Adventures in Behavioral Linguistics

by Marxc2001

I do not purport any of the information in this article to be correct nor accurate.  It is the opinion of the author (me) only.  The author (me again!) does not accept responsibility for anything that you may or may not do or not do, nor any consequences therein.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is one of today's "buzzword" things to have as a trainer.  It is basically a mix of (((Chomskian))) linguistics and behavioral psychology, intermingled with a lot of bullshit.

Some of the more paltry courses merely teach you the models and methods.  They expect you to pay a lot of money for the privilege and you leave with nothing.  I don't wish this to become a harangue, but this does cheese me off somewhat.

However, its more pure aspects, techniques, and theories are quite appealing to our furtive ways.

I used to delight in having my wicked way with computers - getting them to log me in, rootkits, Trojans, and the like - I was young and stupid.  Then one day I did something - I got onto and off a train.  I had bought a ticket, but the one that the train manager had stamped was not valid for that day nor exact route.

It was strange - I had been using an invalid ticket, but was so sure, confident, and convinced that it was a valid one that no one had seen fit to question me.  I tried this again but without buying a valid ticket.  Suffice to say, my nerves gave me away and I went and had to buy a full ticket (my feigned innocence, however, had saved me from the full wrath of the train manager).

I was still buzzing from that previous experience when a friend/mentor in the hacker ways told me about "social engineering."

Besides getting free food and the like in a restaurant, social engineering didn't seem very useful nor intricate enough to me to begin with.  But I had a feeling that there must be more that you can do.

Then I discovered NLP, and all of its psychological inferences, techniques, methods, and mysterious (at the time, anyway) ways.  It was great.

Suddenly doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things seemed not only possible, but easily within the grasp of those who would work on the techniques.  It was not until I saw Derren Brown's Mind Control specials that I was given a boost as to what could be done.

Beware, though, for in his shows there is a lot of trickery and very clever deceptions (I can say this being a magician myself, specializing in Mental Magic).  I am deeply skeptical about NLP - I don't trust the literature around it any more than I could throw it, and even that's too far - when studying this sort of thing, the art is to weed out the crap from the good stuff.  Separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.  Once you learn how to do that, then you are fulfilling a properly skeptical and healthy mindset.

Take this example: don't think of a black cat!  Oops, you just did.

The reason that you did isn't due to any "negative psychology" bullshit that some people would have you believe.  It is because your subconscious (mind, skipping the negative "don't" in the sentence has just heard the command "think of a black cat," and so it will immediately call up the image of a black cat, witch and all, from your memory for you to use.  However, in doing so you have unwillingly disobeyed the command.  This is one technique used in advertising, for example.

My favorite example of these sorts of things is a particular item that Derren Brown did - the Walthamstow dog track piece.

The idea was simple - get a cashier at a dog racing track to pay out on losing dogs.  If you haven't seen it, go to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkHePIahXEs

Now I'm not ruling out the possibility that it was a stooge (a confederate in the pay out window) but let's say that this was not the case.  That means that some rather interesting psychology is at play here.

The general technique is based around something termed as a "Pattern Interrupt."  Much like the interrupts in a CPU, these occur when something interrupts our pattern, or flow, of thought.  This triggers something referred to as a "Transderivational Search" - a TDS.  This is where our interrupted subconscious mind panics and starts to look for something to concentrate on, eliciting a state of confusion that renders a person deeply suggestible.

Imagine this - have you ever gone to shake someone's hand, only to find that just as your hands are about to meet, they put their hand up to their nose, wiggle their fingers, and make "nyaa nya nya nyaa nyaaa" sounds?  If you have, or seen it done, then you have seen a pattern interrupt - the normal pattern of behavior has been interrupted and has left the subject/victim in a state of loss, and their mind is looking for something to latch onto so that it can continue its thought patterns.  It is at this stage, the TDS stage, that we can implant lots of lovely suggestions to illicit the behavior that is desired.

In the case of the Walthamstow dogs, Derren Brown walks up to the window and says, "This is the winning ticket."  The cashier goes through the normal motions of validating the ticket, but she goes back and says "Sorry, this is not a winning ticket," at which point Brown bangs his hand on the window frame and says "This is the dog you're looking for.  Try again, you may have misread it."

In this example you are interrupting the cashier's pattern, and telling her whilst she is in that suggestible TDS state that "this is the dog you're looking for" - that is, the cashiers are looking for the winning dog number on the ticket, and whilst they are in a state of TDS, you just tell them that this is the dog that they are desperately looking for.  You are also giving her a rational reason as to why she didn't just pay out on it ("Try again, you may have misread it.").

Another phrase that Brown uses in the second part of this effect is this: "This is the dog you're looking for - that's why we came to this window."  This plants the same suggestion for the cashier as above - that the winning dog that they look for on the ticket is there - but has a second suggestion that relies on verbal emphasis.

Reread the second sentence.  Got it?  The suggestion should be punctuated like this in your voice: "That's why we came to this window."  See it?  "We came to win" is the suggestion and it just emphasizes to the cashier that you are a winner and as such are to be paid (after all, that's what the cashier does!).

The one thing to emphasize about suggestion is that scripting is very important, and also getting these fluent is paramount.  Also, when doing anything, you must, must, must just believe that it will work to give it its best chance of doing so.  This is tantamount to succeeding with suggestion.  If it doesn't work, just drop it and move on.  Nothing done, nothing damaged.

Take these theories and run with them.

If time permits there may be follow ups to this article but the only limitation is your own imagination, creativity, and resources - and so it is for the rest of the hacker community.  I have released this mini-tut in light of a complete absence of information about this sort of stuff, and a thirst for knowledge regarding this.

This article has covered very basic suggestion and pattern interrupts.  Other interesting areas are anchors, hypnotic language, trance state inductions and manipulation, models and internal representations to name but a few.

As you can see, this is very interesting to look at.  There are many such techniques and examples of these things all over the Internet, media, and in books.  I will not list many here, but the few I recommend are:

Teach Yourself NLP by Steve Bavister and Amanda Vickers.  This is a very good summary of NLP core theory and not a lot of bullshit within its pages.

Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown.  Just released, this is the first book that consolidates the things that he is interested in and dabbles in.  A very good read and very informative.

Have fun.  Be good.  Use responsibly.  Remember - Derren had a TV crew behind him to pay back the dog track.

You don't.