People With This Personality Trait Are The Easiest To Control & Manipulate
Performance and leadership coach Olesya Luraschi revealed the best way to combat having this particular personality trait.
voronaman | Shutterstock A leadership and performance coach, Olesya Luraschi, explained that there's a certain personality trait that an individual has that makes them more susceptible to being manipulated. In a TikTok video, Luraschi explained that when it comes to being controlled and manipulated, it's all about trust and your view of yourself. Being easily taken advantage of isn't a life sentence, however, and she asserted that once you know you have this trait, you can change.
People with low epistemic trust are the easiest to control and manipulate.
"This one trait makes you really easy to control and psychologically manipulate, and that trait is called epistemic trust," Luraschi began in her video. "So epistemic trust is your ability to trust yourself and to trust your own perception of the world around you."
However, being able to trust your interpretation of the world is the correct one, according to Luraschi. She claimed that if an individual has low epistemic trust, it means that you're more likely to be subjected to gaslighting and manipulation from other people. Basically, people with low epistemic trust believe others before they believe themselves.
Some people can psychologically manipulate others and change their perspectives.
"If you encounter someone that just has a higher level of epistemic trust, you will then conform to their level of epistemic trust, and some people actually can psychologically manipulate others. So, they try to change another person's perspective in order to gain some advantage," Luraschi continued.
These people will try and do this to others as a way to get the kind of outcome they want, diminish their own blame, or even change their perspective to make things better for themselves. So, instead, Luraschi claimed, if you seem to find yourself in situations where you're often manipulated, it's not necessarily that the manipulative people are the ones at fault.
Even though they are the problem because of their toxic behavior, it's more that you may have more to work on. You may need to evaluate your epistemic trust, which can end up being a good life hack because the higher this trust, the more likely you are to influence others.
A 2016 study concluded that healthy epistemic trust was linked to secure attachments in childhood. Meaning, someone with low epistemic trust, or what researchers called "epistemic mistrust," was likely subjected to childhood trauma. Fundamentally, however, there is a balance in epistemic trust. Healthy levels of this trust suggest a person knows when it's smart to trust others without feeling the need to manipulate others.
People can pick up on low epistemic trust and self-doubt.
"We can tell when someone has a lot of self-doubt," Luraschi explained. "It makes you not wanna follow that person, and so if you're struggling to influence people at work, if you're struggling having relationships, in which you always feel like you're being the people-pleaser, this is the root cause."
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Luraschi insisted that this is often the core issue that people need to work on. Being able to be more confident in yourself and your decisions is quite a journey and easier said than done. It's about putting in the work, and while you will have days where that confidence slips, it shouldn't define you. Knowing your self-worth makes it easier to attract people who can see it as well.
You should only be surrounding yourself with people who uplift you. If you find yourself being around manipulative and controlling people, then maybe it's time to reevaluate the people you consider close in your life. Their energy should never feel as if it's draining you.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
