Influence

Part 11 of 12  ·  Defense

The Defense Codex

The same thirty techniques from the other side — the early warning signature, the detection protocol, and the counter-response for each.

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1 The Too-Fast Devotion: Detecting Love-Bombing Before the Cage ClosesStrutzenberg, Wiersma-Mosley, Jozkowski & Becnel’s love-bombing study at the University of Arkansas (Discovery/Journal of…
2 Your Memory Is the Evidence: Detecting Gaslighting in Real TimePaige L. Sweet’s ‘The Sociology of Gaslighting’ (American Sociological Review, 2019), built on interviews with domestic-violence…
3 The Countdown That Never Ends: Spotting Manufactured Scarcity and UrgencyThe U.S. Federal Trade Commission staff report ‘Bringing Dark Patterns to Light’ (September 2022), documenting false countdown…
4 The Right to Walk Away: Defeating the High-Pressure CloseThe FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule (16 CFR Part 429), which since 1974 has given U.S. consumers three business days to cancel most sales…
5 The Uniform Is Not the Man: Resisting Authority-Based ComplianceLeonard Bickman’s 1974 ‘The Social Power of a Uniform’ field experiments in Brooklyn, where pedestrians obeyed odd orders far…
6 The One Dissenting Voice: Breaking Social Proof Under PressureSolomon Asch’s line-judgment conformity experiments (Swarthmore College, 1951-1956), including the variation in which a single…
7 The Gift With Strings: Neutralizing the Reciprocity TrapResearch on pharmaceutical industry gifts to physicians, including Chren and Landefeld’s and subsequent survey work showing…
8 The Small Yes That Owns You: Interrupting Commitment CreepFreedman and Fraser’s foot-in-the-door experiments (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1966), where agreeing to a…
9 Consider the Opposite: Disarming Anchors in NegotiationMussweiler, Strack and Pfeiffer’s ‘Overcoming the Inevitable Anchoring Effect’ (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2000)…
10 The Money Is Already Gone: Escaping Sunk-Cost EntrapmentArkes and Blumer’s ‘The Psychology of Sunk Cost’ (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1985) and Hafenbrack,…
11 The Bond That Hurts: Recognizing and Breaking Traumatic AttachmentDutton and Painter’s traumatic bonding theory (Victimology, 1981; Violence and Victims, 1993), developed from battered-women…
12 Becoming Uninteresting: The Gray Rock Protocol Against ProvocationThe gray rock technique as described in clinical guidance for high-conflict and narcissistic relationships (Medical News Today…
13 Deny, Attack, Reverse: Reading the DARVO SignatureJennifer Freyd’s DARVO framework (University of Oregon, 1997) and Harsey and Freyd’s experimental studies showing DARVO exposure…
14 Cutting the Wires: Detecting Engineered IsolationEvan Stark’s coercive control model (Coercive Control, Oxford University Press, 2007) and the UK Home Office statutory guidance…
15 The Recruiter’s Tells: Cult Red Flags in the First Ninety DaysSteven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control (doctoral dissertation, Fielding Graduate University, 2020) and the ICSA…
16 The Charming Colleague: Detecting Dark Triad Operators at WorkJonason, Slomski and Partyka’s ‘The Dark Triad at Work: How Toxic Employees Get Their Way’ (Personality and Individual…
17 Nothing You Say: Surviving Interrogation and the False-Confession TrapSaul Kassin and colleagues‘ APA-endorsed white paper ’Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations' (Law and…
18 Fifty-Four Percent: Why You Cannot Spot a Liar and What Works InsteadBond and DePaulo’s meta-analysis of 206 deception-judgment studies (Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2006), finding 54%…
19 The Urgent Email From Your CEO: Detecting Phishing and Business Email CompromiseThe FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center’s public service announcement ‘Business Email Compromise: The $55 Billion Scam’ (IC3,…
20 The Voice That Isn’t Theirs: Defending Against Cloned-Voice EmergenciesThe FBI’s May 2025 IC3 alert on AI-generated voice and text impersonation of senior U.S. officials, and law-enforcement guidance…
21 The Call About Your Grandson: Countering Scams Engineered for EldersThe U.S. Department of Justice’s nationwide elder fraud sweep charging more than 250 defendants, and the FTC’s report to Congress…
22 Twenty-Nine Red Flags: Auditing an Investment Before It Eats YouHarry Markopolos’s November 2005 submission to the SEC, ‘The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud’, and the SEC Office of…
23 Trust Inside the Tribe: Detecting Affinity FraudThe SEC Office of Investor Education’s Investor Alert on affinity fraud, describing schemes run through religious, ethnic,…
24 The Long Con on Your Phone: Detecting Pig-Butchering Investment Romance FraudU.S. Secret Service and DOJ investigations into ‘pig butchering’ crypto romance fraud, including the federal forfeiture action to…
25 Read the Income Disclosure: Detecting Multi-Level Marketing RecruitmentThe FTC’s ‘Business Guidance Concerning Multi-Level Marketing’ and its consumer alert analyzing what MLM income disclosure…
26 Name the Device: Propaganda Literacy From the 1937 PlaybookThe Institute for Propaganda Analysis (New York, 1937-1942) and its seven propaganda devices — name-calling, glittering…
27 Leave the Page: Lateral Reading Against DisinformationWineburg and McGrew’s Stanford History Education Group study (2017) showing professional fact-checkers evaluating sources faster…
28 Vaccinating the Mind: Prebunking and Inoculation Against ManipulationRoozenbeek and van der Linden’s Bad News game trials (University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab) and the technique-based…
29 The Body Decides Before You Do: Defending Your Physiological StateDanziger, Levav and Avnaim-Pesso’s parole-decision study (PNAS, 2011) showing favourable rulings dropping across sessions and…
30 Protecting the Record: Defending Memory Against ContaminationElizabeth Loftus’s misinformation-effect research, including ‘Planting misinformation in the human mind’ (Learning & Memory,…