Thought Manipulation: The Use and Abuse of Psychological Trickery (3 page)

Cases of tragic entrenchment are costly in that they limit the world perception of the trapped individual, damage his adaptation to the continually changing circumstances of reality, and cause him and his surroundings much misery and suffering. The important point is that a sophisticated manipulative strategy can sometimes be the only hope in such circumstances. An indirect method of influence can persuade the entrenched target to doubt the validity of his biased position. In this way the manipulator could help the entrenched target consider other options that he previously was not even prepared to acknowledge. Ironically, in the initial position the target was convinced that he was choosing the best available option, while it is the manipulative intervention that enabled him to make a real choice.

I label this kind of strategy “liberation by manipulation,” and I address it extensively in the coming chapters. Here, I will mention briefly that this strategy involves methods of influence in psychotherapy and education that are designed to create the impression that the target is doing most of the changing by himself. He is not supposed to notice that someone else (i.e., the therapist or the educator) is actually maneuvering the situation and invisibly helping him discover the road to change and improvement. In the following chapters we will need to explore several issues associated with this strategy: How could the benevolent manipulator achieve this effect? Is “liberation by manipulation” really an effective strategy? What are the risks?

MANIPULATION IS HIDDEN FROM THE TARGET

Motivating by employing manipulative strategy intends to minimize any possibility of the target objecting to the manipulator’s moves. The manipulator strives to prevent the target from considering certain operational possibilities or, alternatively, the manipulator attempts to maneuver the target to consider possible actions that he (the target) refuses to examine. The manipulator attempts to achieve the motivating effect smoothly and elegantly. He wishes to create the impression that the target is choosing his actions freely and independently (i.e., illusionary free choice).

This effect could be achieved because, in the time of a manipulative interaction and in the context of its subject, the manipulator’s spectrum of vision is larger than the target’s. It seems that the manipulator simply knows more. One of the practical implications is that at the time of the interaction the manipulator can adapt the target’s point of view (later I will show that he actually has to do it), something that the target (who holds a smaller spectrum of vision) cannot do. The inevitable conclusion is that during a manipulative interaction the target cannot identify that he operates under a manipulative influence.

A good example is the act of seduction for indecent purposes. The sophisticated seducer estimates possible reactions to her future moves and thinks like the target while she plans the scam. However, the target, whose mind is distracted by strong feelings of passion and love, does not even consider the possibility that he is being led astray. The target’s ability to identify the manipulator’s real intentions enables him to consider options other than the manipulator’s goal. This is exactly what the manipulator wishes to prevent—otherwise, she would not choose to manipulate. The practical meaning is that the “scam” has been exposed and the target can decide whether he wishes to surrender or refuse to act according to the manipulator’s guidelines. In other words, it is not a case of “illusory free choice” but a real free choice. Therefore, the manipulative act fails or does not exist.

According to our characterization, statements like “you are manipulating me” are self-contradictions. It is not possible to be a victim of manipulation and, at the same time, to know about it. Moreover, it is possible that this confronting approach was employed in order to change roles in the interaction. One option is that by leveling the accusation, I am trying to find out your hidden intentions. In a case where you do not see it, we have changed roles. I have become the manipulator and you the target.

Another option is to regard the statement “you are manipulating me” as an indirect message: “This time I am surrendering to you dear, but you have to know that you owe me.” In a case where the manipulator does not see it, he becomes exposed to the possibility of a future pressure without being aware of it. The manipulator’s spectrum of vision is, actually, smaller than the target’s, and the practical meaning is that the original manipulator fell in his own trap and became a victim of manipulation.

MANIPULATION AFFECTS CRITICAL CAPACITY

Critical capacity is an important mechanism that helps us select our actions according to our priorities and preferences. It supposes to function like a dedicated guard whose duty is to keep our decisions and behavior consistent with our self-interest and world view. A motivating action designed to lead a person to act in contradiction to his preferences without noticing the distortion must disrupt, or at least bypass, the inspection process. Accordingly, manipulative behavior necessarily intends to affect the target’s critical capacity. I present two types of strategies that intend to achieve this effect. The first is designed to cloud, blur, and limit the target’s critical capacity while the second, surprisingly, is geared toward improving the target’s performance.

The first type is quite obvious. The manipulator employs morally questionable means during the interaction to diminish any possible objection to his moves by the target. As the next two examples demonstrate, however, affecting critical capacity can be used for different and even opposing goals and motivations. It could be applied for the benefit of the manipulator and it could be used to improve the target’s position.

The first example promotes Erich Fromm’s description of manipulative techniques that is used by modern advertising to neutralize critical judgment and promote the selling of useless—or, at least, unnecessary—goods: “A vast sector of modern advertising...does not appeal to reason but to emotion; like any other kind of hypnoid suggestion, it tries to impress its objects emotionally and then make them submit intellectually...All these methods are essentially irrational; they have nothing to do with the qualities of the merchandise, and they smother and kill the critical capacities of the customer like an opiate or outright hypnosis. They give him a certain satisfaction by their daydream qualities just as the movies do, but at the same time they increase his feeling of smallness and powerlessness.”

The second example is taken from the field of psychotherapy. Milton Erickson’s confusion technique is simply designed to confuse the target. The idea is to paralyze the target’s critical capacity and maneuver him to operate in a direction contradictory to his intentions and priorities: “Particularly did I recall the occasion on which my physics laboratory mate had told his friends that he intended to do the second (and interesting) part of a coming experiment and that he was going to make me do the first (and onerous) part of the experiment. I learned of this, and when we collected our experimental material and apparatus and were dividing it up into two separate piles, I told him at the crucial moment quietly but with great intensity, ‘That sparrow really flew to the right, then suddenly flew left, and then up, and I just don’t know what happened after that.’ While he stared blankly at me, I took the equipment for the second part of the experiment and set busily to work, and he, still bewildered, merely followed my example by setting to work with the equipment for the first part of the experiment. Not until the experiment was nearly completed did he break the customary silence that characterized our working together. He asked, ‘How come I’m doing this part? I wanted to do that part.’ To this I replied simply, ‘It just seemed to work out naturally this way.’ “

In general, Erickson developed and used the confusion technique for hypnosis. Later, he and others employed the confusion technique in psychotherapy to confuse the patient as a preparation for a beneficial change. The confusion works to lower the patient’s critical judgment and paralyze his usual resistance to changing old habits that cause him so much suffering. By lowering the target’s critical awareness, Erickson hoped to open him up to discover new ways.

The second strategy, surprisingly, is designed to develop, improve, and even enrich the target’s critical capacity. However, we should not forget that affecting critical capacity is part of a manipulative strategy. In the final account, manipulation intends to lead the target to act in a manner that he would otherwise have rejected, objected to, and refused. We have good reason to suspect that the sophisticated manipulator only wishes to create the impression of helping the target to improve, develop, and elaborate his critical capacity. The real intention is quite the opposite.

The next example, which presents a manipulative workshop for developing critical capacity, demonstrates this issue. A matchmaker is hired to find the perfect bride for a young, ultra-orthodox Jew. The young gentleman, who devotes most of his time to biblical studies, has never dated a lady in his short lifetime. As an excellent student, he quickly learns from his new mentor (the matchmaker) that the value of the bride is measured according to the status of her family. “The key to successful marriage,” repeats the matchmaker “is that the bride comes from a good family.” Equipped with this valuable knowledge, our young hero comes to his first date to meet an unattractive, spoiled lady whose rich father “accidently” paid the matchmaker a lot of money.

Ironically, funny stories about manipulative strategies in old-fashioned societies resemble serious methods of sales promotion in modern economies. Many times we need to buy a device whose functions we do not understand, and we do not know how to compare between different products. We enter the shop cautiously and insecurely and, immediately, an elegant salesman offers his assistance. Our new guide demonstrates an impressive professional knowledge— of which we cannot appreciate its real value—and patiently explains how to pick the best product and what sort of performance we should expect from quality goods. However, our dedicated teacher, whose main job is sales and not education (a simple fact that we tend to forget,) presents criteria that emphasize the advantages of the goods he wishes to sell and distract attention from their disadvantages.

The more trivial cases are those where the manipulator has a good estimation of the target’s flavors, preferences, and priorities. Nevertheless, the ability to affect critical capacity does not necessarily require such awareness. For example, it can be quite effective to use psychological knowledge and even mathematical expertise to maneuver a person’s decision. A well-known technique is to formulate a decision-making problem in a way that would diminish any possible objection to the manipulator’s desirable outcome: “An individual’s choice can be reversed by framing a given choice problem differently. If it is presented as a choice between gains, one will typically choose the less risky option. However, if it is presented as a choice between losses, then one will opt for the riskier option.”

In general, the manipulator influences the target’s decisions by leading him to believe that he (the target) chooses the best available alternative (according to his preferences and priorities) in a given situation. The target’s understanding or, more precisely, misunderstanding of the circumstances indicates that his critical capacity is clouded, blurred, and even paralyzed. The manipulator is able to achieve this effect by various means: distraction, temptation, misdirection, rational arguments, and so on. This issue will be dealt with extensively in later chapters, where I present different types of manipulative strategies and include practical examples. For this general characterization of manipulation, the crucial point is that manipulative behavior, as desirable as it may be, aims to diminish the target’s ability to judge critically the manipulator’s moves.

THE MOTIVATING ELEMENT IN MANIPULATIVE INTERACTION

We have seen that an important characteristic of a manipulative interaction is the target’s belief that the “intentional action” (i.e., the manipulator’s goal) is the best available option for him in a given situation. Accordingly, the manipulator’s ability to affect critical capacity in order to distort judgment may lower the target’s awareness, but it does not necessarily guarantee a twist in the “right” direction.

To put it differently, blurring, clouding, and paralyzing critical capacity does not promise motivation toward the “desirable” track. A strong incentive is needed to guarantee that the intentional action takes priority in the target’s scale of preferences. In order to achieve this effect, the manipulator strives to create a link between the intentional action and the fulfillment of a powerful wish.

Often enough the manipulator approaches, stimulates, or even creates a powerful wish or a strong desire in the target’s mind. He gives the impression that fulfillment, or satisfaction, can be achieved if the target follows the manipulator’s guidelines. Note, for example, the profitable and efficient strategy to promote the sale of soap, as described by Jeffrey Trachtenberg in an article that appeared in Forbes in 1987: “Women would pay 25 cents for a bar of soap that made their hands clean but $2.50 for a bar of soap that promised to make their hands beautiful. Selling plain soap was peddling product performance. But add some skin cream and you are selling hope—psychologically more powerful, economically more profitable.”

In contrast to this strategy, the link between the intentional action (the manipulator’s goal) and the fulfillment of a wish can be formed into detachment. That is, the manipulator creates the impression that realizing the target’s wish is impossible. In this way the manipulator tries to change the target’s agenda. The following example, which presents an unusual way to escape from a desperate situation, illustrates this issue:

“When in 1334 the Duchess of Tyrol, Margareta Maultasch, encircled the castle of Hochosterwitz in the province of Carinthia, she knew only too well that the fortress, situated on an incredibly steep rock rising high above the valley floor, was impregnable to direct attack and would yield only to a long siege. In due course, the situation of the defenders became critical: they were down to their last ox and had only two bags of barley corn left. Margareta’s situation was becoming equally pressing, albeit for different reasons: her troops were beginning to be unruly, there seemed to be no end to the siege in sight, and she had similarly urgent military business elsewhere. At this point the commandant of the castle decided on a desperate course of action which to his men must have seemed sheer folly: he had the last ox slaughtered, had its abdominal cavity filled with the remaining barely, and ordered the carcass thrown down the steep cliff onto a meadow in front of the enemy camp. Upon receiving this scornful message from above, the discouraged duchess abandoned the siege and moved on.”