Since I doubt anyone present is interested in my opinions on the seduction community, I'll just respond to the theater example. Entertaining an idea or indulging a fantasy that you are a skilled manipulator is wildly different from deceiving yourself into believing it. Thinking about the idea - turning it over in your mind, considering the ramifications and the ways you'd act differently if it were so - can of course affect your behavior.

But this isn't a special feature of entertaining ideas or fantasizing. Priming happens. Read a list of words about old age and Florida and you'll walk slower; think about Iago's machinations and you'll stand and speak in a cold and calculating way. Choosing to prime yourself to achieve a theatrical goal is just a way of self-consciously harnessing that mechanism for your own ends.