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Dark Psychology 202: Summary & Review |

The Power Moves
Lucio Buffalmano

6-8 minutes

March 9, 2019 By Leave a Comment

Title: Dark Psychology 202

Author: Michael Pace
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Release Date: July 30, 2017
Pages: 222
Dark Psychology 202 is an overview of the disciplines and
techniques of manipulation.
It doesn’t go deep and doesn’t have any eye-opening wisdom,
but it could serve as an overview.

Here are a few good ideas:

Anchor Yourself With Positive

Associations
Reward someone handsomely for doing something for you.
You may need to offer this reward a few times to make the
conditioning stick. Then, you can basically set this on
autopilot. Once a person associates you with a reward, they
will have a pleasant association with you.
Make it Seem Easy
Make something seem easy when it really isn’t. Using a
casual tone will often set people at ease and make them
think that something is not a big deal.

Hurt People With Confirmation Bias

How can you use this confirmation bias to your advantage?
One way is in psychological warfare. If you know that
someone believes something ugly or disparaging about
himself, you can keep showing him evidence that confirms
his belief to hurt him.

Self-Serving Bias
Self-Serving Bias Self-serving bias causes people to attribute
their successes to their own internal skills and talents, and
then blame their failures on outside circumstances.

You can use self-serving bias to get people to turn against

each other and convince a person that someone else is a
terrible person.

Be Liked
As simple as it sounds, this might be one of the deepest and
most powerful tools of influencing.

Cialdini, author of Influence, popularized as one of is six key

principles of influencing.

Build a Following
Among many “just OK” and “meh” paragraphs, there were a few
great nuggets of wisdom.
Here is one:
 The modern world of social media can also help you spread
trends more easily. You can influence people to fit your ideas
and to do what you want if you appear to have enough
followers.

Act As An Authority to Be An Authority

You can become an authority figure just by acting like one. If
you act like you know what you are doing and you are in the
right, people will listen. Being assertive and even aggressive
can get you a lot of respect. Then, people will obey you and
do what you want.

Approach Wars Like You’re Right

It’s funny, I am just done reviewing “The Dichotomy of
Leadership” where I scathingly criticized the authors for
believing they were in the right against “the bad guys”, and now
I gotta nod at what Dark Psychology 202 writes:

Approach this war as if you are in the right. Whether you

really are or not does not matter. Who is really judging?

Stir Doubts
For instance, if you are trying to make someone think more
negatively and hurt her self-esteem, you might hear her say,
“I feel really good about this! I think it might go well.” Ask her,
“What makes you think that this will go well? Have you
entertained the possibility that it might go wrong? Are you
prepared for things going poorly?” You chip away at her self-
esteem while appearing like you are simply caring and trying
to keep her from getting crushed. Beautiful.

Start Rumors
Quoting The Art of War,  The 48 Laws of Power and
recommending Machiavelli, the author says that reputation is
everything.

And one way of destroying reputation is by starting rumors:

Spreading rumors is one of the best ways to get others to do

your dirty work for you. You can start a rumor but claim that
you heard it from someone else. Rumors spread like wild fire
with little help. Everyone will participate in the gossip mill.

Tell Elements of Truths When Lying

The more truth you put in a lie, the easier it is to seem honest
(and to keep track of your own lies).

… And More
Many more of the suggestions were techniques that
psychopaths and abusive men use in their relationships.

They weren’t as detailed as other texts and, most of all, I abhor

these men and “techniques”.

They are a high way to being a low-quality man (or low-quality

woman): avoid at all costs!

Not Detailed

Dark Psychology 202 covers a lot of ground but is not detailed

in any of it.

Some Advice is Bad

Some of the advice is generic and thrown out there without any
context can easily 

For example, the author explains how to lie on a date to seem

like you’re rich. But that’s not necessarily good neither to start a
relationship nor to get laid (also read lovers and providers).
Some other advice makes you look like an obvious frenemy, a
backstabber or a social climber.

Some Bad Psychology

The author writes:

In order to motivate a person, you must offer them some sort

of reward. That reward needs to be something that they
really want or need.

That’s generic and, often, not even true. A reward crowds out
intrinsic motivation (read Drive and The Social Animal for more
details).

Dark Psychology 202 is a huge step forward on the author’s

previous Dark Psychology 101.

There is some good stuff here, and even some great reflection.
But you have to wade through a lot of diluted content, bad
generalizations, basic stuff, and even some bad advice.

The uninitiated might find more revelations and ideas, but there
are probably better texts out there to learn psychology.

Check the best books collection or get the book on Amazon

Related
The 2008 Financial Crisis: A Psychological Analysis

The following is an extract of my master thesis. The idea

behind it is that crisis are a natural product of human nature
and psychology. To really understand them -and prevent them-
we then need to understand -and correct- human nature.
Hyperbolic discounting Hyperbolic discounting is a tendency
where, having…
About the Author: Lucio Buffalmano

The author is a social scientist and an eternal student of

human nature.
An avid reader, he believes optimal learning only happens when
you contrast a thirst for knowledge with a skeptic's attitude
who checks facts & references.
If you wan to fuel your development with fact-checked and
scientifically sound information, this is your place.
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