The Many Types of Seduction

Seduction refers to the act of when you lead someone astray. Most often, when you are leading astray, it concerns chastity related issues. Although ‘seduction’ most often concerns enticement from chastity, you can also use the term referring to leading someone away from their sense of duty or purpose. Although the term ‘seduction’ has all the connotations of enticement, it can also include flattery, deceit and leading astray. In modern culture, you may be among those who blur the lines between ‘seduction’ and ‘romancing’. Many movies and Hollywood ideals of relationship have confused the terms.

When it comes to understanding seduction, you first need to know when you are being seduced and how that seduction is occurring. There are many ways that you can be seduced or distracted from your purpose. Those seductions often lead you in believing something that is not what you assumed. Seductions often convey a promise of making something better for you, or delivering something without telling you about the strings attached. The trick of seductions is that they really do not deliver the promise. Some seductions involve the partial delivery of the promise.

Let us take an affair for example. When a potential lover comes along and attempts enticing you as a potential cheater, they often lead you to believe many things. They first get you to believe that you are attractive to them. They also make you believe that they are available for you and that somehow they will make your life better. They may not have told you about their spouse or diseases that they are infected with or that they are looking to steal from you. Once they have you believing that your life will improve by spending time with them, and that you are special, you’re often hooked.

This kind of seduction often involves the use of flattery and showing an interest in the target. When flattery is combined with the effects of alcohol, the process of seduction is often made easier. Alcohol lessens the inhibitions. When the inhibitions are lowered, you are often vulnerable to flattery. When that flattery is delivered by someone who is attractive and interested in you, it only seems to be a matter of time. The book, ‘Contact: The First Five Minutes’ addresses many of the non-verbal skills involved in showing interest in the target.

Paying attention to how people attempt seducing you, will provide many valuable insights. Some seducers use trial and error approaches. The experienced ones often have an intuitive sense of what to say, how to say it and the timing involved. Notice how they used flattery, non-verbal cues, eye contact, and an interest in you along the way. Once you see what they are doing, you can zero in on the techniques that you are most vulnerable to. You will also begin picking up on the process of the seduction.

The seducer often attempts lulling their victim into a passive mode. When your mind is in a passive mode, rather than thinking and problem solving, you are more inclined to follow directions. Seducers know this. When they can persuade you to shift your mind into a passive state, they know that from that moment on, you are going to be like putty in their hand and follow your suggestions. When they can promise to deliver something that you want or get you to dream and fantasize about what you want, your mind often shifts to a passive mode. Once in that passive mode, they attempt taking charge.

Besides sexual oriented seductions, there are also intellectual seductions as well. With an intellectual seduction, the seducer often feeds you some items that have surface validity. They sound believable, so you may choose to accept what they say as being true. Once you have accepted their ‘bait’, they often use emotionally charged items to lead you astray. When the emotions are engaged, you often suspend your thinking mind. The seducers know that if they can get you to take the bait followed by emotional engagement, they can begin leading you astray. Some of the intellectual seducers use their position of authority to help in persuading you that what they are offering to deliver will improve your life.

Seducers who have achieved a position of authority often use that role in seducing you. Since humans often trust authority figures, they want you to ‘trust’ what they say based solely on their position. They want you to fall for their position rather than check their facts or use logic in your thinking to combat their seductions. These seducers may have respectable positions as university professors, police officers, elected officials and priests/pastors. They want you to believe that they have your best interest in mind the whole time they are seducing you. In some cases, when you do not fall for their position, they resort to using their authority as a threat to intimidate you into doing what they want you to do.

One of the popular techniques used in intellectual seduction is known as the ‘Delphi Method’. With this method, the facilitator uses group dynamics to pressure those participating into a false consensus. The consensus they achieve is often brought about by using peer pressure and deceptive measure of central tendency. Some seducers will use time constraints in order to force you into making a choice that you initially did not want to make. Besides using techniques like false consensus, and time constraints, they may resort to ‘either/or choices’. These either/or choices are often called a false dichotomy. The seducer makes you believe you have only one of two options. By limiting your options, they manipulate you regarding your choice.

There are also mental seduction techniques. The mental seducers often use techniques that are labeled as hypnotic or neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). These seducers craft their words in such a way as to bypass your resistance. They use words and behaviors that pressure you to respond in the direction they want you to. Some lawyers have mastered these types of techniques in order to lead juries toward conclusions that they want them to make. These techniques are powerful and often operate at a level that you as the target are not aware of. By learning whether you process information on a verbal, visual or auditory level, they can custom tailor their seduction to those levels. These techniques often make you feel that the seducer is in your mind. That happens due to them conveying material to you in a format or language with which your mind operates. By making changes at the level of your programming, they manipulate you.

Besides conveying material into a programming level format, they often use ‘response sets’. This involves asking you a series of question that they know you will answer either yes or no to. They keep the questions going the same direction, either yes or no. After answering several of those questions, they hit you with the question they want you to answer in that manner. Since the human mind does not like to break the pattern, your answer will often fall into the desired sequence.

There are also more ‘hardcore’ forms of seduction that border on brainwashing or re-programming. These techniques often involve creating an environment where the target is totally dependent on the seducer. In such an environment, situations are created where emotions are intensified to the point of breaking down all resistance to them.

Some seducers who want hardcore results, but do not want to go through the work, may resort to using chemicals which speed up the seduction process. Mind altering drugs allow the target to be disoriented. The seducer comes along and offers to lead them through their disorientation. Since they ‘helped’ you, there is a false sense of trust developed, which in turn is used creating the opportunity for seduction. When you trust you seducer, you are more vulnerable to their seducing advances.

Seduction is taken to its highest development in the espionage community. Within that community, agents know how to seduce, which triggers work best with which population. They also know how to exploit any weaknesses they find in their targets. They know how to use money trouble, work conflicts, marriage disagreements or the desire for power as tools in their seduction. They often cue in on what their target wants most and find ways of exploiting that with promises to make them vulnerable to seduction.

Those in the espionage and intelligence community are often trained in ways of combating seduction as well. They have learned ways of countering each of the triggers that people are vulnerable to.