Influence: When Your Weaknesses Are Used Against You
This short story is about influence. We walk through a metro station. We come back tired from a tiring day at work and want to lay down on our comfy couch and devour the whole fridge. Suddenly we start to smell pancakes and the memory brings us the sensation of their taste, which we love. In the background a musician plays one of your favorite songs on his guitar. Would you give him money?
Psychologist Robert Baron of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, studied this phenomenon with his team. According to their results , it seems that we are three times more likely to give money when we are surrounded by pleasant scents.
This is how nature affects people. However, it’s not always best for the emotional part of our brain to take over for our logical part. How do we see the influence then? How do we know what affects us? Let’s dig deeper.
Small, daily acts of influence
It is normal for us to indulge in something that spoils our ego and promises us happiness. Without delving too much into the subject, we can say that success is generally about using persuasion, both implicitly and explicitly.
Influence has a powerful effect on us because we are social and emotional beings. In fact, we are sometimes convinced of the most trivial attitudes and actions. For example, we give in to our cat’s call to pick up something for the simple fact of meowing over it.
We may give in to our children’s requests to play video games for an extended period of time, although we don’t believe they really should. Our children are experts at playing with our emotions and they constantly test us. Children are great proof that people master the act of influencing very early.
Malicious Influence
Influencing is a natural tendency that is present in all of us. We can’t feel guilty about trying to use all our available resources to get what we want. We all influence to a greater or lesser extent. However, the real influencers know their limit when to use it.
These true specialists of deception and simulation are fueled by the little secrets or signs you show them. We can act in a generous or sincere way, only for the master influencer to use that act as a great advantage to use against you later.
A high degree of influence towards others can even be a sign of psychopathy. Basically, the influencer uses your weaknesses to his advantage. The influencer uses your weaknesses against you and convinces you to act as he pleases.
Influencers need control over others and do not feel guilty about it. That being said, there are certain characteristics that are shared by those who are easily misled. In addition, if you give in to influence once, you are likely to give in to influence more in the future. This is because vulnerability is a learned behavior.
If you reveal your weaknesses, you are at the mercy of others
The influencer tries to promise you what you want most. The more you know about their needs and wants, the more weapons you can use against the influencer.
Plus , influencers are experts at exploiting your insecurities. For example, if you feel uncomfortable or have doubts about your abilities, people will try to help you, but always at a high cost. On many occasions, the products you buy during such times are nothing but a smoke screen.
We also have ‘ the eternal victim’. This type of influence is more complex because no material item is traded. The eternal victim is constantly complaining and taking it out on you. Often they tell you things that are tempting to tell other people, but you start to feel guilty about exposing their secrets to others.
The eternal victims always make them seem worse off than everyone else. The eternal victim is always more affected than the other side in their dramas and they always have to deal with the most painful circumstances. You have no reason to complain or have an outlet. In this case, the influencer influences you for your undivided attention.
There are many types of influencers, but they are all based on the same idea. At first , they appeal to your feelings to get something from you that you don’t want to give them. To avoid falling into this trap, you need to be very vigilant.
How do we protect ourselves from influence?
The best solution to protect ourselves from being influenced is to have a good self-confidence. Being confident makes it much harder to be persuaded by purely emotional arguments. Confidence allows us to discern when something makes sense and when something isn’t.
In addition, it is important to consider whether our relationships are useful. If someone is doing us more harm than good, why should we keep talking to them? The best we can do is to remove the people who use us without caring about our feelings.
You shouldn’t feel bad about having to cut someone out of your life. If you notice that someone is trying to influence you, don’t hesitate to move away from that person immediately.
