit or miss when it comes to the law. Some states allow them,
some states ban them, some federal agencies mandate them, and some people on probation
or parole are required to take them. So while we all know that they don’t work, at least on
some level we hope they work for other people. So how do these things supposedly work? Well,
a polygraph measures physiological changes. It tracks heart rate, blood pressure, respiration
rate, and skin conductivity. Skin conductivity? They also call it the galvanic skin response.
Sounds super fancy right? The person administering the polygraph will always tell you about these
super scientific things it’s measuring in order to get you to – at least in the moment – believe
that the machine works. Skin conductivity literally means how sweaty your fingertips are.
The most widely used questioning method is called the controlled question test. At the start,
the administrator will tell you to lie… and then point out on the machine that
it was pretty obvious that you were lying. So now you believe that the machine works. Onto
the questions. All of your answers are simple yes or no. There are three types of questions,
control or diagnostic questions, which are pretty simple. Is your name Kayleigh? Are
you currently in the seated position? Then there are irrelevant questions, these are usually bad
things about your past that aren’t part of the investigation. Have you ever lied to a
loved one? Have you ever stolen anything? And then the relevant questions to the investigation. All
of the questions are in a mixed random order. The polygraph is passed if your physiological
responses to the irrelevant questions are greater than to the relevant questions. If they are equal,
then the test is ruled inconclusive, and you might even be accused of trying to cheat the polygraph.
The problem is if you’re innocent, anxious, and very adamantly deny that you committed
the crime - I did not murder him. Hell, I don’t want my toaster or my vacuum cleaner
appearing emotional. I DID NOT MURDER HIM! - even if you’re telling the truth,
the polygraph is going to register that as more than the irrelevant questions, therefore,
you’re lying. The fear of false positives, and the anxiety that comes along with it, turns out to
be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and therefore the polygraph is no more reliable than a coin flip. In
several high profile cases, like the BTK Killer, the guilty person actually passed the polygraph.
Some say that trained polygraph administrators are no more reliable than untrained citizens
at deducing whether or not someone is lying. A better method of polygraph questioning is
called the Guilty Knowledge Test. Instead of using yes or no questions, the person is presented with
a multiple choice question, where one of the options is something that only the guilty party
would know. “Was the victim stabbed, shot, or strangled?” “Was the victim shot with a pistol,
rifle, or shotgun?” The questions are slowed down so the person has time to think about each of the
options, and their overall reactions to the guilty information is what determines whether
or not they are guilty. There are variations of this test where, after the question,
the person is told the correct answer – in order to rate the “Oh no, they know!” reaction.
There are some methods of lie detection that are proving much more reliable. Such as
measuring ocular-motor functions, which you can’t consciously control, or using an fMRI. The problem
is that these methods are extremely expensive and nowhere near ready to use in criminal cases.
So okay, enough about polygraphs and lying to get out of trouble. Most of the other lies that
we tell are in order to protect someone or not hurt their feelings. We usually call these “white
lies.” Thanks for the sweater grandma! Yes, this tastes delicious. Make no mistake, these are lies.
The problem with white lies is that if the person ever finds out that you were lying, you’re going
to be in way more trouble than if you had actually just told the truth – because not only have you
hurt their feelings, but you also lied about it. That’s why I never tell any lies, not even white
ones (press X to doubt)…. What. Zoom out already. Somewhat more rare are lies for attention or
sympathy. We all do this to some degree – the fish was this big, I swear – but the best example comes
from pathological liars. These are the people that lie about having a famous dad or uncle,
or having cancer, or that they were abused, in order to look good or get more sympathy. They want
to be seen as being cool, the hero, or the victim. All of these get them more attention. There are
four characteristics to a pathological liar: The lies are always amazing, they never
lie about something dull, but they are always within the realm of possibility.
The lie is automatic and chronic. They will always lie – in any situation.
The motivation to lie is internally generated. No one is making them or teaching them how to lie.
The lies always make the person look better or more deserving.
A key point in identifying a pathological liar is that they KNOW they are lying. If someone lies so
much that they believe their own lies, they’re no longer lying, they’re suffering from a delusion.
One of the first steps in diagnosing psychopathy is whether or not they are a pathological liar.
All psychopaths are pathological liars. But not all pathological liars are psychopaths.
The final reason people lie – although I’m sure someone will pick this apart
and find a reason that I missed – is lying for personal gain. This could be as simple as lying
in order to get someone’s money, like a con artist. Or as complicated as lying in order
to increase power – like in government, or business, or even in a relationship.
And here is where we finally get to talk about gaslighting. Gaslighting is a lying scheme used
deliberately to control a person’s perception of reality, in order to maintain or strengthen the
liar’s control. Not all lies are gaslighting, and as I said before, if we overuse this term,
it’s going to become diluted and meaningless. Just like what happened with fake news just a
few months ago. It started off as just hoaxes and lies, but now it means “any news I disagree with.”
But the reason gaslighting has become such a popular phrase as of late is because of
Donald Trump and his surrogates. Before the last few years, gaslighting was a term only
known in the clinical psychology world. It was the method by which an abusive spouse kept the
submissive spouse in line… even to the point of making the abused spouse deny that there was any
abuse or believe that they somehow deserved it. It got its name from a 1944 film named Gaslight,
in which a woman is psychologically tortured and made to question her entire reality.
We’re going to look at three examples in order to explain gaslighting. First, the original
perpetrator: the abusive husband. Sup.
Second, a less obvious gaslighter, the cheater. Hello. Wait… is, is this thing on?
And lastly, since he is the reason the term rose in popularity recently, Donald Trump.
Help… mmph… I’m gonna barf. So the main goal of gaslighting is to
get the person to question their own perceptions of reality and accept yours, thus giving you more
power. In the husband's example, they are trying to get power over their spouse, so they’re talking
directly to their spouse in a confrontation. In the examples I’ll give you of Donald Trump and his
administration, he’s not talking directly to the American people, but to reporters. But, he is not
attempting to gaslight the reporter, as some would say, he’s trying to gaslight the American people.
There are five tactics in gaslighting. Any one of these on their own is simply a lie,
it's the combination, the elaborate and deliberate implementation, that makes it
gaslighting. And a person who is gaslighting will use all of them, not necessarily all at once,
and in no particular order. Reject. Deny or reject
the accuser’s version of events. Pfft. It ain’t even like I hit you.
What? No, we were just meeting up for some drinks. No one had numbers because the National
Parks Service, which controls the National Mall, does not put any out.
Diminish. Marginalize or reduce the accuser’s claim, you’re admitting that it happened,
but not to the degree that they think it did. I barely even hit you. If I wanted
to hit you, trust me, you’d be in the hospital. It didn’t mean anything, not like I’m
with you… it was just a fling. Could you hear the voices from the
women’s march here in Washington? We know there were more than a million people who turned out,
and you are their president now too. It’s true. Could you hear them… No, I couldn’t hear them.
Alternative. Offer an alternative example that’s much bigger or much worse than what they’re
claiming, thus further diminishing their claim. You’re acting like I went all Chris
Brown on Rihanna or something. It was just one night with a friend. It’s not
like I’m sleeping with hookers at a motel. You’re gonna have a large crowd on
Friday too, which is mostly pro-life people. You’re gonna have a lot of people coming on
Friday. And I will say this, and I didn’t realize this but I was told, you will have a very large
crowd of people, I don’t know, as large or larger. Some people said it’s going to be larger.
Blame. Accuse the accuser of bias or being the cause of the event.
Sometimes you just make me crazy is all, you know how you get.
Well, maybe if you weren’t at work so much I wouldn’t have to look around for attention.
Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way,
in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall.
These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.
Pro-life people, and they say the press doesn’t cover them. I don’t want to compare crowd sizes
again. No you shouldn’t. But let me just say, what they do say is the press doesn’t cover them.
Assure. Reassure the accuser that your version of events is the correct one by
using a statement they should already accept. C’mon baby, you know I would never hit you.
C’mon baby, you know I would never cheat on you. But I have to also say, we just had an election a
few weeks ago, and they voted, in many cases, in some they didn’t vote I imagine, and we did have
an election. With that being said, absolutely I have a responsibility to everybody, including
people that didn’t vote for Donald Trump. This was the largest audience to ever
witness an inauguration period. Both in person and around the globe.
All five of these tactics, used in tandem, will cause the victim to question their reality,
and the evidence of their eyes and ears, and accept the alternative reality supplied by the
gaslighter. The spouses in the first two examples, and as some people say, the American people,
in the last example. They will also begin to reject any evidence that contradicts the
reality they’ve been indoctrinated to believe, thus giving the gaslighter even more power.
It should be noted that not everybody is susceptible to gaslighting. The victim has to
be relatively unintelligent or unaware – in the dark so to speak. As Maureen Dowd said in 1995,
“You cannot gaslight someone who is already a little lit.”
As I said, any one of those on their own is simply a lie. Or an alternative fact. Sigh… no… no,
I’m not falling down that rabbit hole. Calling it an alternative fact is just a way to diminish
the accuser’s claim that they are lying. It’s one of the tactics of gaslighting.
So now that you know all about lies and gaslighting, make sure that you’re using
the terms correctly. And make sure that others are using them correctly. I understand that
tweeting back to someone and saying “That’s not gaslighting, that’s just a lie. Gaslighting is
an elaborate system of lies used for control.” Is the kind of hair-splitting that might get
people to dislike you, but if we allow the term to be diluted and diminished,
we are actually helping the gaslighting process. So hopefully now, you know better.
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