Surviving Parental Alienation by Amy J. L. Baker

Author:Amy J. L. Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

The Six Tactics of Persuasion

Decades of psychological research and consumer marketing studies have identified the essential elements of the art of influence. What we know is that humans have evolved to make use of mental shortcuts to help navigate complex decision-making situations and social interactions. Because these shortcuts are not conscious, they can be activated outside of a person’s awareness, through the use of persuasion tactics. When an alienating parent engages in one of more of these tactics, the child can be manipulated into believing the truthfulness of the alienation message the same way that consumers can be tricked into buying a product they don’t need or want. In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, psychologist and persuasion expert Dr. Robert Cialdini describes six tactics, all of which can easily be applied to understand parental alienation.[12]

The first is the rule of reciprocity, which dictates that a person will generally feel obligated to reciprocate when given a gift or favor. A common employment of this rule is the marketing ploy of sending free gifts in the mail along with requests for donations. The recipient will unconsciously feel obligated to return the favor by making a donation, which he or she might not have made otherwise. All parents give things to their children, so the alienating parent has many opportunities to invoke this rule of reciprocity. That parent can do this, for example, by reminding the child of everything he or she has done for the child and signaling that something is expected in return (loyalty, preference, rejection of the other parent). The child’s sense of indebtedness can be increased if the alienating parent creates the appearance of “going to battle” for the child, by claiming, for example, to be protecting the child, advocating for the child, or standing up for the child, or to have made sacrifices for the child. These are common themes in the stories of alienation throughout this book. For example, Sonya was led to believe that her father was trying to protect her from her mother’s theft of her college funds.

The rule of reciprocity may also explain why alienated children are pressured to refuse gifts from the extended family of the targeted parent, as that would create an indebtedness toward them, something the alienating parent does not want to see happen. The child may also decline gifts to avoid feeling indebted to the targeted parent.

Second is the rule of consistency and commitment. As Cialdini explains, “Once we have made a choice or taken a stand we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressure to behave consistently with that commitment.”[13] If the alienating parent can create a situation in which the child will betray the targeted parent (be rude, lie to, spy on, reject, and the like), the child will come to believe that the targeted parent must be unworthy. (Why else would the child have behaved the way he did?) The very act of betrayal creates inside the child an identity as someone who doesn’t love or care for the other parent.

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