Pedestalling is a form of positive manipulation, where the Abuser is primed towards a particular mindset or consideration that hopefully decreases their harmfulness. People often put others on Pedestals without ill intent – it is a social skill that can be used well or poorly. In this case, we use Pedestalling to increase collaboration and decrease harm.
Positive Manipulation: All communication is a form of manipulation. Often we equate the term ‘manipulation‘ with ‘negative manipulation‘, where your choices are taken from you, as part of a con.
Positive Manipulation refers to purposeful communication for a good reason – one that increases someone’s choices, or decreases harm. When dealing with an Abusive Person, by breaching the social contract of fair behaviour, they have decreased the need to be as fair to them.
Priming: Elephant. Think of a large grey animal. The odds are you answered with elephant simply because you saw the word prior to the question, so you were primed to think of elephant first.
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Pedestalling is a manipulation tactic. All interactions, at their inherent root, are manipulative. You can use Pedestalling as a positive or negative social manipulation, depending on whether you are increasing positive cooperative choices, or coercing people.
Like any tool, Pedestalling can be used for good or ill.
When someone says that you are ‘honest and fair‘ just prior to discussing a problem, you have just been primed (prompted and set by default) to be ‘honest and fair‘ in what you are going to do about that problem. The other person placed you on a ‘pedestal‘ that you would like to live up to. Someone might say “after I tell them this, people don’t want to interact with me“, which uses a reverse psychology trick, priming you to stick around so you don’t become one of “those” people. Again, this tactic is making use of placing you on a pedestal, but this time you have been put in an uncomfortable to you pedestal, prompting you to prove you don’t belong there.
When interacting with a known Abuser, you can use the Pedestalling skill by opening up with something along the lines of:
- “People like and respect you, because …”.
The next part is the kind of behaviour you would like to promote the toxic person to conform to, such as ‘helpful‘. Once you have set up the platform, you can now tell them the thing you would like them to do. “Jake and I were hoping to get this things done, but we can’t do it ourselves. Can you help us?”
4 Step Pedestalling skill:
- Set the positive public image that the toxic person wants to be seen in.
- appealing to their ego and fears of negative public regard. Most toxic people very much want to be seen as good, but don’t see the need to do so if they won’t get credit for it.
- Define a problem that needs someone to do something.
- clearly specifying why there is a need for someone to do something.
- Ask the person to do the thing.
- a request for them to do the thing, with a strong implication that they would succeed at Step 1 if they do so. This is the choice bit, where they have the real option to say “no”, and thus this is not bad manipulation.
- If they do the thing, afterwards, thank them for it, ideally in some kind of public setting.
- giving them that public image where possible, or at least private positive feedback when it isn’t.