Best Books on Frame Control

By Lucio Buffalmano / 8 minutes of reading

Frames and frame control: such a central aspect of social and power dynamics, and
yet so few books and resources on this topic.

Most of the resources discussing frames are still all clustered in seduction, pick-up,
and manosphere sources.
Next comes sales, especially from authors schooled in NLP. And lastly, there are
negotiation books, which also often end up discussing frames.

And even when frame control is discussed, it’s most often a paragraph or a
mention.
I haven’t seen any great resources fully dedicated to frames.

And academia and social research have largely ignored frames.

Now, that being said, scattered around, we can find some good stuff on frames and
frame control.
This list only contains top-notch information on frames and frames’ control:

Contents

12. Primal Leadership

11. The Shadow Negotiation
 10. Negotiation Genius
9. Pitch Anything
8. Pre-Suasion
7. How to Make Girls Chase
6. Talking From 9 to 5
5. The Secret Handshake
4. Don’t Think of An Elephant
3. Getting Past No
2. The Social Strategist
1. Power University

12. Primal Leadership

Goleman says that when two people with different emotional states meet there is a
tug of war at the amygdala level.

And the ones that “sticks to his (emotional) guns”, ends up winning the other
individual over to his own emotional state of choice (for example: when an
unflappable person meets a confrontational one, the confrontational one will
eventually calm down).
Goleman never calls them “frames”, but he is talking about frames.

11. The Shadow Negotiation

Another book proving my original point:

Many authors talk about “frames”.

They just rarely call them frames and rarely apply the framing nomenclature.
For example, Deborah Kolb talks about reframing your opponents’ frames, but
instead of calling her techniques reframing, she calls them “strategic turns”.

Still, a great book to understand how frames affect negotiations, and how you can
use them to your advantage.
And her example of “interrupting the move” (ie.: “breaking the pattern”) was genius.

And talking about “genius” and “negotiations”:

10. Negotiation Genius

Simply the best book I have read on negotiation.

It’s not laser-focused on frames, but since frames are often about negotiation and
negotiation of meaning, then this book will help you with both.

9. Pitch Anything

When I started reading “Pitch Anything” I was flabbergasted.

“God”, I thought, “this book is ThePowerMoves applied to negotiation! This guy is

the real deal!”
But by the time I had finished, I felt that Oren Klaff remains stuck on one type of
frame control only: frame domination.
His techniques zero in on wresting control of the interaction. And that’s all cool and
dandy: you need those skills as well.

But frame domination sometimes leads to an escalation of conflicts, and it can ruin
relationships.
In life as much as in sales, you also need frame control skills that help you negotiate
the frame, or persuade others without making enemies.

That’s why I recommend the reader get a wider overview of frames, which includes
collaborative frames and frames negotiations.

Alright, the warning being sounded, this is still an awesome read on frames and
(frames conflicts).

8. Pre-Suasion

Pre-suasion is all about “pre-framing”.

And pre-framing is all about influencing people by exposing or manipulating the
frame of mind and frame of reference before they are exposed to a certain stimulus.
In psychology, this is called “priming”, and depending on how you “prime” people,
you might as well call it “pre-framing”.

Priming as a psychological construct has been under heavy fire during the recent
psychological replication crisis, and it’s even been branded as a “pop-psychology
myth“.
But, of course, the war against psychology went too far. Priming is real, and so is the
effectiveness of pre-framing.

7. How to Make Girls Chase

Frames are very popular in male pick-up, seduction, and dating advice.

As a matter of fact, that’s pretty much the only area of self-help and social skills that
ever addressed frames, and that’s where the name “frame” even comes from.

Chase talks about frames referring ot what he calls the “hard push”, a name that at
the time of writing this post in the midst of cancel culture may land him straight into
cancellation :).
However, the dynamics he refers to are correct, and they also happen in general
socialization, or what we call here “power showdowns” or “power escalations”.

6. Talking From 9 to 5

So much genius insight here.

Not just frames, but also power dynamics concerning gender and sexual conflict.

The only con for most people reading is that Deborah Tannen, the author, is a
linguist and researcher, so her books can come across as long and tedious to those
who are used to a more engaging “Malcolm Gladwell” style of psychology.

5. The Secret Handshake

“The Secret Handshake” is the perfect example that there is great wisdom on
frames around, but it’s very much scattered.

In the specific, Kathleen Kelley Reardon opened my eyes to the best to teach
frames, and frame control.
She uses very simple yet effective ways of describing frame power dynamics. She
puts an arrow up to “one-up” actions, an arrow down for “one down” and more
submissive actions, and “one across” to neutral actions.

You can use “one-up” and “one down” to attack, counter-attack, or defend. And you
can use “one across” to buy yourself time.

So simple, yet so effective.

I couldn’t help but use a similar framework for my lesson on frames.

4. Don’t Think of An Elephant

The only book on this list to discuss framing at a political and mass-communication
level.

George Lakoff, the author, is obviously a Democrat. But he doesn’t hide it, so it
doesn’t bother me one bit.
And what he says simply makes sense, independently of where you stand in the
political spectrum.

This whole book is an exercise in frame wars and frame control, applied to politics
and public discourse.
Lakoff discusses how the Republicans framed the political debate around key issues
such as taxation (tax-relief) and climate (climate change instead of global warming)
in a way that benefited them.
By winning the frame war against the unsuspecting Democrats, Republicans
convinced millions of people to vote against their own economic interests.

So, in a way, this is also a book on how to use frames to manipulate and persuade
people.

You might not agree with it, but his analysis on frames is spot on.
Genius book.

3. Getting Past No

There is a genius insight in “Getting Past No”.

And it’s one of the foundational concepts of this website, and for our general life
strategies for power and success.

And that insight is that you will gain every time you can turn a competitive frame into
a win-win frame.

Says William Ury:

Whenever the other party goes into positional and confrontational

bargaining, you must reframe it to a more helpful win-win approach.

That’s become one of the main tenets of ThePowerMoves.com

As a general rule, there is always more power in turning as many relationships into
win-win, rather than fighting (frame) wars.

2. The Social Strategist

Review – Amazon

No surprise The Social Strategist is the highest-ranking book on frames and frame
control.

After all, it’s this website’s first and currently main book.
And TPM was the first website to properly address frames outside of very niche
social research, or less rigorous self-help.

It’s also one of the very few books to properly call it “frame control”, and there is a
whole chapter dedicated to it, not just snippets here and there as it’s the case for
many other books in this list.

1. Power University
Question: What’s the best book on frame control?

Answer: The best book on frame control is not a book, but a course, and it’s the
Power University course.

Here is what one Power University alumnus has to say:

The Power University course doesn’t just describe frames as a book does, but it
shows you clear video examples from real life, mock dialogues, and quizzes.
The quizzes test your intuition and help you develop your social radar to “see”
frames, and teach you how to influence them.

I started this website, and the course, because there was little available on power
dynamics.
And there was nothing much on frames, either, so I put a lot of information on
frames, frame control techniques, and how to use frames to increase your personal
power and life success.

Frames are discussed more than once across Power University, and there are three
dedicated lessons that go more in-depth on frames and frame control

You can get 50% of those lessons’ content in this free article:

Frame control techniques

Basics of frame control

Bonus: Meditations
So far we discussed mostly social frames.

But frames are also used to control oneself, and one’s mind.

Meditation is the first, most iconic text discussing frames as a way to control oneself
and one’s mind.

Says Marcus Aurelius:

Whatever happens in your life, you decide what that means to you and
how you feel about.

And that’s the essence of frames applied to any external event, to control one’s own
feelings about it.
Aurelius also recommends only focusing on what you can control, and letting
everything else drop out of focus.
In a way, that means embracing a smaller frame towards the world, only looking at a
small portion of reality. The only part that matters: what you can control.

Frames for self-help are also popular in male self-help and pick-up literature.
Frames discussed in pick-up are often framed as “imposing one’s frame” or
“constructing one’s own reality”. Both can be helpful if one does it strategically. But it
can also make people come across as social retards when applied indiscriminately,
or as mentally unhealthy when that “reality distortion” goes too far.

For more on self-help related frames, see:

Learned Optimism: changing your internal dialogue to be happier and more

optimistic, by an actual psychologist researcher
 Personal Power II: Possibly my favorite self-help product. Tony Robbins
discusses reframing to change the meaning of what life events mean to you
Creating Lasting Change: Tony Robbins, again. Schooled in NLP, Robbins goes
heavy on frames. He talks a lot about changing people’s frames to influence their
moods and behavior

Also read:

Best books on power

Best red pill books
Best dating books for guys

Related Posts
Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: Summary & Review
By Lucio Buffalmano

The Signal and the Noise: Summary & Review

By Lucio Buffalmano
The Entrepreneur Mind: Summary, Review & Criticism
By Lucio Buffalmano

About The Author

Lucio Buffalmano

The author holds a master's degree from La Sapienza, department of

communication and sociological research, and is a member of the American
Psychology Association (APA). He studies psychology, persuasion, social &
dating strategies, and anything related to people and power dynamics. Lucio's
approach combines science, first-hand experience & critical analysis. He believes
that you can only teach social strategies if the three go together. You can learn it
all in one fell swoop with Power University.
Categories
Power Dynamics (320)

Case Studies (37)

Reading People (3)

Dating (Men) (75)

Dating (Women) (44)

Influence & Persuasion (19)

Leadership (9)

Power Theory (49)

Relationships (60)

Social Skills (51)

Body Language (7)

Workplace Power (27)

Reviews (541)

Business (58)

Entrepreneurship (33)

Dating Men (49)

Dating Women (28)

Leadership (22)

Learning Tools (13)

Persuasion (48)

Negotiation (13)
 Power & Strategies (110)

Career Strategies (30)

Manipulation (47)

Psychology (155)

Clinical Psychology (16)

Dark Triad (46)

Evo. Psychol. (19)

Personality Psychol. (28)

Red Pill (27)

Relationships (33)

Self-Development (171)

Biographies (13)

Critical Thinking (19)

Spiritual (11)

Wealth (17)

Social Science Textbooks (28)

Social Skills (86)

Body Language (8)

Communication (33)

Self-Empowerment (13)

Collaborators (1)
Recent forum posts
Troubleshooting jobseeker s refer …
by Transitioned
15 hours ago

How does Psycopath hypnosis pract …

by Kavalier

3 days ago

How to handle and reframe parents …

by Maverick

3 days ago

Join the Top 1%

About

Login

Contact

T&Cs / Privacy

Refund Policy

Learn the skills of the top 1% to become more powerful

and successful

!"#$%&#''()**

YES! SEND ME THE FREE COURSE!