Plausible Deniability in Relationships & How To Identify This Psychological Tactic

What is plausible deniability?

Plausible deniability, or culpable deniability, when used intentionally, is a manipulative social tactic that allows an individual to deny knowledge, intent or responsibility for a harmful action or utterance because the victim lacks proof of the manipulator’s intentions. It works to let someone evade accountability by keeping the situation open to multiple interpretations, letting the manipulator try and pass off harmful behaviours as accidents or misinterpretations. This often causes the victim to doubt their own reality of events, similarly to the more commonly known term of ‘gaslighting’.

How does plausible deniability work?

Plausible deniability works because of the ambiguity between doing something harmful by accident or by malice. We give different social consequences to a person that has committed an offence intentionally or by neglect/inattention/accident. We see this in the legal system with the distinction between murder and manslaughter, for instance. The outcome is the same—a person died—but the cause is different, and the classification often relies on the offender’s intentions being clear, whether they meant to take the victim’s life or simply caused it to happen unintentionally. This same principle makes up the social context of plausible deniability, where a manipulative person can use the veneer of accident or miscommunication to conceal their intentions, as the victim often has no way to tell the difference.

To be clear, plausible deniability isn’t always a bad thing. We use it as a piece of rhetoric to prove people’s innocence as well as guilt. Someone that was not aware that they were giving out false information, for example, is unlikely to be blamed for actively lying to the people they dispensed it to, unless it can be proved that they should’ve known better. This is why it tends to work so well as an abusive tactic—we are charitable to people we think have good intentions, and by lying about or omitting their manipulative intentions, people often take advantage of this fact to get away with their coercive tactics.

What’s an example of plausible deniability in a relationship?

To be a bit more clear, we’ll use an example of a husband that has occasionally looked at the lock screen of his wife’s phone.

He’s seen suspicious notifications pop up from men in his wife’s life that he doesn’t trust. Having seen them, he’s almost convinced his wife is cheating. But the consequences of being wrong are pretty significant—he doesn’t want a confrontation unless he is absolutely certain of his wife’s potential indiscretions. So instead of out-and-out accusation, he can instead choose a more manipulative method. Through careful questioning and plausible deniability, he can confront his wife without ever being at fault for snooping or coming across as insecure. Note that in doing this, he is avoiding accountability, and a more integrity-driven person would just have an honest conversation.

Plausible deniability is the smokescreen between a manipulative person and their deceitful actions. The victim is led to believe something about this person (or their actions) that justifies or in some way validates their story. Even when you catch them red-handed in a bold-faced lie, if the liar has plausible deniability, they may escape the consequences. We do this all the time innocently, like when we don’t want to text someone back so after two days we just reply “sorry, I was busy”. Or when we’re too polite to leave an awkward social situation, so we make an excuse up to avoid hurting the person’s feelings. Even if the other person accused us of not wanting to text them back, or wanting to leave—we have plausible deniability for our absences, so it would be unreasonable to take offence. This is the theme, avoiding accountability and escaping confrontation that might lead to negative consequences.

Returning to our example, let’s imagine the husband starts a conversation with his wife. Talking about smartphone upgrades, he asks his wife how she feels about her phone. A normal and innocuous topic, it has the side benefit of establishing a segue to talking about her phone. By picking an adjacent thread of conversation, it allows him to broach his actual target subject (her phone and potential infidelity) in a way that seems organic enough to not raise concern. He was “simply asking about phone upgrades”. Questioning his intentions would be downright paranoid at this point—avoiding accountability.

He goes on to casually mention, in between some other unrelated information, that his current phone has stopped lighting up when it gets a text. This may be true, it may not. The content of the lie really doesn’t matter, because all a manipulative person wants from sharing this fact is the ability to then ask about her phone in a way that doesn’t raise concern. He is bridging the gap between the start of the conversation and his intended outcome in a way that seems natural, keeping plausible deniability the whole time. You may start to see a pattern here.

Each step in the conversation is a smooth transition towards the topic the manipulator has in mind. Nothing so far has been of any concern to an unfaithful wife. No accusations have been thrown around, no confrontation has happened. If she becomes suspicious, he can simply feign ignorance. All he’s done is ask whether she likes her phone and if it has an issue displaying text messages. This is how manipulators get away with weaving their narratives. The worst ones are clever, slowly submerging their targets into their narratives in a non-confrontational way. Only later does the victim realise that they were coerced into a conversation they did not plan to have, excuse behaviour they wouldn’t tolerate, or reveal information they otherwise wouldn’t.

Even after the victim sees how they’ve been played, it’s difficult to confront people using tactics like this. The whole point of plausible deniability is to intentionally disguise someone’s motivations with superficial excuses. When confronted with their deceit, manipulators will retreat into these excuses, often feigning ignorance or suggesting it was not their idea in the first place. Passive aggression has some overlap here, being another non-confrontational technique people use to force topics or prompt another person to say or do something without being overt about it.

Eventually, the husband asks more and more pointed questions, starting general but eventually being able to ask about his wife’s conversations with her colleagues. His wife, feeling unthreatened by the minutes of dull, unrelated conversation, is lulled into revealing that she has been having no trouble with her text messages to her male coworker—a normal thing to bring up if she thinks her husband is not suspicious of her.

This is, of course, a perfect excuse for the husband to latch onto the topic. He exclaims his envy, saying that her phone seems to work fine, quoting a line of the suspicious conversation he just ‘happened’ to see when her phone lit up.

From there, the topic has finally been reached, as if by pure coincidence. His wife is in hot water. Of course, the husband “hadn’t been snooping”, it was just his irritation with his own phone that caused him to take a peek. And she’d been the one to mention her coworker first.

Everything he has done so far is socially blameless. If you get angry at someone employing plausible deniability, you’ll quickly encounter a million reasons why your feelings are unjustified. ‘It’s nobody’s fault’, ‘the situation was just unfortunate’, ‘I didn’t mean to…’, et cetera, et cetera.

Plausible deniability gives manipulative people a way out of every criticism and every note of fault. It is the platform on which all manipulation stands, because it hides someone’s true intent perfectly. For someone to execute this tactic perfectly, nobody will ever suspect them of manipulation, rather just some trivial mistakes and ignorance. Incompetence is a fantastic disguise for malicious intent.

How do we spot plausible deniability?

So how does someone combat this sneaky tactic?

By nature, it’s difficult to spot. As with gaslighting and other forms of manipulation, it is imperative to keep a strong grasp on reality, preferably with proof or other outside sources.

This type of manipulation works best when the victim would otherwise trust the manipulator, and the two are generally alone for their conversations. It’s much harder to maintain plausible deniability in a group, because of how many perspectives the manipulator has to keep track of—and how the group can come together to keep track of all the manipulator’s offences.

There are some red flags to watch out for. As with any manipulation, most of the solution is in spotting the coercion in the first place. Most people using this tactic do so instinctively to avoid blame, like your mother’s constant ‘inadvertent’ guilt trips. It’s very rare to find someone able to do it intentionally to serve a purpose. Therefore, it shouldn’t happen very often naturally—usually only in heightened states of emotion/ego/self-preservation. Knowing that, if you notice that you struggle to hold someone accountable to almost any of their actions, that might be a sign they’re employing this technique.

They may often do things like tell you reasons your feelings are invalid, or give excuses as to why it doesn’t make sense for you to be mad at them. If you care about the person and trust them, it may be tempting to accept their excuses at face value. But ask yourself, does what they’re saying actually make sense? Does what they’re saying actually absolve them of responsibility?

Be wary of conversations that start and end in drastically different places. Sometimes conversations can spawn many tangents, and innocently reach many topics, with no cause for concern. Other times, one person may seem to be driving, with questions that almost seem out of the blue. They may be directing you to a topic you had no intention of discussing, or probing for information you didn’t want to give.

Manipulators often accuse the other person of the very thing they themselves are trying to do, or suggest how hurtful it is to be criticised or accused of wrongdoing. The best defence can often be a good offense, as if you’re worried about causing your own harm, you’ll be looking less closely for coercion. Manipulation relies on the good nature and empathy of others, and our own instinctual drives to believe what we’re being told.

4 strategies to spot plausible deniability in your relationships and combat it.

• Commit the above red flags to memory. Spotting a situation that you think may be manipulation will make you more critical and alert. You obviously don’t want to be paranoid, but in situations that concern you, being careful about what you say and who you say it to can only be a good thing. Most manipulators rely on their victims being emotional or distracted. If someone’s being very critical of their conversations, it’s much, much harder to deceive them.
• Use other people around you. Describing a situation to others will often reveal the truth about the matter. If you hear yourself speaking and become confused as to how or why a situation took a turn, you may have recognised some manipulation. It’s often only in the recounting of a story that we notice how illogical some things can be—especially if your feelings (shame, guilt, sadness, undue responsibility) don’t line up with what happened. Apologising at the end of a discussion you started to bring attention to someone else’s bad behaviour is a classic sign of plausible deniability accompanying manipulation.
• Lean on your support system, as they’re a great asset to maintain your sense of reality. As with gaslighting, it is much harder to mislead someone with a strong support structure and close confidants. People outside the situation can give excellent advice, unbiased by potential manipulation. This is why many emotionally abusive relationships involve the victim being isolated from friends and family.
• Become comfortable with confrontation. Often, a manipulator will have very little experience with direct, honest and genuine confrontation. They will often dance circles around the truth all they like, but if you hold steady to what is real, manipulators buckle and backpedal very quickly.

Plausible deniability is a philosophy that many manipulative people use as a basis for their way of life. Con artists, abusive partners, liars and cheats, all types of deceitful people will use plausible deniability to shield themselves from responsibility and consequences of their actions. Remembering what we’ve outlined here today will give you the tools necessary to combat this type of manipulative behaviour where and when you spot it. It should go without saying that issues such as coercion, manipulation and abuse mandate seeking the proper support and help. Each country has their own helplines and counselling systems in place to deal with these issues, and it is highly recommended you explore these options if you think that is something you need.