The Still Report

Informational Blurring

This technique was detected by AI but doesn't yet map to our curated glossary. We're tracking its usage patterns.

Conditional emotional appeal

AI detected as: Emotional Hijacking Via Patriotic/familial Sentimentality

Using guilt, fear, or obligation to pressure you into compliance. The message is: "If you were a good person, you would do this." It bypasses rational evaluation by making refusal feel like a moral failure.

Forward's FOG model (1997) — Fear, Obligation, Guilt

In-group/Out-group framing

AI detected as: Threat Convergence Framing

Leveraging your tendency to automatically trust information from "our people" and distrust outsiders. Once groups are established, people apply different standards of evidence depending on who is speaking.

Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979); Cialdini's Unity principle (2016)

Appeal to authority

AI detected as: Authority-based Framing (the 'informed Insider' Persona)

Citing an expert or institution to support a claim, substituting their credibility for evidence you can evaluate yourself. Legitimate when the authority is relevant; manipulative when they aren't qualified or when the citation is vague.

Argumentum ad verecundiam (Locke, 1690); Cialdini's Authority principle (1984)

Archetypal Mapping

This technique was detected by AI but doesn't yet map to our curated glossary. We're tracking its usage patterns.

Appeal to authority

AI detected as: Authority Positioning

Citing an expert or institution to support a claim, substituting their credibility for evidence you can evaluate yourself. Legitimate when the authority is relevant; manipulative when they aren't qualified or when the citation is vague.

Argumentum ad verecundiam (Locke, 1690); Cialdini's Authority principle (1984)

Moral framing

AI detected as: Theological Priming And Moral Absolutism

Presenting a complex issue with genuine tradeoffs as a simple choice between right and wrong. Once something is framed as a moral issue, compromise feels like complicity and disagreement feels immoral rather than reasonable.

Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory; Lakoff's framing research (2004)

Anchoring

Presenting an extreme number or claim first so everything after seems reasonable by comparison. The first piece of information becomes your reference point — even when it's arbitrary or deliberately inflated. Works even when you know the anchor is irrelevant.

Tversky & Kahneman's anchoring heuristic (1974)

The 'reasonable Defector' Narrative

This technique was detected by AI but doesn't yet map to our curated glossary. We're tracking its usage patterns.

Moral framing

Presenting a complex issue with genuine tradeoffs as a simple choice between right and wrong. Once something is framed as a moral issue, compromise feels like complicity and disagreement feels immoral rather than reasonable.

Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory; Lakoff's framing research (2004)

Conditional emotional appeal

Using guilt, fear, or obligation to pressure you into compliance. The message is: "If you were a good person, you would do this." It bypasses rational evaluation by making refusal feel like a moral failure.

Forward's FOG model (1997) — Fear, Obligation, Guilt

Us vs. Them

Dividing the world into two camps — people like us (good, trustworthy) and people not like us (dangerous, wrong). It exploits a deep human tendency to favor our own group. Once you accept the division, information from "them" gets automatically discounted.

Tajfel's Social Identity Theory (1979); Minimal Group Paradigm

In-group/Out-group framing

Leveraging your tendency to automatically trust information from "our people" and distrust outsiders. Once groups are established, people apply different standards of evidence depending on who is speaking.

Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979); Cialdini's Unity principle (2016)

Appeal to authority

Citing an expert or institution to support a claim, substituting their credibility for evidence you can evaluate yourself. Legitimate when the authority is relevant; manipulative when they aren't qualified or when the citation is vague.

Argumentum ad verecundiam (Locke, 1690); Cialdini's Authority principle (1984)