Applied Romance

It’s that feeling when you get into an argument: you’re holding your own, temper under control, being a reasonable person, and that person says one of those things that just makes your blood boil, instantly!

You’ve been baited…

And you took the bait!

On the other hand, perhaps you’re having a polite disagreement with someone close to you, and you “reiterate” some point of contention… and they blow up, just go off the wall. You inadvertantly trolled some bait, and they rise to it. Their emotional response far outweighs your intentions. And from here out whatever rational basis for dispute takes the backseat to unproductive emotionally-driven interaction.

What is baiting?

Baiting takes three general forms: 1. baiting between people who have emotionally significant relationships, 2. confrontational baiting between strangers, and 3. teasing in a flirtatious or suggestive manner. The purpose of baiting in all cases is frame control. In the first case, the effectiveness of baiting is closely correlated to the intimacy between the participants. It’s very difficult to bait someone who has no emotional investment in the other person, and very easy to bait someone once you have become more closely acquainted. In the second case, baiting can also occur between strangers as intentional provocation using socially stereotypical insults. For example, “Hey bitch” to a woman you don’t know could get you anything from ignored to laughed at to slapped in the face. Or worse. In the third case, baiting is part and parcel of flirting, which must be calibrated to the woman in front of you (as usual). Baiting is absolutely gender-independent: men and women bait both men and women. This article examines emotionally provocative baiting between men and women rather than between men or between women.

Within an emotionally significant relationship, baiting usually comes from an emotionally weak state, generally indicating low self-esteem in one form or another. Baiting is a form of conflict initialization or escalation involving intentional emotional provocation of a target by an instigator. Baiting can be an insidious and extremely dangerous form of emotional manipulation.

How baiting works

When people are deep into emotional stress, especially novel stress, they tend to fall back on “default” behaviors. That is, their emotional responses trump their rational responses. As certain stresses become more familiar, a tendency to bait can be overcome using the same tools for self-development allowing other emotionally unproductive behaviors to be overcome. However, this requires the instigator to both understand the process, and desire to change the behavior. Within a relationship where baiting has been allowing to escalate, the target has little hope of providing a positive impetus for change on the instigator’s behavior. Sadly, the baby has to go out with the bathwater far too often.

Baiting takes the form of a call and response interaction:
# The bait is tendered by the instigator, often in the form of indirect ad hominem attacks.
# The target reacts emotionally.
# Commonly, the instigator now escalates by “blaming the victim” and using more direct attacks.
# Further reaction by the target results in vulnerability to other forms of emotional manipulation, such as deliberate miscommunication, being put into double binds, physical violence, etc.

* The insidousness of being baited is that calling it out plays into the instigator’s frame, because the instigator owns the frame of communication. A horrible double bind. Once the bait has been taken, the instigator gets increasingly large emotional rush out of the interplay, while the target becomes more and more distressed.

* When the instigator is coming from a position of lower self-esteem, baiting sucks the self-esteem out of the target to bolster the self-esteem of the instigator.

Emotional dissipation

Baiting as a form of emotional dissipation is particularly dangerous because of the underlying dominant frame assumed by the person doing the baiting. In other words, the initiating party will win any argument that ensues. This is foregone in their mind, and they will use any and all means of emotional manipulation to ensure the outcome. Once someone has resorted to baiting, they are totally unreachable while in that emotional state. If the baiting has gone on long enough, the instigator will “set the frame” permanently, and no further communication on the topic is possible.

When baiting is employed

* Baiting as a form of one-upmanship.
* Intentional disrespect.

Baiting is a tremendous rapport-breaker, guaranteed to put a large amount of distance between the participants very quickly. The person accepting the bait automatically puts themselves into a supplicating relationship, whether they mean to or not, and whether they are aware of it or not. Part of the insidiousness is that the person accepting the bait may actually have completely honest intentions, yet gets sucked into unwanted conflict without any notion of what is happening or why. Within a relationship, baiting is a very effective step in a direction for dissolving the relationship. As the bait is taken, emotional escalation proceeds, frame control increasingly shifts. Baiting can backfire in a really big way when the baited party, the target, simply loses interest.

Screening

* Screening for it: watch for baiting being applied to other people. If you don’t know all parties involved fairly well, this can be difficult to ascertain. On a more general note, watch for any sort of interpersonal gamesmanship. When you see such behavior, there may be baiting involved.
* Baiting very commonly involves an emotional invalidation component, which is a very strong way to dominate a frame of interaction. In some cases, the instigator will claim the frame of communication with a double bind such that either communicating or not communicating results in a loss for the target. The “win” is implicit for instigator. The target can only choose to continue interaction or not, regardless of the instigator’s opinion. In short, not everyone wants “world peace.”
* Summarily ending a relationship risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Breaking the cycle

Breaking a cycle of baiting can be difficult.

The key is to understand why the baiting is working. There is an easy and a hard case. The easy case is when the baiting strikes at an emotional weakness. You may find yourself supplicating, or your actions or words are inducing a perception that you are supplicating. In this case, it’s easy to break: disengage emotionally. In the second case, the baiting potentially affects your material bottom line, it costs you money or time, either directly or indirectly. This case is much more difficult to deal with.

How to break it: As a target, first break the cycle within yourself, internally. “Press the reset button” if necessary, and return to an initial, more productive frame. Since baiting behavior often comes much later than when EFAs are set, resetting can often work very well.