Getting a Grip on Gaslighting

Gaslighting as a concept has captured the public's attention like few others, speaking to a deep, unsettling, and all-too-common situation in which power imbalances in relationships are used to manipulate and control.¹ Yet research on gaslighting has lagged behind the proliferation of more casual portrayals. Societally, we are embedded within an information environment that has become vague and ill-defined, with misinformation and overt deception the norm, creating a condition I call "the ambient gaslighting of everyday life."² How can we get a better handle on gaslighting, without rushing to label any interpersonal situation we don't like as gaslighting?

Researchers Willis Klein and colleagues define gaslighting as follows: "[A] form of psychological manipulation that, over time, causes a victim to doubt their sense of reality, often leading to a loss of agency and emotional and mental instability." Given the need for a more formal model of gaslighting, they recently published a framework to better define and study gaslighting (Klein et al., 2025). Klein was kind enough to provide an overview of their work and discuss the future of gaslighting in this brief interview.

Grant H. Brenner: How would you currently define gaslighting, and how has the importance of the term shifted in the present day?

Willis Klein: Gaslighting is when one person tries to convince another that they shouldn’t trust their own understanding of reality, and ability to make decisions. This is usually done to control and exploit the targeted person. One caveat is that the person being gaslit actually does have a more or less accurate view of reality and can make decisions on their own. So if someone is, for example, having a psychotic episode and others are trying to help them, then that clearly isn’t gaslighting.

I think there are many contemporary issues that have led to all the recent dialogue about gaslighting. For one, I think the Me Too movement has raised awareness about all kinds of abuse. I also think the rise of the internet has complicated our everyday epistemic landscape. When people who are siloed into different information economies collide, it can create the conditions for gaslighting. Relatedly, the validity of a lot of traditional authoritative sources of truth has been questioned in recent years; people have less trust in the news, scientists, and politicians than in the past. So, I think increased awareness about abuse and changes to the availability of, ability to produce, and trust in information have led to the public interest in gaslighting.

GHB: Are there any phenomena that appear to be gaslighting, but are really something else? Do we overuse the term?

WK: I definitely see the term being misapplied, or even inverted to discredit people, but the benefit of increased awareness of gaslighting outweighs the damage done by misusing or inverting the term. One important distinction to remember is that it’s normal to have differing, even irreconcilable, perspectives, but that doesn’t imply gaslighting. This can start to turn into gaslighting when one party insists that the other must share their perspective, or that the differing point of view is evidence of the other party being wrong about all of their beliefs.

I think there are likely several distinct phenomena all being labeled gaslighting. What I study is gaslighting in close relationships, like romantic partners, family, friends, maybe some workplace relationships could apply. Gaslighting in close relationships should more or less be similar to any case where gaslighting is occurring between two individuals. In the political sphere, I think other existing ideas can capture a lot of what people refer to as gaslighting, for example, propaganda or Frankfurt’s idea of “BullSh*t” (2005). Similarly, gaslighting is sometimes described in philosophy or critical theory as an extended and distributed social process that reinforces systems of oppression. Gaslighting used in that sense has some conceptual and formal similarities to gaslighting in close relationships, but also strikes me as a distinct phenomenon. Lastly, I often see people using the term jokingly; I don’t think this is anything to get up in arms about, and I think anyone who's familiar with the term can tell when it’s being applied facetiously.

GHB: How do you conceptualize gaslighting in your model? How does this help us to study and understand it?

WK: There are several theoretical perspectives in cognitive science that all suggest that the key to studying the mind is understanding how we react when our expectations or predictions are not accurate. According to these theories, we have predictive models about the world. When these predictions are wrong, when we’re surprised, we can either learn from these mistakes—that is, update our predictions—or change the state of the world to match our expectations. My co-authors and I have attempted to explain the psychological impact of gaslighting on targets using these principles. Our proposal is that gaslighters repeatedly create surprising situations, creating an opportunity for the target to update their models of the world. The gaslighter takes this opportunity to suggest to the target, either implicitly or explicitly, that the target is irrational or crazy. So the gaslighter is slowly trying to teach the target to doubt themselves, which, in addition to making the target more suggestible to the gaslighter, is very destabilizing for the target.

A lot of times, people find it hard to believe a sane person could be convinced by someone else to doubt their own sanity under anything but the most extreme conditions. I think conceptualizing it as a slow, iterative learning process, helps make it a bit clearer. The gaslighter repeatedly creates these unexpected situations and then suggests or implies, “If you didn’t expect this, and you repeatedly experience things you didn’t expect, maybe your grip on reality is not accurate.”

I also think this model has the potential to help people suffering from gaslighting recover, by essentially inverting the process—meaning, in a controlled environment, iteratively providing evidence that the person is able to accurately process reality and make good decisions in response to their surroundings.

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GHB: What research directions are you exploring to better understand gaslighting? What future directions are you considering?

WK: In terms of future research directions, gaslighting really is an open field. There are so many questions that haven’t been answered yet. Personally, I’m interested in testing the core components of the model that my co-authors and I have proposed. We think that gaslighting relies on learning mechanisms that are common to all close relationships, so I’d like to explore how close others impact how we process and learn from surprising information. I’m also interested in how interpersonal trust impacts learning, how much interpersonal trust generalizes across topics, and how the presence of attachment figures impacts learning. Once these processes have been tested in the general population, we can look into whether these processes change after long-term exposure to gaslighting. The long-term goal is to contribute to evidence-based treatments for survivors of gaslighting.

GHB: What are some ways to counter gaslighting, based on your work?

WK: If my proposed model is correct, one major antidote to gaslighting would be getting away from the gaslighter and spending time with people who treat you as though you do have a good grip on reality. Interestingly, this is consistent with Katharina Sodoma’s work, which comes from a completely distinct theoretical perspective. If you’re getting involved with someone who is constantly making you doubt yourself and your choices, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re experiencing gaslighting, but it might be worth checking in with other friends and family members about what you're experiencing. My work also suggests that learning processes could be applied in a therapeutic context to help undo the harm caused by gaslighting; by iteratively reaffirming to a client that they can understand and respond to reality accurately. [GHB: I believe it is important to look within for vulnerabilities to gaslighting, starting with self-deception and wishful thinking.³]

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