"Gaslighters conjure up a model of the world that is false to gain power and control over their targets. If targets fall for the illusion, they become progressively untethered from reality. Losing touch with what's real is indicative of insanity, which is exactly what the gaslighters set out to accomplish. Gaslighters make their targets mentally unstable, then insist they must rule over them, because they are mentally unstable."
"Recent research by Willis Klein, Susan Wood, and Jennifer Bartz examines the "prediction error minimization" (PEM) framework of the brain that gaslighters appear to exploit in causing a target to lose trust in their ability to make sense of reality. The gaslighters' goal is to make targets trust in the gaslighters' version of reality while believing that they themselves are "epistemically incompetent.""
The brain navigates a dynamic reality by predicting the future using sensory data and past experience, minimizing prediction errors to conserve energy. Gaslighters exploit that prediction mechanism to present a false model of the world and induce cognitive dissonance in targets. Targets who accept the false model lose trust in their ability to distinguish truth from illusion and gradually become untethered from reality. That loss of epistemic confidence produces self-doubt, reduced agency, and increased dependence on the abuser's version of events. Conserving brain energy depends on trusting others' social-emotional constructs of reality, making social trust a vulnerability gaslighters exploit.
Read at Psychology Today
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