Gaslighting, Confabulation, and Epistemic Innocence

Recent literature on epistemic innocence develops the idea that a defective cognitive process may nevertheless merit special consideration insofar as it confers an epistemic benefit that would not otherwise be available. For example, confabulation may be epistemically innocent when it makes a subject more likely to form future true beliefs or helps her maintain a coherent self-concept. I consider the role of confabulation in typical cases of interpersonal gaslighting, and argue that confabulation will not be epistemically innocent in such cases even if it does preserve a coherent self-concept or belief-set for the subject. Analyzing the role of confabulation in gaslighting illustrates its role in on-going interpersonal relationships, and augments already growing evidence that confabulation may be quite widespread. The role of confabulation in gaslighting shows that whether confabulation confers epistemic benefits (and so is epistemically innocent) will depend greatly on the interpersonal context in which it is deployed, while whether a coherent self-concept is epistemically beneficial will depend to a great extent on the content of that self-concept. This shows that the notion of an epistemically harmful or beneficial feature of a cognitive process can and should be further clarified, and that doing so has both theoretical and practical advantages in understanding epistemic innocence itself.

Characterizing GaslightingGaslighting involves (i) the attempt by the gaslighter to undermine his victim’s self-trust: her conception of herself as an autonomous locus of experience, thought, and judg-ment.2 The gasligther’s (ii) motivation is a strong desire to neutralize his victim’s ability to criticize him and to ensure her consent to his way of viewing things (specifically with regard to issues relevant to the relationship, perhaps in gen-eral), and thus to maintain control over her. The gaslighter (iii) pursues this goal by means of a strategy of manipula-tion, fabrication, and deception that (iv) specifically relies upon his victim’s trust in him as a peer or authority in some relevant sense.3The most distinctive feature of gaslighting is that it is not enough for the gaslighter simply to control his victim or have things go his way: it is essential to him that the victim herself actually come to agree with him (Abramson 2014, pp. 10–12). Gaslighting is thus distinct from (though not unrelated to) silencing, as well as from creating an envi-ronment where everyone else believes the victim is wrong, and also from creating a situation where the victim has no choice but to acquiesce, even while not agreeing or seeing things his way.From the standpoint of social psychology, it makes sense to think of gaslighting as a type of abuse. The motives of the gaslighter are consistent with “power and control” motives typically ascribed to abusers (Wagers 2015). Like other forms of abuse, gaslighting is also typically persistent, and deployed over a long period. Also, abusers are often characterized as having difficulty identifying, managing and expressing emotions, and as suffering from a strong sense of vulnerability and low sense of self-worth (Smith 2007; Wagers 2015). Someone with a psychology of this sort is likely to be motivated to gaslight insofar as a partner who (as a result of gaslighting) assents to the gaslighter’s view of things is unlikely to offer emotional or other challenges. I will consider additional similarities between gaslighting and other types of abuse in Sect.3. However, so far as I am aware, there do not exist empirical studies focusing specifi-cally on the phenomenon of gaslighting. This being the case, in the next section I will consider two examples of gaslight-ing that have played an important role in recent discussions in order to illustrate the phenomenon.1.2 Gaslighting: Two CasesIn the 1944 film Gas Light, Paula (Ingrid Bergman) is the victim of gaslighting on the part of her husband, Gregory (Charles Boyer).4 Unbeknownst to herself, Paula is in pos-session of priceless jewels that belonged to her aunt, a famous opera singer mysteriously murdered when Paula was a girl. Gregory, in fact the murderer of Paula’s aunt and now bent on gaining possession of the jewels, romances and marries Paula, then convinces her to return to London to live in her aunt’s old house. Confident the jewels are in the attic, Gregory “goes out on business” often, when in reality he goes to the attic by a back staircase. His use of the gaslights in the attic dims the gaslight in the house. Paula sees this, and often hears mysterious footsteps in the attic. Gregory repeatedly assures her that she is imagining things, sug-gests that she is “over-tired”, and questions her memory and perceptions. He arranges things so that it appears that she has been stealing, hiding, or moving objects in the house. When confronted, Paula has no recollection of having done this, which only confirms Gregory’s “suspicion” that she is mentally unstable. As a result, Paula’s confidence in her own judgment and mental faculties gradually deteriorates. Gregory’s goal is to drive her to the point where she believes she is mad so that he can get her out of the way in order to search for the jewels more efficiently.A second example comes from the1952 Film Pat and Mike, and is used extensively by Abramson (2014). Pat is an aspiring female golfer, while her fiancée, Collier, wants her to give up her golf career so they can get married and she can assume wifely duties of household and children. After a close tournament loss in which Collier’s less than supportive approach has played a clear role, Pat finds herself in crisis. Her confidence and life-goals shaky, Collier takes advantage of the opportunity to press her to give up her 2 Here and throughout I use ‘she’, ‘her’, etc. to refer to the victim of gaslighting and ‘he’, ‘his’, etc. to refer to the perpetrator. This usage helps to avoid pronoun-confusion throughout, and fits with the situ-ations in key examples of gaslighting (the films Gas Light and Pat and Mike) and with the feminist slant of Abramson’s 2014 analysis of the phenomenon. In adopting this usage, I do not mean to take a stand concerning whether gaslighting is particularly or predominantly perpetrated by men against women. I think that the agent and patient of gaslighting can be mixed in any number of ways in terms of gender (men to women, men to men, women to men, etc.) and other social relations. Who gaslights who predominantly or the most, in terms of social category, is an empirical question that I expect depends rather heavily on social and cultural factors. The analysis being offered here should apply regardless.3 Gaslighting is not limited to intimate partners in a relationship. As characterized here, gaslighting is possible in many interpersonal contexts involving trust or authority, such as employee-employer rela-tionships and relationships amongst peers of various sorts (friends, co-workers, fellow students, etc.).4 The film is itself based on Patrick Hamilton’s (1938) play of the same name.
Gaslighting, Confabulation, andEpistemic Innocence 1 3career (something Pat clearly does not want) and marry him (“Why don’t you just let me take charge!” says Collier at one point). During their conversation, Collier refuses to express support for Pat, tacitly but persistently suggests doubt in her ability to make judgments for herself, and issues the sub-tle threat that her failure to see things his way might result in the end of their relationship (“Just make sure you don’t think it under…” Collier says, then abruptly shuts down the conversation). Whereas Gregory’s gaslighting of Paula is about gaining control over her by means of providing her with significant but false evidence against trust in her own agency, Collier’s gaslighting of Pat attempts to undermine her sense of her own agency largely by marshalling her emo-tional commitment to him (as well as her own diminished self-confidence), but with the clear goal of ensuring that she comply with his vision of their future together.1.3 Abramson onGaslightingOn the basis of examples such as these,5 Abramson argues that gaslighters are individuals who cannot tolerate eve
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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 genderbased 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.
Keywords
gaslighting, domestic violence, gender, sexuality, intersectionality

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