Dark psychology vs persuasive psychology: What’s the difference?

Psychology is every successful marketers’ best friend. The art of persuasion psychology involves how to understand and easily influence people's emotions and actions without using force. That’s why sales comes as offering a gift for some and pushy to others. Dark psychology, on the other hand, is how people use their understanding of human behavior and emotions to control others.

Influence and control… aren’t they basically the same? Not really. 

Influence is about having an affect on people’s thoughts, beliefs, and overall character. And the word “affect” means “to influence.” So, there’s an element of freewill. That’s why social media is populated by so many influencers. You have the choice to follow or ignore. 

Control, however, is about having power over someone else. In some instances, it’s essential, like when a parent needs to control their child’s tantruming or the police put up barriers to control traffic for a parade. Those are good things, not necessarily dark.

When you start to factor in tactics, such as manipulation, gaslighting, and (dare I say) persuasion, it gets dark.

So is persuasion psychology dark psychology?

Yes and no. There’s a lot of muddy, grey areas. Let’s look into them a little more in-depth.

Persuasion Psychology

To recap, it’s understanding people to influence their attitudes and behaviors. As Psychology Today explains, it’s both an art and a science that strikes the perfect balance between sharing your perspective and not being pushy all while not brushing off people. 

Sounds complicated and convoluted, but there’s a simple way of doing this.

Empathy.

Showing empathy bridges that gap between persuading people to do what you want and showing them that you care. You show them what might help them, and then you allow them to make a choice.

In marketing, you need to get people to take action, otherwise your business won’t survive.

That’s why thinking about who you want to gift your services to and why is so important. However, some people may try to look for the same solution elsewhere.

That’s why it’s important to build your brand.

But what if you don’t have a brand yet?

Fear not, there are easy, empathy persuasion techniques you can implement to get going.

1. Scarcity. People tend to want what they don’t have, especially if there’s less of it. Just make sure your scarcity is real, otherwise you lose people’s trust—a highly valuable asset.

2. Social Proof. If it’s recommended by someone they know or has great reviews, people are more likely to buy that thing.

3. Reciprocity. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. You have many options to doing this, either by offering a bonus upfront, offering something for free, or something else.

Persuasion psychology has multiple methods, and they work best when paired with empathy.

Dark Psychology

Dark psychology, the estranged cousin to persuasion psychology with empathy because it’s understanding people to control their behavior. 

Dark psychology primarily relates to a “triad” that criminologists and psychologists use to predict unsavory behaviors. These are narcissism (lack of empathy), machiavelliansim (lack of morality), and psychopathy (impulsive selfishness that involves the previous two).

However, even those of us with empathy and a moral compass are guilty for doing or have fallen victim of dark trickery.

Maybe you’re familiar with most of these.

Have you ever given someone the silent treatment? 

Yeah, that’s a trick in dark psychology. Silence really does speak louder than words, and it gets you better results than being loud, or even speaking calmly. When you’re silent, you trigger confusion, self-doubt, and anger in others… often all at once!

It’s funny, because growing up I was also told that if I have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. Would that be considered dark parenting?

How about false social proof?

We’ve seen these for movies that make you question how you’ll get your time back, all because they had “great” reviews. Or the media claiming that a celebrity said or did something when they didn’t. Heck, even celebrities use their social status to get what they want. 

Plus, we see people using AI to copy the likeliness of celebrities, animals, or regular folks who “look trustworthy” and get people to take action. How does that fair out for individuals (like impressionable children) who can’t tell the difference?

Or maybe making problems appear worse than they actually are?

I know I’m guilty of this one. Sometimes it was because my perception of the issue made me feel like the itsy-bitsy spider climbing the water spout, believing that it was always raining. When in reality, I just needed to wait for the sun to come out. (I’m a mom, you’re gonna get nursery rhyme analogies here.)

But one I thought as innocent was withholding information because I thought I was protecting people. Even with the best intentions, this seemingly harmless act takes away power and isolates the person who doesn’t have the full story.

We see examples of this in history with history bias (i.e. condensing world history into a few textbooks) and our everyday lives (i.e. confirmation bias, which is interpreting information that’s consistent with your existing beliefs).

What you need to know about psychology

“The only thing you need to know about psychology is that people love talking about themselves.” That was the advice a mentor gave me after letting my psychology britches show. And you know what, he’s right. We do love talking about ourselves.

Ask someone the right question about themselves, like “How did you get started doing___?” or “Why is your favorite vacation spot___?” and they’ll talk.

How you get them to talk, or even take action, depends on your approach.

Are you going to persuade with empathy? Or will you use a selfish approach?

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