Gaslighters Manipulate How Our Brains Predict

Gaslighters conjure up a model of the world that is false to gain power and control over their targets. If targets fall for the illusion, they become progressively untethered from reality. Losing touch with what’s real is indicative of insanity, which is exactly what the gaslighters set out to accomplish. Gaslighters make their targets mentally unstable, then insist they must rule over them, because they are mentally unstable.

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse that zeros in on the way we interact with and know ourselves and the world. It specifically attacks our mind’s mechanisms for distinguishing between truth and lies, reality and illusion, knowledge and opinion. Gaslighting is a mental version of provoking someone into self-defence, then condemning them for being violent.

Recent research by Willis Klein, Susan Wood, and Jennifer Bartz examines the “prediction error minimization” (PEM) framework of the brain that gaslighters appear to exploit in causing a target to lose trust in their ability to make sense of reality. The gaslighters’ goal is to make targets trust in the gaslighters’ version of reality while believing that they themselves are “epistemically incompetent.”

Epistemology is a theory of knowledge, how we acquire it, limits and scope it might have. Over time, the targets fall prey to the gaslighters’ fake knowledge, their false version of events. The targets replace their once competent relationship to reality with self-doubt and loss of agency. The targets’ belief, that they are incompetent in their ability to know themselves and the world, makes them even more susceptible to the gaslighters’ manipulation.

The brain is a predictor

Generally, people think that an outside event causes a reaction in them that they call a “trigger.” Someone will say that they found an action, moment, or speech "triggering.” What is less well-known is that in fact our brain is a predictor. We take in sensory data for instance, compare it to past knowledge, and make a prediction about the future. We hear the doorbell, and based on past experience, we predict someone is at our door.

Our body informs our prediction as well by sending us data about feeling curiosity or irritation depending on what’s going on. If we’re bored, we might predict a visitor with curiosity. If we are busy, we might predict a visitor with irritation.

We open the door and there is a person. If it’s a friend who’s surprising us, we might get bodily data of happiness and excitement. If it’s a stranger who appears menacing, we might get bodily data of anxiety and fear. Regardless, our brain predicted correctly that the sound of the doorbell meant a person was at the door.

Now, it is also possible that we open the door and no one is there, only a package. The body sends data about feeling deflated or disappointed. In that moment, our brain recognizes that it has made a prediction error. Prior experiences and emotional reactions are mismatched. Essentially, the brain has made an “incorrect guess about what will be occurring in the body or the world.” Gaslighters home in on the brain’s errors, mismatches, and incorrect guesses to destabilize targets.

Workplace gaslighting

Source: Geralt / Pixabay

Who falls for gaslighting?

Klein, Wood, and Bartz explain that gaslighters’ manipulations and lies cause targets to “question whether they can accurately model reality and, consequently, begin to reduce their confidence in their other beliefs about the world and about themselves.” Targets begin to give less credence to their past experience as they become overwhelmed by the gaslighters’ repeat, intentional “prediction errors.” Over time, the gaslighters “exert more influence” over the targets who are drawn deeper into “the cycle of gaslighting.”

The researchers reveal that “gaslighting arises as a function of typical social-cognitive mechanisms operating in atypical social situations (i.e., when the close other has malevolent intentions).” That close other can be a colleague, higher-up, manager, or leader. The researchers have found that we depend on others to co-create reality as a way to relax constant responsibility.

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As they explain, “to have epistemic trust in another person means that you will ‘take their word for it,’ in other words, you will learn from them.” You need to believe in the leader and take their word for it because it would simply be draining and exhausting not to. Perpetually questioning, verifying, checking, consulting are near impossible. It is thus not surprising how workplace gaslighting in particular occurs.

How prediction errors play out in workplace gaslighting

Imagine in the workplace, an employee reports bullying or sexual harassment and supplies factual evidence. The employee has been told multiple times over the years that the company has zero tolerance for any form of bullying. Feeling anxious, seeking safety, the employee’s brain therefore predicts that the leader will protect him and take action against the ones causing harm.

The leader responds by first telling the employee that what he sees as maltreatment is actually an “interpersonal problem.” Second, the leader says the employee reporting is actually “the problem.” Third, the leader warns that the employee reporting might be committing “defamation.” The employee is confronted with a sense that their brain has predicted incorrectly and has mismanaged reality on multiple levels. Seeking protection may become feelings of shame and loss of self-trust.

Note that it is the gaslighting leader who has replaced the reported facts with prediction errors. Instead of addressing the facts of bullying or sexual harassment, the leader first denies wrongdoing and replaces it with an interpersonal conflict. Second, the leader attacks the employee by saying he is the problem. Third, the leader transforms the employee reporting into an offender by saying he is going to hurt the reputation of the perpetrator.

The leader gaslights his employee. The leader alters reality with a series of prediction errors as psychologist Jennifer Freyd has detailed as DARVO: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. As outlined in detail in The Bullied Brain, the gaslighter’s attack on the target’s ability to accurately predict knowledge of self and the world can cause the brain to “degrade all systems,” which is what Dr. Michael Merzenich sees when “the brain can’t answer the question.”