Here’s Why People Gaslight, According To A New Study

The term was even Merriam-Webster’s 2022 Word of the Year after searches for the term jumped 1,740% from 2021.

As defined by Merriam-Webster, gaslighting is “psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.”

The term comes from the 1938 play “Gaslight” by Patrick Hamilton (adapted into two films in the 1940s), in which a husband tries to convince his wife she’s losing her mind to distract her from his criminal behavior.

More recent pop culture references to gaslighting include a 2020 song by the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks ― “Gaslighter, denier/ Doin’ anything to get your ass farther/Gaslighter, big timer/Repeating all of the mistakes of your father,” sings then-newly divorced lead singer Natalie Maines ― and the internet accusing a “Bachelor” contestant of gaslighting a date after an argument over what went down in the show’s fantasy suites.

In spite of its prominence in pop culture and armchair psychology, research and clinical interest on gaslighting is relatively sparse, according to psychologist Willis Klein of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

“I first became interested in gaslighting in 2016, when the term was starting to receive a lot of media attention but not a lot of research,” he told HuffPost. “I was shocked that, at that time, only one peer-reviewed article had been written about gaslighting since 1996. After discovering this gap in the literature, I decided I wanted to start researching the term.”

Now Klein has released a study of his own, published in the journal Personal Relationships, that discusses the effects of gaslighting in romantic relationships. The study also sheds light on the underlying motivations of gaslighters and how gaslighting unfolds within relationships.

Through a qualitative analysis of survey responses from 65 gaslighting victims (ages 18 to 69), Klein and his co-authors at the University of Toronto were able to identify a number of traits and behaviors gaslighters generally share. Below, we highlight some of them.

Gaslighters are motivated primarily by these two things.

Klein and his co-authors were especially interested in determining whether or not gaslighters typically had a single goal or motivation in mind when they used their tried-and-true manipulative tactics. (More on those later.)

The researchers found two primary motivations for gaslighters:

• To avoid accountability for bad behavior, such as infidelity.
• To control the victim’s behavior.

It’s important to note that Klein and his team interviewed only survivors of gaslighting, so they had to rely on the survivor’s interpretation of the abuser’s motivations.

“That said, one major theme that emerged was gaslighting as an attempt to avoid accountability, most often for infidelity,” he said. “The second motivation was a more general desire to control the survivor, to dictate how they behaved, who they spoke with, what they wore.”

The researchers also uncovered various stages during which gaslighting unfolds. The four most common behavioral patterns that occurred in gaslighting relationships were:

• Love-bombing, which occurred in the majority of responses and was most common at the start of a relationship.
• Isolating the victim from friends and family.
• Perpetrator unpredictability, when the gaslighter would unpredictably change their behavior from one emotional extreme to another.
• Cold-shouldering, or the absence of communication.

The role love-bombing played in the early stages of gaslighting is particularly interesting, Klein said. (Love-bombing is a form of psychological and emotional abuse in which a partner uses excessive displays of attention or affection to gain power and control.)

“The sense of having these emotional needs fulfilled quickly creates an intense emotional bond and may additionally create a sense of indebtedness to the gaslighter,” Klein said.

“This emotional connection creates ‘epistemic trust,’ meaning the gaslighter will have a greater influence over their partner’s beliefs, including beliefs about themself,” he explained.

Epistemic trust is a normal part of healthy relationships ― we rely on our partners to verify and expand our beliefs about ourselves ― but the abuse of this trust is an essential component of gaslighting, Klein explained.

“Love-bombing essentially accelerates the formation of the epistemic trust that is required for gaslighting to occur,” he said. “More research needs to be done to determine whether gaslighters are consciously aware of their own love-bombing.”

There are a few common “psycho-social outcomes” for people in relationships with gaslighters.

The researchers also discovered three notable consequences for people who’d been gaslighted: The victim felt a diminished sense of self, increased guardedness and increased mistrust of others.

“I think the sense of feeling diminished, uncertain and like a shell of yourself is the outcome that requires the most attention,” Klein said. “Healthy relationships should generally reduce your feeling of uncertainty, expand your sense of self and create a sense of shared reality.”

People who are being targeted by a gaslighter have the exact opposite experience in their relationships.

“In general, it seems like gaslighters typically directly accuse their partners of having some sort of deficit, the classic example is directly calling someone ‘crazy,’ but other types of insults (‘irrational,’ ‘stupid,’ ‘greedy,’ ‘lazy,’ ‘careless’) work as well,” Klein said.

The gaslighter gets their partner to consider that they may have this sort of deficit and then uses this deficit to dismiss or undermine their judgments and boundaries, controlling their behavior, he explained.

Though most participants in our sample recovered relatively quickly after they separated from their gaslighter, a few participants still felt uncertain and unlike themselves years later, the researchers say in the study.

One woman reported on how her experience with gaslighting had changed her views on other social interactions:

It has affected every relationship I’ve had since I’m still paranoid that people are trying to undermine me, that I can’t express my own feelings or opinions because someone will try to change them or take them away from me, or make me feel less than myself. It definitely has made me more guarded and paranoid.

Though some of the participants reported that they had not recovered from their gaslighting relationships at all, for those participants who did report some degree of recovery, a few key themes emerged in their responses, Klein said.

First, ending the relationship with the perpetrator and spending time with others immediately caused relief from the effects of gaslighting for many. As one participant wrote: “Right when things ended, I immediately regained my sense of self as well as confidence.”

Outside of spending time with others, the respondents said that engaging in various “re-embodying” hobbies and activities also helped them heal: Re-embodying hobbies included yoga, meditation and sports ― basically, anything that leads to a greater sense of connection with one’s own body and a certain amount of introspection.

Practicing therapists we spoke to who are unaffiliated with the study also offered some advice for those recovering from a gaslighter.

B. Nilaja Green, a psychologist and founder of Atlanta Trauma Therapy, reviewed the study and emphasized the importance of taking a step back from a gaslighting partner. It’s hard to make heads or tails of the situation when you’re in the thick of it.

“Ultimately, if you are with a partner who is using direct and indirect tactics to control you, you must step back and weigh the health of the relationship as a whole, which includes identifying its real impact on you and your life, and then make a decision from there,” Green said.

Beverly Engel, a marriage and family therapist and author of “Escaping Emotional Abuse,” said she tells victims of gaslighters to involve other people. If your partner is telling you that you’re acting irrational about something, reach out to friends and ask them if they’ve noticed the behavior that the abuser is continually calling out.

“Most friends can be relied on to tell the victim the truth,” she said. “Victims need to get outside feedback because gaslighting is so effective in causing people to doubt their own perceptions and behavior.”

The biggest positive takeaway from the study is that moving on and building healthier relationships is possible after being involved with a gaslighter.

As one participant told the researchers: “I am a much stronger person now and know when I am being used.”