exercise · all tools
Emotional Manipulation
Depth · what it can open●●●○3 — emotional
Holding · facilitation2 — facilitator
Trust · group readiness★★★established
Disclosure · what is sharednone
A two-player scene opens with a line designed to move the other character's emotional state — a compliment or an insult — and the second player accepts it and lets it land. The source is emphatic that it is the characters' emotions being moved, not the players', and that it needs a group that already trusts each other.
Hold with care
- The source's own instruction, and the strongest warning on any page in this batch: do not use this exercise unless the players have developed a great deal of trust
- The opening lines are personal in form — the source's examples are about appearance and weight — and the fiction that they are aimed at a character is thin if the group is not solid
- The word manipulation carries weight the exercise does not intend; the source says so itself
Practical
- Time
- — min
- Group
- ?–∞ · pairs
- Settings
- in-person
- Mechanisms
- emotional-processing, perspective-taking, behavioral-rehearsal
- Change scope
- state → skill · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- improvencyclopedia.org/games/Emotional_Manipulation.html — Improv Encyclopedia, open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
Source link checked 1 Sep 2026 — reachable
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Unattributed; compiled by Improv Encyclopedia — Improvisational theatre
In this directory via Improv Encyclopedia
status: checked · added 2026-08-31