Among the most frequent reports of those who have been manipulated - assuming that they realize it - there is that of having found themselves in a "particular mental state", in which his normal critical and rational faculties have not worked as they should have.

This is what is reported by the victims of certain deceptions, by those who have fallen into a sect, by those who "inexplicably" performed acts that contrasted with his values and beliefs.

Psychology defines these occurrences as altered states of consciousness. In fact, it often insinuates that the manipulator has succeeded in its intentions thanks to the use of hypnotic techniques: is this case really true?

To clarify this point, we can start by stating that by neurological consciousness we mean a state of vigilance of the mind.

Our ordinary state of consciousness is very complex, in the sense that we are not in the presence of a group of isolated psychological functions but in a system, or an interacting, dynamic configuration of psychological components, some of which are extremely complex (e.g. sexual needs, social adjustment mechanisms etc.).

In the first phase, the inductive phase, a first change in the state of consciousness occurs. On the EEG (Electroencephalogram) we can find an accentuated presence of alpha waves typical of states of relaxation and detachment from external reality. Subsequently,with the deepening of the attention inside there is a predominance of the slower theta waves that characterize the real trance.

Milton Erickson, American psychiatrist, probably the greatest hypnotherapist of the 1900s, is the author of the conception of the unconscious as something that is completely distinct and separate from the conscious mind and that has creative ability. Jeffrey Zeig, psychotherapist and his student, has made an inventory of the most common physiological reactions to the state of hypnosis which are: tendency and economize one's effort in active and reactive movements, relaxation involving heartbeat, breathing and muscle areas,tendency to give essential and short answers, decrease in the perception of the external world.

Psychic changes are given by accentuated attention span and superior imaginative power; the subject narrows the field of internal perceptions and focuses his attention only on some elements obtaining clearer and more vivid emotional and mental images compared to the waking state.

Under these conditions, is it possible that a subject is induced to perform actions that contrast with his desires and convictions?

Milton Erickson's studies, along with those of many others (Rowland, Lowenfeld, Shilder, Young, etc.) have amply shown that this does not happen.

It seems that the only risk of hypnosis is relegated to some peculiarities of stage hypnosis and in particular to back pains of the volunteers who are suspended between two chairs during the show.

By contrast, the subjects who participated in Erickson's experiments were more likely to do reprehensible actions when awake than in a modified state of consciousness.So, if hypnosis has nothing to do with it, what other techniques can be more suitable for manipulative purposes?

Scholars such as Gregory Bateson, anthropologist, sociologist and cybernetic scholar, Humberto Maturana biologist and philosopher and Francisco Varela, neurobiologist and epistemologist, have proposed that cognition, being the process of knowledge, should be described in terms of the interactions of an organism with its environment.

Neuroscience studies have confirmed these intuitions by proposing a systemic mind structure, with an active role in building a model of reality that can be shared with one'sown kind. It is precisely in this need for sharing - as social beings - that manipulation can infiltrate.

Already from the first studies of systemic psychology it is evident that every process of building sense of a human being takes place in relation with other humans following a pattern that can be symmetrical or complementary. Symmetrical: no one has the power to tell others what to do, think, act. The roles are interchangeable.

Examples of symmetrical relationships are those between teammates, work colleagues, husband and wife (although not always, to tell the truth). Complementary: here there is someone who has the discretion to tell others how they should behave in a certain area, and the roles are not interchangeable. Typical cases are those of the doctor-patient relationship, head-collaborator, teacher-student and so on.

Taking the lead of a relationship therefore means being able to create a top / down complementarity that the other - implicitly or explicitly - ends up accepting, thus effectively delegating to those who lead the definition of the field of experience in which both are inserted, with related roles, behaviors and assumptions. If we think of the example given at the outset, is becoming clear that the successful swindler had previously managed to accredit himself with the goldsmith as a reliable and wealthy person, to whom it was logical to do a favor such as that requested.

Hence the most obvious question: through what phases and behaviors is it possible to ask oneself towards another person, already at the first meeting, as reliable and credible individuals?

Historically, the first answers to this question did not come from psychology, but from two apparently very distant areas: the American sales manuals of the 1960s - which put black and white the most effective tricks to get the order signed of purchase - and Ethology, the science of animal behavior dynamics that Konrad Lorenz had started to formulate since the 1930s. In Ethology the study of hierarchies is particularly important.Individuals are classified as "alpha" if dominant, "beta" if subordinate; "omega" is rarely used to indicate the last individual of a herd in hierarchical order, the one subordinate to all the others. The hierarchical abbreviations do not indicate permanent status: each individual is alpha or beta not in himself, but always with respect to the other in front of him. And the way roles are defined is based on behavioral patterns of mutual interaction.

Although the American vendors probably ignored Lorenz's work, they had come to similar conclusions through experience in the field: the excellent seller was thanks to the ability to take the lead in the sales situation using, rather than verbal language, appropriate behavioral patterns.

The psychologist Albert Mehrabian in the 70s conducted a series of experiments that led him to quantify the incidence of non-verbal factors in the effectiveness of influencing communication: over 90 percent.

Immediately afterwards, to code everything into operational schemes, what often came to be, even in a not entirely justified way, is considered the model of professional manipulation par excellence: the NLP - Neuro Linguistic Programming. In reality, NLP was born as a linguistic support for learning and psychotherapy, but its effectiveness and manageability soon made it available also for less immaculate purposes.

Originally conceived by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, NLP schematizes the control process in four steps: Calibration - Mirroring and Tracing - Report - Guide. Let's see them in order. In the calibration phase, those who want to take the lead observe and study the other's body patterns (gestures, postures, mimicry, use of the voice), and detect what their cognitive patterns may be. In mirroring, it reproduces the observed body patterns on itself. In fact, ethology shows that this helps to configure a symmetrical relationship of trust"we are equal". In the tracing, the manipulator begins to propose new interactions by inserting them into the cognitive schemes previously detected.

The subliminal message is "I think like you, you can follow me". In this phase, atypical move of the manipulator is early tracing, that is, showing positive feelings towards the other who - if offered in a credible way - will produce reciprocity. It was for example demonstrated, with confidence, manipulating process produces an automatic response of engagement confirmed even by endocrine system. The rapport phase is marked by the establishment of a good emotional climate between the two participants: a sort of virtual empathy where jokes, opinions and non-verbal notes are exchanged. Finally, the complementary driving relationship (alpha subject vs. beta subject) arrives as a logical consequence as soon as the person who implemented the sequence advances his proposals.

It can be seen that, in the initial example of the jeweler, all the fraudster's moves were designed in such a way as to fit perfectly into the victim's cognitive schemes: retain are spectable customer, secure the sale, guarantee safety, and conclude quickly. There was also no lack of attestation of trust (Entrust the custody of the other "their" jewels).

Another element to underline is the concomitant action of the "role in the pack":when a subject has entered an ethological condition of subordination, his normal critical and rational faculties are automatically clouded, as Stanley Milgram has shown with his famous experiment, without that there is no need to resort to hypnotic techniques.

After the illusionists and the hypnotists on stage, the new mentalist figure has been in vogue for some years, which gives a show by combining the skills of the first two with an excellent knowledge of effective communication. The most famous of these is the BritishDerren Brown, a serious professional (also a law graduate) capable of amazing effects, such as convincing an honest and fearful person to carry out a robbery (pretend without his knowledge) or to pass off as a bank employee sheets of paper as if they were banknotes. Hetoo agrees to attribute most of the manipulative effectiveness to the linguistic structures of NLP.

Indeed, in his opinion, human beings seem to have been expressly designed to be manipulated, and he provides numerous examples in this regard even outside the professional context. This is undoubtedly an element to reflect on: in the human and animal world, deception and manipulation are so widespread and ingeniously elaborated that they suspect their essential role in the evolutionary process.

If on the one hand, Mother Nature seems to reward the social behaviors of loyalty and homologation to the group, on the other it seems to do the same with those who are able to deceive other living beings to their advantage. In all likelihood, we are faced with classic systemic polarities in apparent competition, where in reality both phenomena have an important function in limiting escalation mechanisms or ecologically unsustainable closures.

The fact that we accept that manipulation has a role in the world does not,however, prevent us from humanly wishing that this evolutionary function be exercised possibly far from us. How can you defend yourself, at least a little? In addition to practicing in some way with the techniques that someone else might want to subject us, so as, to eventually notice what is happening, there are four useful tips that anyone can follow:

Get used to listening to your emotional nuances Belly sensations are now fully legitimized by science, especially since the existence of an extensive neural network was discovered in the intestinal area, more or less complex, like the brain of a cat. The trouble is that you are often accustomed to ignoring these signs based on "reason" or "commonsense", with sometimes disastrous results. As advised by Robert Cialdini, psychologist expert in persuasive techniques: if something gives you the feeling of being manipulated,take it for granted and go away. You will do the analyzes later.

That is, learning to observe and observe one's thoughts by cultivating what is psychologically defined as meta cognition. Train yourself to act in a different perceptual position. In situation - or even seeing it in memory - to act "as if" you were a third character who arrives, looks out and observes the interaction between himself and the other. This invariably retrieves new useful information.

Manipulation is part of life, like colds or unfortunate occasions. Insisting excessively on wanting to protect yourself, in addition to not offering the total guarantee in any case,leads over time to a paranoid approach to reality which in turn constitutes an excellent lever to be manipulated by those who sell security. Much more useful instead to increase one's resilience, that is, the subjective ability to take sporadic blows without losing confidence and positivity in facing life.