In Business I keep on bumping into people that try to use cognitive dissonance as the primary tool of persuasion. The basic idea works like this. In any basic transaction there are two players: the manipulator and the victim. First the manipulator makes a number of promises and other vagaries that he/she has no intention of honoring. Once the victim has bought into the relationship of trust, the tables are turned and a ‘new’ situation that greatly disadvantages the victim is thrust into the foreground. The victim at that point has two choices: either he/she can call the bluff of the manipulator and explode, or concede to the situation through cognitive dissonance and keep the trust of the manipulator.
There is, however, an alternate situation that can throw the manipulator off guard; when the intended victim is a sadomasochist. In this rare case, the manipulator is in fact the victim of a much more pernicious game. In this scenario, the intended victim can lead on the manipulator, sometimes for years, and accede to his/her various ‘demands’ in endless scenarios of cognitive dissonance. All while doing this the victim keeps control of the purse strings, slowly weaving a web of psychological dependence onto the chosen manipulator. Even though the manipulator saviors each victory as getting yet one more over on the victim, he/she eventually succumbs to realities of that they are in fact being used in a much more sordid Faustian game.
