Thought Manipulation: The Use and Abuse of Psychological Trickery (8 page)

Modern liberals, like Joseph Raz, argue that freedom and liberty have meaning only if human beings know what to do with them. Manipulative behavior, which is an uninvited interference in another’s decision-making, distorts the normal process of discovering, forming, and realizing preferences and priorities. Manipulation, according to Raz, intrudes on the individual’s mental freedom and damages the process of self-creation. Therefore, making someone believe that a bar of soap with skin cream has magical cosmetic powers is indecent. It intends to turn women into soap consumers from false and subjective considerations. In general, the whole idea of manipulating people to develop a consumerist lifestyle is necessarily indecent.

It seems that the different views on the ethics of manipulation result from different emphasis. Raz the modern liberal speaks about the intentions of the manipulator, while Hayek of the classical school indicates that the responsibility of the target to his behavior in the interaction should be a major concern.

The two extreme approaches immediately bring to mind the question of free choice in a manipulative interaction. It would be interesting to ask Raz if the future manipulator always chooses to manipulate from an adequate range of options. Maybe there are problematic situations that compel a person to take the role of the manipulator. The relevant question to Hayek is related to the target’s freedom of choice: Is the target always responsible for his behavior in a manipulative interaction? Is there a possibility that he operates under the influence of irresistible incentives?

Social life is complex, unpredictable, and not always fair. In almost any social interaction there are failures and successes and weak agents and strong agents. It seems that Raz’s total disapproval of manipulative behavior is not sensitive to the disadvantaged in society, those people whose problems are overlooked and who may need to use manipulative means to get their voices heard. Is it acceptable to condemn any kind of manipulation, when sometimes a person needs manipulation as a strategy to draw the minimum awareness to his misfortune? The position of the classical school is no less problematic. The responsibility that Hayek projects onto the individual seems to be too much of an over-statement. Is it accurate to say that any sufferer of manipulation who clearly acts against his best interests is fully responsible for his behavior?

There is no doubt that manipulation is a multifaceted phenomenon that can appear in almost infinite variations. From the manipulator’s position, it can be the last resort of the disadvantaged in society and it can also appear as a powerful weapon of the conspirator. From the target’s standpoint, manipulation can motivate by using incentives that seems to be irresistible, and it can offer a sweet fantasy to people who easily forget the meaning of responsibility. The problem of free choice in a manipulative interaction can be summarized by one clear question: Where exactly does human weakness end and free choice begin?

With regard to Hayek, who emphasizes responsibility in almost any human interaction, the focus should be on the target when discussing the moral implications of manipulation. In the case of Raz, who condemns any kind of manipulation, the center of attention should be given to the manipulator. Neither Hayek nor Raz provide satisfactory answers to the question of the extent of free choice in a manipulative interaction. However, my presentation of their respective positions is only a simplification that sketches a biased and partial picture.

In general, the liberal tradition does not separate the ethical dimension from the political one, as the ethical dimension is viewed as an integral part of a decent, stable society. Ethics is an inseparable part of the search for a social order that can reduce the impact of damaging influences, minimize injustice, and diminish many other social problems. For example, Friedrich Hayek and other classical liberals will argue that the free capitalist society can spontaneously solve the ethical problems that manipulative behavior raises. Moreover, social competition is the best judge in ethical questions regarding the relations between people. How? I will explain and demonstrate this important issue in Chapter 6,
Spotlight on Advertising: The Free Market and Manipulation
.

The discussion of modern liberals, like Joseph Raz, seems to me too theoretical. I will leave it for a future work. Nevertheless, I intend to continue challenging the view that any manipulation is necessarily indecent. I intend to demonstrate that manipulation can sometimes help a person become more autonomous and make better decisions according to his preferences and priorities.

NOTES

1. These situations recall the double-thinking mechanism that is described in George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel,
Nineteen Eighty-Four
[Orwell, G.,
1984: A Novel
(New York: Plume, 2003)]. In this catastrophic world, the workers are compelled to change historical documents according current interests and to forget the change (i.e., to regard the modified documents as authentic and originals).

2. We need a theory of the psychic mechanism in order to explain this psychological phenomenon. This exploration exceeds the scope of this book. A possible explanation can be derived from Fried and Agassi, especially from the parts that describe and analyze Jackson’s principles—Fried, Y., and J. Agassi,
Paranoia: A Study in Diagnosis
(Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1976).

3. For a further discussion on subliminal advertising, see Haberstroh, J.,
Ice Cube Sex: The Truth About Subliminal Advertising
(Notre Dame, IN: Cross Cultural Publications, 1994).

4. Rudinow, J. (1978), “Manipulation,”
Ethics
88: 347, claims that knowing a target’s weaknesses enabled the manipulator to offer him irresistible incentives: “I cannot expect to succeed unless I...know or believe that there are some incentives which...you will find irresistible. That is, unless I know or think I know a weakness of you.”

5. Compare to Goodin R. E.
Manipulatory Politics
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980), 28: “Man is ‘wired’ much as a puppet. Manipulating him is a simple matter of pulling the strings by playing on the right symbols to trigger the desired response mechanism.” Goodin claims that this mechanistic model is unrealistic. It is possible to assume that Homer, especially when he wrote the scene about Odysseus and the sirens, might have disagreed with him.

6. Compare to Szasz, T. S.
The Myth of Mental Illness
(New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 26: “...the human disposition to resume immature or childish patterns of behavior, which Freud called ‘regression,’ is regarded as satisfying a biological need similar to other biological needs, such as that of food or water.”

7. Ibid., p. 27: “Many observers of the human condition have offered quite different accounts of how people develop, giving much greater weight to innate drives toward maturation...All this is not to deny that learning is often difficult and painful: It requires diligence, self-discipline, and perseverance. Since being a child is, in a sense, a habit, it must, like all habits one wants to change, be overcome.”

8. An extreme example of a hostile and depressing environment is described in George Orwell’s famous novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. However, Orwell’s imaginary world is constructed to prevent any discussion by its unhappy habitants on social problems and dilemmas in the scope of the text before you.

9. Compare to Kelman, H. C. (2001), “Ethical Limits on the Use of Influence in Hierarchical Relationships,” in
Social Influences on Ethical Behavior in Organizations
, edited by J. M. Darley, D. Messick, and T. R. Tyler (Mahwah, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum), 12.

10. It is worth mentioning that Freud believed that dissatisfaction in reality is a strong incentive to fantasize: “We may lay down that a happy person never phantasies, only an unsatisfied one. The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality. These motivating wishes vary according to the sex, character, and circumstances of the person who is having the phantasy; but they fall naturally into two main groups. They are either ambitious wishes, which serve to elevate the subject’s personality, or they are erotic ones.” Freud, Sigmund. [1959] (1908), “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,” in
Standard Edition
Vol. IX: 141–153 (London: Hogarth Press, 146–147.

11. In many courtship games, it seems that both participants have hidden agendas exceeding the direct messages. Both parties appear to be involved in an indirect communication that slides to a mutual manipulative game. I will get back to this interesting issue in Chapter 10 by asking and wondering: Who is the “real” manipulator?

12. Compare to Szasz,
The Myth of Mental Illness
, 139.

13. See, for example, Szasz,
The Myth of Mental Illness
, 119: “This...is the essential communication dilemma in which many weak or oppressed persons find themselves vis-à-vis those who are stronger or who oppress them: if they speak softly, they will not receive a hearing; if they raise their voices literally, they will be considered impertinent; and if they raise their voices metaphorically, they will be diagnosed as insane.” Of course, the case of mental illness in particular is a wide and controversial matter. I note Szasz’s radical view only to concretize how manipulative behavior can be a last-ditch strategy born of desperation.

14. For example, Goodin (
Manipulatory Politics
, 22) looks at manipulative behavior as an exercise of power. He points out that manipulation, compared to other motivating actions, takes the lowest position in the scale of morality: “Morally speaking, the distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative power plays is parallel to that between ‘cheating’ someone and merely ‘beating’ him. What makes us object to cheating is not just that in so doing the cheater moves outside the rules of whatever game he is playing...but rather that he is deceiving others in pretending to play according to rules which he then proceeds to violate. Cheating has as its defining characteristics to ‘deceive, trick, deal fraudulently.’ That is what makes cheating someone so much worse than beating him. That, too, is one of the things that make manipulating someone so much worse than just exercise power over him.” Goodin seems to forget that manipulation, an exercise of power in his terminology, can be the last resort of the weak, the powerless, and the disadvantaged in society.

15. See Trachtenberg, J. A., “Beyond the Hidden Persuaders,” Forbes (March 23, 1987) Vol. 139 (6): 134.

16. Szasz, T. S., “Placebos, Healing and a Mother’s Kiss,” in Letters to the Editor, New York Times, May 29, 2001: “It is self-evident that the so-called placebo effect is just as imaginary as is the therapeutic effect of any other kind of faith healing. In addition, the term is an offensive relic of medical paternalism. What is a placebo? A lie that the physician tells the patient. Accordingly, the placebo is not a species of treatment, but a species of deception...” Available at
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html

17. See, for example, Szasz, T. S.,
Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers
(New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003).

18. In contrast to monistic ethical-political theories that center on one super value, pluralism is usually associated with the idea that there are irreducibly many prudential values. For a further discussion on the monism-pluralism issue, see Griffin, J.,
Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986) 89–92.

19. To clarify the far-reaching si
gnificance that stems from this difference of opinion, I chose to focus on the theories of two central thinkers: Friedrich Hayek, representing the classical school and considered one of its most significant spokesmen in the twentieth century, and Joseph Raz, one of the major modern liberal philosophers. In this section, I mainly refer to F. A. Hayek’s classical book
The Constitution of Liberty
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, page 12) and J. Raz’s well-known composition
The Morality of Freedom
(New York: Oxford University Press, page 390). Hayek’s leading value is freedom—lack of coercion. Raz’s central value is personal autonomy—”the ideal of free and conscious self-creation.”

20. See Raz,
The Morality of Freedom
, 378: “Coercion and manipulation subject the will of one person to that of another. That violates his independence and is inconsistent with his autonomy.” Moreover, manipulating someone expresses disrespect for him: “It is commonplace to say that by coercing or manipulating a person one treats him as an object rather than as an autonomous person.” (Ibid.) Therefore, manipulation is an indecent motivating action.

21. See, for example, Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 75–76: “When men are allowed to act as they see fit, they must also be held responsible for the results of their efforts.”

22. See, for example, Raz,
The Morality of Freedom
, 390.

23. It does not mean that it is illegal. Both Hayek and Raz differentiate between the moral dimension and the legal one.

24. According to Raz’s ideal, the individual’s “choice must be free from coercion and manipulation by others, he must be independent.” (Raz,
The Morality of Freedom
, 373).

25. See, for example, Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 75–76: “...we believe that, in general, the knowledge that he will be held responsible will influence a person’s conduct in a desirable direction.”

CHAPTER 4

Four Types of Manipulation

Manipulative behavior is geared toward indirect interference in the decision-making of another person, usually without his or her approval. Manipulation is not exactly coercion or persuasion or deception. This elusive phenomenon is located somewhere in the gray area between these motivating actions. The ambiguity of manipulation enables the phenomenon to appear in almost infinite forms and under many different guises.