Gaslighting by Crowd

Abstract

Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting (Abramson, “Turning up the Lights on Gaslighting” [2014]; McKinnon, “Allies Behaving Badly: Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice” [2017]; Ruiz, “Spectral Phenomenologies” [2014]) by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis will focus on a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement.

Collaborative Story Craft: A Tool for Building Narratives in Organisational Change

“…Gaslighting in the workplace can occur when individuals perform actions that cause colleagues to question themselves and their actions in a way that is detrimental to their careers (Adkins 2019).…”

Exit only: harms from silencing employee voice

“…These are all versions of credibility-diminishment, telling medical professionals that their immediate, ground-level perceptions of a health care situation are not to be trusted. Gaslighting, a kind of epistemic injustice that involves telling agents they are epistemically unreliable, has indirect harms, particularly in the workplace -it reduces creativity and engagement [Abramson, 2014;Adkins, 2019].…”