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In 2025, researchers Willis Klein, Suzanne Wood, and Jennifer Bartz published findings on how gaslighters use the brain’s dependence on relationships to upend the way we co-create reality. We depend on others to “verify our self-views and our experience of the world,” but when we connect with emotional abusers, specifically gaslighters, for the building of our shared reality, we may replace self-trust with self-doubt, lose our sense of agency, and succumb to “emotional and mental instability.”
When we think about gaslighting, we tend to focus on the gaslighter and the victim. Klein, Wood, and Bartz expand this focus to include a wider community and a more extended timeline. Looking at the way our brains develop a sense of selfhood, as well as a sense of reality through and with others, helps explain why our brains are vulnerable to gaslighters.
If we require others in our community and society to construct selfhood and reality itself, it is understandable that those who seek to manipulate us can effectively hijack our brain’s innate plurality or communality. One of our greatest vulnerabilities is the fact that our brains are wired to establish reality and function in connection with other brains.
Gaslighters take advantage of the brain’s dependence on others
Klein, Wood, and Bartz review extensive research that documents our dependence on others. From attachment theory to social baseline theory, our brains have evolved to seek belonging and trust. When we are in our “social ecology,” research shows that it impacts our information processing so that cognition is “more effortless and less vigilant.”
In other words, when we are in community, we can let down our guard and direct our brain resources to other functions. It is in this state of relaxed defences that the gaslighter strikes. We are relieved to “share the load” of scanning for threats, assessing safety, and navigating a perpetually changing world, and this sharing is exactly what puts us at risk if we are exposed to a gaslighter.
When we are in a close personal relationship or in an organizational or professional set of relationships that brings us into shared mental space with others, we rely on these figures in our lives to facilitate learning about the self and the world. These relationships are built on trust, and they lead us to “adopt beliefs” not only about ourselves, but also about the world. What’s disturbing is when “gaslighters abuse this privilege for their own gain.” Gaslighters manipulate specifically in the space of intimacy in the personal sphere, and dependency, along with authority, in the organizational sphere.
Two core features of gaslighting
Klein, Wood, and Bartz posit two fundamental features of gaslighting. They see the first as “an attempt by the perpetrator to convince a target that they (the target) are epistemically incompetent—that is, incapable of either grasping some (or all) aspect(s) of reality, potentially including some aspect of themselves.”
This type of maltreatment can be seen in bullying cultures, whereby the perpetrator labels the target in a demeaning way to discredit their ability to comprehend reality and self: for instance, calling someone “deranged” or saying they are a “lunatic.” Labeling someone as if they are crazy or insane not only may gaslight the target, but also the observers of the bullying. This form of emotional abuse, which uses public gaslighting, may reinforce the target’s destabilization, as not only the perpetrator but others are manipulated to view them as mentally deficient.
This type of gaslighting leads to the second fundamental feature that the researchers identify, which is “the target’s epistemic trust in the perpetrator.” While this trust applies in personal relationships, it also applies to organizational gaslighting as described above. The more power, credibility, and social standing an individual has due to their position—teacher, coach, priest, doctor, leader—the more the community trusts in the perpetrator’s knowledge of reality.
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How positions of power affect gaslighting
The power dynamic works against the target. Not only is their mental state undermined, but by the perpetrator labeling them as mentally unfit, the gaslighting may also serve to increase an anxious trust in the gaslighter’s capacity to designate who is mentally worthy and who is not. This parallels: who is in the in-group and who is out. Once the gaslighter convinces the target that they are mentally incompetent, the researchers explain that this works so that “the gaslighter may further control the target.”
If we examine how this works in an organization, when the target is labeled and exposed publicly as mentally incompetent, the gaslighter may further control the group, who fear being comparably labeled and exposed. This adds another layer to the way we depend on one another for belonging, for sharing a co-created vision of selves and reality. The one with power and influence can dominate the group’s vision of “reality.”
The researchers begin their article discussing the community dynamic of how we create reality, but when they examine how the brain succumbs to manipulation, they narrow their focus to the gaslighter and the target. If we continue to examine the community or societal construct of reality, building on how our brains work together, it reveals how gaslighting influences organizational psychology and hinges significantly on the position of power and influence one holds. It helps us see how groups or even whole populations may turn against a target or targets who are labeled as mentally unfit and untrustworthy.
The danger of gaslighting for individuals and communities
Klein, Wood, and Bartz argue that targets may defer to the gaslighter’s vision of reality in place of their own experience because “close relationships fulfill fundamental needs related to belonging and security.” They explain that we are motivated to see those we are close to in a positive light, even if it means we must dismiss our own relationship to the truth. If we apply this insight to organizational psychology, it explains why we might sacrifice the truth to align our vision of reality with those in positions of power and influence, who determine whether we belong to the group or will be cast out.
