Take our Gaslighting Test

Find a therapist who understands manipulative behavior

Gaslighting occurs when another person tries to convince you that your memory has failed.

A new study puts close relationship partners into situations that test the tendency to believe misinformation.

Knowing how fallible memory can be is the first step to counteracting the manipulative ways of the gaslighter.

No one’s memory is perfect, a fact that some people take advantage of when exploiting or trying to control their partners. Nicky felt pretty certain that she correctly remembered a rather sensitive and potentially inappropriate question her boyfriend, Pete, asked her on their first date. The topic concerned Nicky’s previous relationship partner. The question made her feel uncomfortable, but she was willing to give her boyfriend a pass. Now, six weeks later, he completely denies having asked the question.

This could boil down to a simple misunderstanding if it were not for the fact that Pete seemed to cause Nicky to question her memory on a pretty regular basis. Now, she rarely trusts her own version of past events but relies almost completely on Pete’s reconstruction of their past interactions. Indeed, these reconstructions usually favor Pete, making him look like a generally good guy, if not a saint.

The Vagaries of Memory Reconstruction

Research on memory has established quite solidly the fact that recall of the past is subject to a variety of distortions. Apart from simple forgetting, people tend to shave off unpleasant features of past experiences to make themselves look better. It’s also remarkably easy to........

© Psychology Today