17. What specifically influences human beings?

In the previous articles we looked at how control felt from the inside. The overload. The guilt. The autopilot. The flinch when a thought strayed too far from the approved script.

You now have language for what happened to you. You can name the mechanisms that kept you compliant, and you can recognise them when they surface in your own thinking.

What we have not yet done is pull the camera back and look at the architecture itself. Not how it felt, but how it was built. The specific principles of human influence that were systematically used against you.

That is what this section is for. We are going to examine seven rules of influence, one at a time. For each one you will see how it operates in ordinary life, how it can be used ethically, exactly how the organisation weaponised it, and a set of questions designed to help you identify your own relationship with that particular rule.

By the end, you will not only understand the system that was used on you. You will be better equipped to see it coming the next time someone tries.

While we were involved in the organisation we did things that were not in alignment with who we really are or how we really want to live our lives.

Shunning friends and loved ones because of an arbitrary disfellowshipping decision. Forcing our views and beliefs on other people and demanding they conform. Making medical decisions for ourselves or others that could be life-threatening. Neglecting our education and limiting our career options. Treating people outside the congregation not as human beings, but as threats or prospects.

We are both good and intelligent people. So the question is: how does this happen? How do good and intelligent people get influenced down a path that is neither good nor intelligent and wind up acting in ways that do not serve them?

There are stock answers. "They use fear to manipulate us." "They target emotionally vulnerable people." Those answers are not wrong, but they are not specific either.

Knowing how something works gives you the ability to respond to it differently. It is the difference between someone who can follow a recipe and someone who understands flavour, technique, and ingredient chemistry. One can only reproduce what they have been shown. The other can improvise, adapt, and create from first principles.

So this section sets out to answer a precise question: What specifically influences human beings?

Religious organisations are not the only entities employing these tactics. Every enterprise that involves directing or influencing people, ethically or not, is using some or all of these principles. We swim through influence the way fish swim in water and never realise they are wet.

The principles we are going to examine are the seven rules curated by Robert Cialdini, drawn from decades of research in social psychology. We will take those principles and examine them through the lens of our experiences of religious indoctrination.

For each of the seven rules you will learn how we experience it in day-to-day life, how it can be applied ethically, how the JW organisation specifically weaponised it against us, and a set of identification questions to audit your own vulnerability to that particular tactic.

One thing worth stating plainly before we begin: these are real psychological tools. Understanding them gives you a degree of power you did not have before. What you do with that understanding is your choice.

What was done to us was a weaponised application of principles that can also be used to genuinely help people. The difference is intent, transparency, and respect for the other person's autonomy. I trust you to make good choices with what follows.