From time to time, on the city streets, you can meet gypsies who pester passers-by with an offer to tell fortunes or even with some completely innocent questions. People who had the imprudence to talk to them are deprived of all the money that they had with them. The consequences are even more disastrous if gypsies go from door to door.
The technology of psychological manipulation used by gypsy scammers is called "gypsy hypnosis." Unlike ordinary hypnosis, a person does not fall asleep, his consciousness does not turn off, but his will is paralyzed. The victim does what the hypnotist wants from her, but these "specialists" want one thing: to get money and valuable things.
Attract and hold attention
Most often, such scammers operate in crowded places where people are unconsciously ready to make contact. They can attract the attention of a potential victim in different ways: by offering to buy something very cheap, making an insignificant request, for example: "Give one ruble - the child is not enough for a bun." Gypsies often "work" accompanied by small children, which also lulls vigilance.
Make you trust
If a person repeatedly agrees with the statements of the interlocutor, the likelihood increases that he will agree with the next statement, even if it does not correspond to reality. To destroy the client's skeptical attitude, scammers make statements with which he will agree for sure: “You are simple yourself, not proud” (in Russian culture, modesty is considered a woman’s dignity, it’s nice to agree with such a statement), “You have lost your first love” (such a statement is true for most people and therefore "win-win"). An even stronger effect is provided by copying the victim's facial expressions and body movements, up to the frequency of blinking.
Trust is fostered by touch. Gypsies usually touch the right hand, since its cortical representation occupies almost a quarter of the cerebral cortex, so whoever takes possession of a person's right hand takes possession of his psyche.
"Disabling" the left hemisphere
The main goal of gypsy hypnosis is to weaken the criticality of thinking. This function is concentrated in the left - "rational" hemisphere of the brain. In the process of hypnosis, the right hemisphere, the emotional and instinctive hemisphere, takes over. For women, it is leading an order of magnitude more often than for men, so gypsies more often harass women on the streets.
The right hemisphere is activated at the moment of danger, so the gypsy instills danger in the victim, which she supposedly sees in the lines of her hand: "You will lie paralyzed!" At the same time, the fraudster constantly speaks - not falling silent, and most importantly - monotonously. The impact of a monotonous stimulus easily leads a person into an altered state of consciousness. Its onset is determined by external signals: dilated pupils, a look directed "nowhere". As soon as a person has fallen into such a state, you can do whatever you want with him: he will meekly give the money and will not even remember it until someone else asks him about the money.
There are people who are able to quite successfully resist such influences, but gypsies do not approach them. Fraudsters are good at identifying by gait and facial expression who can be hypnotized and who can not. The only way to protect yourself from gypsy hypnosis is to avoid contact with such people.
