Thought Manipulation: The Use and Abuse of Psychological Trickery (7 page)

The second category of manipulation includes interactions that are designed to prevent the target of any choice but to fulfill the manipulator’s wish. For example, the whole idea of subliminal advertising is to inspire people to consume by transmitting messages that cannot be perceived consciously. A well-known technique of this form of advertising involves flashing high-speed sales promotion slogans, such as “drink Coca-Cola,” that can be detected only by our subconscious.
True, it is not clear at all whether those techniques are really effective. Nevertheless, stimulating people to act by using irresistible methods of influence, such as subliminal advertising and other mechanisms that are based on powerful neurobiological knowledge, are designed to create an effect that is similar to coercion. Their contribution to our understanding of the unique characteristics of manipulation, especially in regard to the individual’s freedom of choice, is marginal. Therefore, in this book I will not include them under the label manipulation.

The more challenging manipulations, especially to liberals, are those where the target is clearly cooperating with the manipulator. This kind of cooperation, or so-called prima facie cooperation, becomes problematic when the target operates against his personal best interests. For example, someone who must adhere to a special diet is enticed by advertising to consume food that endangers his health. The question is: How come a person plays an active role in a manipulative game without being forced (in the physical sense) to do so?

BETWEEN CHOICE AND WEAKNESS

This book focuses on manipulative interactions wherein the target is actually cooperating with the manipulator. The most embarrassing cases, especially to liberals who emphasize our ability to choose our actions freely and independently, are those where the target acts against his best interests. The question is: Can it be that the target’s active participation proceeds from a free will or is some hidden compulsion at work pushing him to act?

A common explanation of this somewhat weird behavior is overpowering incentives. The manipulator takes advantage of human weaknesses in order to generate incentives that the target will find irresistible. Can it be that manipulative interactions, those motivating situations where the target’s behavior influences the outcome, are possible without the will of the target?

Undoubtedly, the extent of the target’s ability to freely and independently choose his actions in manipulative interactions depends on many variables and parameters, such as objective circumstances, level of knowledge, and psychological state of mind. However, it is specifically the psychological dimension that could help set the range of this controversial discussion by distinguishing between two competitive radical camps: the Freudian faction and the liberal one.

Freud will remind us that it is quite common for human beings to act subversively to their declared aspirations. For example, a young lady may express sincere wishes to get married but has love affairs only with married men. According to the Freudian thesis, it does not make sense that someone who consistently acts against his explicit declarations and best interests does so out of a conscious choice. It is quite reasonable to assume that he is motivated by certain incentives unclear even to himself (which is one of the reasons that he “needs” psychotherapy). Moreover, from the Freudian view it is implicit that understanding and exploiting deep psychological complexes, weaknesses, and motivations might be extremely effective in leading a person to act in the service of aims that he did not agree upon in advance. Accordingly, the art of manipulation is simply knowing how to “press the right buttons” in order to lead a person to act differently than he might otherwise.

It is doubtful that many liberals would accept such a mechanistic model of humanity. Most of them emphasize the individual’s ability to choose, which makes him responsible for his decisions, behavior, and actions. True, the liberals will admit, life is not easy, but any human should insist on coping with real-life hardships rather than escaping to some fantasy world that a manipulator offers. Therefore, cooperating with the manipulator is a matter of free (maybe profoundly defeated) choice rather than the result of someone else playing upon human weaknesses. If the target is stupid enough to cooperate with the manipulator, the liberals insist, he should pay the price for his stupidity.

Both camps, the Freudians and the liberals, agree that the target’s cooperative behavior in psychological manipulation is childish, but where they diverge is over the source of such childishness. The Freudians argue that an infantile behavior is the consequence of a strong desire. Each one of us has an inherent need, they suggest, to preserve his childhood and stick to infantile habits. For that reason, the manipulator is simply abusing one part of our human nature.

In contrast, the liberals argue that there is no evidence to support this absurd view. They believe the opposite; that many of us have strong drives toward maturation. We would like to know more, elaborate our skills, and enjoy “grown-up” activities. However, maturation is a learning process that requires investment, discipline, and overcoming infinite frustrations. Sometimes it looks much easier to stick to our old childish habits than to cope with real-life difficulties. For example, becoming a good piano player demands a lot of hard work. Many music students will prefer to fantasize about performing in Carnegie Hall rather than practice boring, difficult scales. Similarly, in a manipulative interaction, it is easier for the target to choose to cooperate with the manipulator instead of challenging him.

It is hard to deny that there is some truth in both Freudian and liberal opinions. Sometimes reality is so frustrating that a person is almost compelled to escape into an imaginary world, and a well- skilled manipulator can take the opportunity to exploit the distress and offer the target a fictitious shelter. In contrast, there are typical situations where it is clear that the target is looking for shortcuts or magical solutions and chooses not to cope with difficulties. In most cases, reality is somewhere in between the extremes. The target’s behavior is a combination of choice and weakness. Accordingly, the more interesting and appropriate question is: Where exactly does free choice end and human weakness begin?

Unfortunately, it seems impossible to find a satisfactory answer to this important question. We do not have an X-ray to the mind and soul that enables us to examine the real motivations behind human actions. However, the ambiguity between choice and weakness can help us demarcate the landscape of our discussion and better understand the manipulation phenomenon. The more challenging cases of manipulative interactions seem to be those in which the target’s responsibility to his role in manipulation is unclear. I suggest labeling this area of uncertainty the “human sensibility sphere.” The term sensibility expresses the ambivalence between choice and weakness.

This book focuses on the human sensibility sphere; that is, on those manipulative interactions where the target cooperates with the manipulator, but his extent of responsibility in doing so is unclear. On the one hand, those manipulative interactions contain certain elements that belong to the decision-making process of the target, such as forgoing critical judgment and laziness that prevents investigation of the intentions behind suspicious interactions. On the other hand, human weaknesses, such as a frustrating life, tiredness from the burden of responsibility, and the common trickery intrinsic to manipulation, promote such difficulties.

It is true that certain manipulative interactions that start as voluntary participation in a free-choice game can reach the “point of no return.” Those cases appear somewhat as an indirect negotiation where everyone is aware, or at least suspicious, of the other party’s intentions. For example, let us imagine a meeting between a young man who is interested in casual sex and a conservative young lady who wishes to get married. The young man invites his lady friend to see his paintings in his apartment. It is quite clear to both of them that there is a hidden agenda that exceeds far beyond an innocent invitation to a private exhibition. Nevertheless, the lady agrees to go. After a certain point, with the help of cheap manipulative courtship tricks, our lady begins to lose her critical judgment, forgoes her suspicions, and lets the womanizer pilot the interaction. Unfortunately, the results are neither engagement nor a long-lasting relationship but a dissatisfaction for her. Who was responsible in that scenario? Why would the woman enter a situation that is disadvantageous for her? Was there a point in which she could have halted the manipulation?

THE MANIPULATOR’S FREEDOM OF CHOICE

The conventional wisdom is to categorize manipulative behavior as offensive. The phenomenon is mainly understood as an attempt by one person to exercise power over another by employing morally questionable means. Indeed, it is beyond controversy that manipulation influences by means that are not usually associated with decency— misdirection, intimidation, and so on. However, is it enough to pass a moral judgment? Can we conclusively resent every form of manipulation?

I have limited our discussion to cases where it is not clear whether the target is acting out of free choice or whether he is motivated by irresistible incentives that a skillful manipulator provides. The question of responsibility, which is crucial to almost any ethical discussion, requires examination of a related issue that is often neglected, and that is the manipulator’s choice to manipulate: Is he or she always manipulating out of free will? Who is the victim and who is the oppressor? Is said manipulator truly an aggressor or is he also being acted upon by an outside force?

It is hard to deny that there are cases in which manipulative behavior seems to be a desperate choice that comes out of weakness. For example, the disadvantaged in society may feel that the only way to express their misery or to receive help is through manipulative behavior. This point was argued intensely by the well-known psychiatrist, or more precisely the “anti-psychiatrist,” Thomas Szasz, who denies the existence of mental illnesses and claims that abnormal behavior is simply a desperate cry for help. In other words, the weak in society have no choice but to vie for attention and seek help through manipulative means. The bitter irony, according to Szasz, is that it is common for psychiatrists to “fall in the trap,” and instead of “really” listening to the patient’s distress, to diagnose him as a “mentally ill patient” and check him into a psychiatric ward. In these extreme cases manipulation actually backfires, as the “victim of manipulation,” the doctor, becomes the oppressor who operates under the illusion that he chooses the best available option for the manipulator, the mental patient.

Of course, the “mental illness” issue is a controversial and sensitive matter that exceeds the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, the controversy over the term mental illness in general and Szasz’s perception in particular raises important and interesting questions concerning the individual’s freedom of choice. I will return to this issue in the following chapters. I briefly touch upon the “mental illness” issue at this juncture only to establish how difficult it is to pass a conclusive moral judgment on manipulative behavior.

Those who revile every kind of manipulative behavior discount the misery and the hopeless situation of the weak in society. True, we should not praise the use of offensive means. However, we should consider that manipulative behavior could be used as a desperate strategy to attract attention to severe social problems and to trigger positive change.

THE ETHICS OF MANIPULATION

As noted in the first chapter, it has been shown that some women will pay 25 cents for soap that will make their hands clean and $2.50 for soap that promises to makes their hands more beautiful. Selling a plain soap is selling a plain product, but claiming the benefit of beauty is also selling happiness, which is more powerful psychologically and more profitable economically.

Most of us don’t believe that soap that contains a little bit of cream will make someone’s hands beautiful, but we are willing to consider that a placebo medication (that resembles the drug without its active substance) can help cure a sick person. Most of us are inclined to believe that the first example involves some type of indecent manipulation while the second, in certain circumstances of course, can be considered admirable. Is there any significant difference between the two examples of manipulation? Perhaps our different expectations are the result of our own biases and self-deception?

In order to pass a moral judgment we need a theory and context. For example, Thomas Szasz, the libertarian psychiatrist, points out that using placebo drugs in medical practice represents indecent manipulation. Doctors who use placebo drugs are, according to Szasz, simply untrustworthy to their patients and betray their profession. Shifting attention to the marketplace, however, will lead Szasz to change his considerations for ethical judgment. Szasz, who believes in a free trade of drugs, will probably refuse to express a moral opinion on the sale of soaps through impossible claims. However, he will condemn almost any kind of government regulation that intends to ensure the “decency” of our cosmetic products.

In general, we can identify two central flows in the liberal tradition: classical liberalism and modern liberalism. Each school presents a monistic ethical world view; that is, an ethical perception that centers around one specific core value. The principal value in the classical tradition is liberty, which means lack of coercion in the physical sense. The core value in the modern school is autonomy, which means the ability to choose freely and independently.

Manipulation intends to influence the target’s autonomy without limiting his liberty in the physical sense. The classical school does not leave any room for discussing the ethical aspects of manipulation. The modern school views any kind of manipulation as wrong. Classical liberals, like Friedrich Hayek, argue that liberty and responsibility are inseparable values. In the marketplace, any individual should be responsible for his choices and actions. It is a woman’s private matter to believe soap can make her hands more beautiful.