{
  "id": "gaslighting.hidden-edit",
  "term": "gaslighting",
  "sense": "hidden-edit",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 15,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "Power that edits another's trust in what it reads, without its knowing, until it acts on the reports of the one editing it instead.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "power.over",
      "self-model.reflexive",
      "trust.reliance",
      "read.information",
      "report.information",
      "edit.process",
      "know.cognitive",
      "model.representation",
      "time.dimension",
      "instead.alternative",
      "act.deed"
    ],
    "interaction": "The power acts not on the world but on the target's reading of it: each denied or altered reading lowers the target's trust in its own inputs, and since the target does not know it is being done, it blames its own model. The window of readings it will act on narrows until only the editor's reports are left.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "power aimed at the instrument, not the reading",
      "a target that repairs its model in the wrong direction",
      "dependence built by removing self-trust"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The term comes from Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas Light, in which a husband dims the gas lights and then insists his wife is imagining it.",
      "domain": "psychology"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "nudge.drift-steer",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "both OTHERS-READ hidden; a nudge moves which way choices go, gaslighting moves whether the target trusts what it sees"
    },
    {
      "id": "self-deception.split",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "self-deception edits one's own model from inside; gaslighting is the same edit made by another's power"
    },
    {
      "id": "rose-tinted-glasses.filter",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "a filter shifts readings on the way in; gaslighting leaves them and teaches the holder to discount them"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "gaslight",
    "gaslighted",
    "gaslighting",
    "gaslights",
    "gaslit"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-28",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-gaslighting.hidden-edit"
}