How to protect yourself from other people's influence?
For most people, the real problem is not so much how to influence other people, but how to resist their influence. Objectively, much greater psychological discomfort is caused by the feeling of the futility of one’s own attempts to overcome the influence of others or to distance oneself from it in a psychologically justified way. One's own inability to influence other people is experienced much less acutely. In other words, it seems to most people that they know the methods of influence sufficiently for them, but the methods of resisting the influence of others are clearly not sufficient.
In practice, such methods of counter-suggestion are distinguished as avoidance and denial of the authority of the source of influence.
Avoidance. This is the most radical way of counter-suggestion, consisting in avoiding contact with a partner who is considered as a “stranger”, “enemy”, “ill-wisher”. Naturally, this makes communication impossible. If it is still not possible to evade, then the person makes every effort not to perceive the message: he is inattentive, does not listen (“turns deaf ears”), does not look at the interlocutor, constantly finds a reason to be distracted, uses any excuse to end the conversation.
Denial of the authority of the source of influence. If a person is denied authority, then everything he says can be questioned or his message can be ignored according to the principle “eggs don’t teach chicken.” It happens that a person has several authorities whose opinions he unconditionally trusts. In this case, everyone else is deprived of authority, and their opinions, suggestions and advice are not perceived. For example, one famous athlete had a negative attitude towards the training methods that his coaches and teammates suggested to him, until he learned that his idol was using the same method.
To these methods of counter-suggestion, you can add one more - ignoring the message, based on the attitude “This does not concern me.” For example, when an alcoholic is persuaded to undergo treatment, he responds: “I’m not an alcoholic. I do not need it".
Strengthening your personal position. This can be achieved by making your position public before a person is confronted with the opinions of other people. By protecting it, a person becomes less receptive (“open”) to what others will say. Thus, C. Kiesler (1971) discovered that when people who have stated their position are faced with not very strong counterarguments that are not capable of knocking the ground out from under their feet, they only strengthen their own opinion. This is helped by the fact that when someone attacks the attitudes that a person holds dear, he usually gets irritated and thinks of counter-arguments. This effect, similar to vaccination against infectious diseases, is called installation inoculation.
A group of scientists led by Alfred McAlister “vaccinated” seventh-graders against peer involvement in smoking (McAlister et al., 1980). Teenagers were taught to react to the advertising slogan “A woman who smokes is a free woman” in the following way: “How free is she if she’s “hooked” on tobacco?” They also participated in role-playing games in which, after being called “foolish” for refusing a cigarette, they responded along the lines of: “If I agreed to smoke in order to impress you, then I would definitely I’d be a fool!” After several such sessions during seventh and eighth grades, the “vaccinated” students were half as likely to start smoking as their peers at another school, whose parents had about the same number of smokers.
The subject's resistance to persuasive influences depends on his moral state. When a person is depressed and understands the futility of what he did before, his resistance sharply decreases.
Each type of influence can be opposed by different types of opposition, and the same type of opposition can be used in relation to different types of influence. E.V. Sidorenko (1998) provides a more expanded list of types of psychological resistance to influence and influence (see Table 1).
Table 1. Types of psychological resistance to influence
| Type of confrontation | Definition |
| Counterargumentation | A conscious, reasoned response to an attempt to persuade, refuting or challenging the arguments of the initiator of influence |
| Constructive criticism | Fact-supported discussion of the goals, means or actions of the initiator of influence and justification for non-compliance with the goals, conditions and requirements of the addressee |
| Energy mobilization | Resistance of the addressee to attempts to instill or convey to him a certain state, attitude, intention or method of action |
| Creation | Creation of the new, neglecting or overcoming the influence of pattern, example or fashion |
| Evasion | The desire to avoid any form of interaction with the initiator of influence, including random personal meetings and collisions |
| Psychological self-defense | The use of speech formulas and intonation means to maintain presence of mind and gain time to think about further steps in a situation of destructive criticism, manipulation or coercion |
| Ignoring | Actions indicating that the addressee deliberately does not notice or does not take into account the words, actions or feelings expressed by the initiator |
| Confrontation | Open and consistent opposition by the addressee of his position and his demands to the initiator of influence |
| Refusal | Expression by the addressee of his disagreement to fulfill the request of the initiator of the influence |
A person tends to perceive only what corresponds to the dominant emotion. A kind of “vicious circle” arises: the content of what is perceived and remembered strengthens and strengthens the emotion. This, in turn, further reinforces the tendency to focus on the content of the emotion. A person who is deeply affected by the humiliation he has experienced not only constantly returns to it in his mind, but also remembers other humiliations experienced in the past, focuses his attention on the fact that there is a threat of further humiliations in the future, etc. This leads to an intensification of the past experiences. A person in a state of deep anxiety notices new reasons for anxiety in himself and around him; in a state of offense - more and more reasons to feel offended; lover - all new manifestations of the virtues of the adored person; a person overwhelmed by a sense of guilt receives more and more evidence of his guilt.
That is why, as a rule, attempts to influence strong emotions through persuasion, explanations and other methods of rational influence are unsuccessful. From all the information communicated, a person selects, perceives, and remembers only that which corresponds to the dominant emotional process. Any attempts to convince him that he should not be upset, that the offense is not so great, that the object of his grief does not deserve the feelings he has for him, are, as a rule, unsuccessful and only cause a feeling of misunderstanding. In such cases, it is more important to help a person defuse the emotion, that is, to create conditions under which the most complete expression of the emotion reduces its intensity for some time, after which it becomes possible to eliminate the source of the emotion and prevent its recurrence. Another way to get out of an emotional vicious circle is the formation of a new emotional focus, strong enough to inhibit the previous emotion.
