The Sociology of Gaslighting

Abstract

Gaslighting—a type of psychological abuse aimed at making victims seem or feel “crazy,” creating a “surreal” interpersonal environment—has captured public attention. Despite the popularity of the term, sociologists have ignored gaslighting, leaving it to be theorized by psychologists. However, this article argues that gaslighting is primarily a sociological rather than a psychological phenomenon. Gaslighting should be understood as rooted in social inequalities, including gender, and executed in power-laden intimate relationships. The theory developed here argues that gaslighting is consequential when perpetrators mobilize gender-based stereotypes and structural and institutional inequalities against victims to manipulate their realities. Using domestic violence as a strategic case study to identify the mechanisms via which gaslighting operates, I reveal how abusers mobilize gendered stereotypes; structural vulnerabilities related to race, nationality, and sexuality; and institutional inequalities against victims to erode their realities. These tactics are gendered in that they rely on the association of femininity with irrationality. Gaslighting offers an opportunity for sociologists to theorize under-recognized, gendered forms of power and their mobilization in interpersonal relationships.

‘Upon the gears and upon the wheels’: Terror convergence and total administration in the neoliberal university

“…Hence the high rates of output' (Stalin, 1935). So mendacious were management pronouncements, so clear their ideological function, that some staff began to view them as a form of psychological warfare, almost a form of gaslighting (Sweet, 2019). Perhaps their 'frustration, indignation, alienation' really were their 'own personal fault' (Marcuse, 2009(Marcuse, [1975), perhaps they were going crazy.…”

“…Through a subtle process of shifting emphases, these ongoing management pronouncements constructed a 'rationality' of justification for the redundancies that was fluid and opaque. Some began to speak of gaslighting (Sweet, 2019) as colleagues negotiated a highly unstable discursive reality; one which was beginning to have observable and substantive human impacts.…”

Is ethnic representation in an industrial cluster related to earnings of co‐ethnic employers and employees?

“…The majority of immigrants in Canada work in industrial sectors with over-representation of co-ethnic groups in specific industry clusters. This situation may require governments to pay more attention to the workers' exposure to "institutional vulnerability," which may affect their economic returns (Sweet, 2019).…”

Toward a Theory of Concealment

“…Concealment of information affects human interactions in a multitude of ways: whether we conceal or reveal information to others predicts power and dependence, affects trust and cooperation, precludes social influence, and determines what we know-and think we know-about other people (Shapiro 2005;Goffman 1959Goffman , 1963Kitts 2003;Cowan 2014;Cowan and Baldassarri 2018;Talwar and Crossman 2011;Stattin and Kerr 2000;Rote and Smetana 2015;Jensen et al 2004;Rossman 2014;Schilke and Rossman 2018). Likewise, when sociologists study fake news, hidden identities, norms about teen sex, structural holes, abortions, gaslighting, lending money to friends and family, wall street deception, internet privacy, and codes of the underworld, we are implicitly studying concealment (Burt 2009;Miller et al 2003;Gambetta 2011;Cowan 2014;Simpson 2013;Marwick and boyd 2014;Mollborn 2017;Sweet 2019;Wherry et al 2019;Guess et al 2019).…”