What was another non-physical way masters pressed slaves?

Masters often employed psychological tactics to control their enslaved people. These tactics included using fear, shame, and manipulation to make slaves ashamed of their heritage and to encourage them to do the work their masters required of them. Masters would use subtle threats and names to degrade their slaves, ridiculing and belittling them to make them feel powerless and humiliated. Additionally, masters would frequently threaten to separate families, or they would threaten to sell off family members to other plantations or slave traders in order to control individual slaves.