"In 2025, researchers Willis Klein, Suzanne Wood, and Jennifer Bartz published findings on how gaslighters use the brain's dependence on relationships to upend the way we co-create reality. We depend on others to "verify our self-views and our experience of the world," but when we connect with emotional abusers, specifically gaslighters, for the building of our shared reality, we may replace self-trust with self-doubt, lose our sense of agency, and succumb to "emotional and mental instability.""
"When we think about gaslighting, we tend to focus on the gaslighter and the victim. Klein, Wood, and Bartz expand this focus to include a wider community and a more extended timeline. Looking at the way our brains develop a sense of selfhood, as well as a sense of reality through and with others, helps explain why our brains are vulnerable to gaslighters."
Brains depend on social verification of self-views and experiences, making individuals reliant on others to co-create reality. When emotional abusers such as gaslighters become part of the network that builds shared reality, self-trust can be replaced by self-doubt, agency can be lost, and emotional and mental stability can deteriorate. The construction of selfhood and reality through social relationships means manipulation can hijack cognitive plurality. Gaslighting can therefore operate at both individual and group levels, reshaping communal beliefs and organizational dynamics. Vulnerability arises from evolved attachment and social-baseline mechanisms that prioritize belonging and trust.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]