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Interventions to Psychological Manipulation, featuring Diane Benscoter
Diane Benscoter is the Founder and Executive Director of Antidote and author of Shoes of a Servant: My Unconditional Devotion to a Lie*.
Recorded 19 March 2026 for the Cambridge Disinformation Summit webinar series.
00:00 Intro and brief history
03:23 Project 1: learning community
03:59 Five phases of manipulation
05:23 Project 2: stories bank
06:23 Project 3: attention integrity movement 06:48 Inoculation: anti manipulation identity 07:01 Education of mechanics
07:15 Community building
07:36 Why people are drawn in
09:11 How opportunists find targets
10:33 Manipulation process
11:15 How to break through
14:13 Processing trauma from revelation
15:23 Identity crisis
15:54 Rebuild agency & autonomy
17:13 What drew you in
17:55 "My people"
18:52 Self intervention
20:00 Look for dissonance cracks
20:40 Cult hopping
21:08 Reconstructing self
23:57 Scalable interventions
27:50 Conmen and cults
29:35 Dopamine addiction
31:10 Online vs in person
33:32 Customizing interventions
34:50 Empathy, protecting pride, & dignity
42:19 Opportunists source pain
43:30 Politics
47:04 Signs of being manipulated
48:43 First intervention steps
50:00 Anti manipulation identity
52:43 Policy needs
54:10 Digital literacy skills
55:58 Tips for the vulnerable
Part of the
University of Cambridge (UK)
Disinformation Summit
Cambridge Disinformation Summit
Purpose:
To facilitate interdisciplinary research and policy that:
•Advances understanding of how disinformation is deployed to exploit vulnerable communities and how it amplifies and accelerates global systemic risks,
•Advances efficacy assessment, accelerates deployment, and amplifies impact of disinformation harms interventions, and
•Advances understanding of the implications of interventions on other fundamental rights (e.g., free speech), to help preserve those rights.
Key definition:
•Disinformation is when an actor intentionally disseminates a false or misleading narrative, through selected channels, to exploit a targeted vulnerable audience.
This project does not promote censorship.
University of Cambridge (UK)
Disinformation Summit
Cambridge Disinformation Summit
"I see disinformation as preparing the landscape for corruption." Professor Jagolinzer, Summit Chair, 2026.**
Purpose:
To facilitate interdisciplinary research and policy that:
•Advances understanding of how disinformation is deployed to exploit vulnerable communities and how it amplifies and accelerates global systemic risks,
•Advances efficacy assessment, accelerates deployment, and amplifies impact of disinformation harms interventions, and
•Advances understanding of the implications of interventions on other fundamental rights (e.g., free speech), to help preserve those rights.
Key definition:
•Disinformation is when an actor intentionally disseminates a false or misleading narrative, through selected channels, to exploit a targeted vulnerable audience.
This project does not promote censorship.
*https://dianebenscoter.com/books/
**https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2026/cambridge-disinformation-summit-focuses-on-downstream-harm/