Why is manipulation wrong

There are many reasons that people choose to manipulate others and these can vary based on the person. Most people engage in manipulation at times, but those who primarily interact with manipulation often share some traits among themselves. Many people become aware they are being manipulated but are not sure how to handle the situation.

The first thing to keep in mind is to always consider your safety above all else. However, there are a few suggested ways to better understand the other person and their motivations that can be tried. Be direct and honest. Do not participate in situations that escalate the manipulation when you can help it.

Ask questions of the manipulative person and find out if they will directly tell you what it is they want. Do not share how the manipulative acts make you feel, those feelings will likely be exploited later. Try to avoid being guilted or shamed into doing something.

If the other person threatens you, ask them about it rather than avoiding the situation. While a skilled manipulator can use emotional manipulation on nearly anyone, there are some common themes that manipulators look for. Those who tie their self-worth to meeting the needs of others are a common victim type.

Manipulators are drawn to this type of person as they are easy to manipulate, blame, and victimize. Individuals who have a hard time saying no to others are also a common type for manipulators to prey on. If you avoid conflict, that allows the manipulator to do what they want without worrying about any repercussions. People who have trouble expressing negative emotions will typically avoid confrontation and keep things happy no matter what.

As such, manipulators sometimes seek these people out as threats may be all that is needed to get whatever it is they want. Those who have a weak sense of self often have difficulty distinguishing themselves from the abuser. That makes it especially hard to trust your own feelings or make decisions that will make you happy.

While we have already mentioned ways to interact with a manipulative person, there are also things you can do yourself to raise your own self-esteem as well. Having a higher self-confidence will help you fight against a manipulator before they are able to damage your overall well-being.

If you are currently trying to get out of a manipulative relationship or environment, follow these tips and guidelines below. Understand and be aware of what is going on around you. Re-read the above material and look for things mentioned so you know how to catch them the next time around.

Be aware of how manipulation works and where it leads. Listen to yourself and your feelings. If you feel self-doubting or confused, be aware of that and consider why you are feeling that way. Pay attention to what the manipulative person is doing or saying and how that affects you.

Pay more attention to actions than words. Watch for what someone does instead and base your feelings on that. Understand that you are not the problem. If you have realized you are being manipulated, that is not your fault. Be aware that you did nothing wrong to cause it and the other person has their own problems.

Be assertive for yourself. Start by choosing to stop responding to techniques the way you did before. Say no if you want, speak up if you want.

Understand that their reaction is not your responsibility. Think about the relationship with the other person. Maybe you want to speak with friends about how you feel or perhaps you want to confront the person. Consider all the options and do what is comfortable for you. Take your power back by confronting them.

However, explaining how you feel and what is bothering you is not doing something wrong. Request that the other person changes their behaviors. Take your power back and do what you need to do. Peaks Recovery Centers exclusive approach to inpatient treatment empowers men and women to leave drugs and alcohol behind them. Whether you are looking for alcohol rehab, drug rehab, our rehab program helps individuals learn and invest in new life practices, therefore they can restore and reclaim their lives.

Or complete our Admissions Contact Form. This information onManipulators has been extremely helpful. This works because, following the larger request, the smaller appeal seems reasonable comparatively, Olson says. A good support group can help, too, says Stines. They are conditioned to think the interactions are normal. Someone needs to help them break out of that assumption. For other forms of manipulation, Stines suggests trying to not allow the manipulative behavior to affect you personally.

Often, establishing boundaries can play an important role in keeping manipulation at bay. Manipulators often have either boundaries that are too rigid or enmeshed boundaries.

In a manipulative situation, it can also help to delay your response, according to Olson. Contact us at letters time. By Cassie Shortsleeve. Instead it perverts the way that person reaches decisions, forms preference, or adopts goals. Raz However, now we should worry about the bar being set too low. For many forms of non-rational influence do not seem to be manipulative. For example, graphic portrayals of the dangers of smoking or texting while driving are not obviously manipulative even when they impart no new information to the target Blumenthal-Barby In addition, moral persuasion often involves non-rational influence.

Appeals to the Golden Rule invite the interlocutor to imagine how it would feel to be on the receiving end of the action under consideration. It is difficult to believe that all such appeals are inherently manipulative, even when they appeal more to the feelings than to facts of which the interlocutor may already be aware. Finally, consider something as innocuous as dressing up before going on a date or an interview.

Yet dressing up on a single occasion provides little if any rational basis for conclusions about what the well-dressed person is really like day in and day out. Thus, impression management of this sort seems to be an attempt at non-rational influence. But this would merely move the problem without solving it, for now we would want to know what distinguishes immoral forms of manipulation from those that are not immoral. Perhaps we could address this problem by defining reason more broadly, so that appeals to emotions could count as forms of rational persuasion.

Such a move might be independently motivated by the rejection of what some critics regard as the hyper-cognitivist radical separation of reason from emotion. However, it is not clear that allowing emotional appeals to count as rational persuasion will get us very far in defining manipulation in terms of bypassing reason. For while we will have avoided the implausible implication that all appeals to emotion are ipso facto manipulative, we now face the question of which appeals to emotion are manipulative and which are not.

And that is close to the very question that the idea of bypassing reason was supposed to help us answer. And if we fix that problem by adopting a conception of reason according to which appeals to the emotions are not ipso facto non-rational, then we are left with the original problem of determining which appeals to the emotions are manipulative and which are not.

Nevertheless, even if defining manipulation in terms of bypassing reason turns out to be a dead end, it is still possible that manipulation really does bypass reason in some sense.

But it may turn out that we need an independent definition of manipulation before we can determine in what sense manipulation bypasses reason. However, a recent argument by Moti Gorin raises questions for the claim that manipulation bypasses or subverts reason—even when that claim is not being used to define what manipulation is Gorin a. Gorin argues that manipulation can occur even when the target is offered only good reasons. James knows that Jacques believes that 1 God exists, and that 2 if God did not exist, life would be meaningless, and he would have no reason to go on living.

James provides Jacques with rational arguments against the existence of God. Jacques promptly commits suicide—just as Jack had hoped he would. A second approach to manipulation treats it as a form of trickery, and ties it conceptually to deception. The connection between manipulation and deception is a common theme in both non-philosophical and philosophical discussions of manipulation. In the literature on advertising, for example, the charge that at least some advertising is manipulative often rests on the claim that it creates false beliefs or misleading associations e.

Similarly, in his discussion of promises, T. Scanlon condemns manipulation as a means of inducing false beliefs and expectations Scanlon — Shlomo Cohen offers a somewhat different account of the relationship between manipulation, according to which the distinction lies in the methods by which the target is induced to adopt a false belief Cohen forthcoming.

But even on this more nuanced view, there is still a strong connection between manipulation and deception. Although some versions of the trickery view simply treat manipulation as being like deception in that both induce false beliefs and leave it at that, more expansive versions of the view treat manipulation as a much broader category of which deception is a special case.

Whereas deception is the deliberate attempt to trick someone into adopting a faulty belief, more expansive versions of the trickery account see manipulation as the deliberate attempt to trick someone into adopting any faulty mental state—belief, desire, emotion, etc.

An early example of this more expansive trickery-based approach to manipulation can be found in a paper by Vance Kasten, who writes that. Kasten More recently, Robert Noggle has defended a version of this more expansive approach, writing that. There are certain norms or ideals that govern beliefs, desires, and emotions. Noggle Barnhill 73, emphasis original; for a similar view, see Hanna Claudia Mills offers a theory that can be considered as either a version of, or a close relative to, the trickery account:.

We might say, then, that manipulation in some way purports to be offering good reasons, when in fact it does not. This more expansive version of the trickery view retains the connection between manipulation and deception but extends it to characterize manipulation as inducing—tricking—the target into adopting any faulty mental state, including beliefs, but also desires, emotions, etc.

The activities in virtue of which he merits this label seem to involve various forms of trickery. For example, through insinuation, innuendo and cleverly arranging circumstances like a strategically placed handkerchief he tricks Othello into suspecting—and then believing—that his new bride Desdemona has been unfaithful. The trickery view accounts for our sense that Iago manipulates Othello by noting that Iago tricks him into adopting various faulty mental states—false beliefs, unwarranted suspicions, irrational emotions, and so on.

The fact that the trickery view explains our sense that Iago manipulates Othello is a key consideration in its favor. Proponents of the trickery view differ over several of details, most notably on how to define a faulty mental state. Although the trickery account has considerable appeal, it faces an important challenge: It apparently fails to count as manipulative a whole class of tactics that seem, intuitively, to be manipulative.

Tactics like charm, peer pressure, and emotional blackmail tactics 1, 5, and 9 do not seem to involve trickery. Yet it seems quite natural to think of such tactics as forms of manipulation.

A third way to characterize manipulation is to treat it as a kind of pressure to do as the influencer wishes. On this account, tactics like emotional blackmail and peer pressure are paradigm cases of manipulation, since they exert pressure on the target by imposing costs for failing to do what the manipulator wishes. One rationale for treating manipulation as a form of pressure is the observation that manipulation is neither rational persuasion nor coercion.

It seems plausible, then, to suppose that there is a continuum between rational persuasion and coercion with regard to the level of pressure being exerted, with rational persuasion exerting no pressure, coercion exerting maximum pressure, and the middle region, manipulation, exerting pressure that falls short of being coercive. In this way, we might arrive at the idea that manipulation is a form of pressure that does not rise to the level of coercion. One of the earliest philosophical accounts of manipulation, by Ruth Faden, Tom Beauchamp, and Nancy King, has this structure.

They begin by contrasting using rational persuasion to convince a patient to take a medically necessary drug with simply coercing him to take it. Then they observe that. There are many in-between cases: For example, suppose the physician has made clear that he or she will be upset with the patient if the patient does not take the drug, and the patient is intimidated. However, they do not claim that all forms of manipulation fall into the middle region of this continuum; they also count forms of deception, indoctrination, and seduction as manipulative, and claim that.

Nevertheless, the idea that at least some forms of manipulation involve pressure has been very influential. Joel Feinberg offers a similar account of manipulation. He writes that many techniques for getting someone to act in a certain way.

The line between forcing to act and merely getting to act is drawn somewhere in the manipulation or persuasion part of the scale. Feinberg More recently, Marcia Baron and Allen Wood have also discussed forms of manipulation that seem best characterized as forms of pressure Baron ; Wood Although we can treat the idea that manipulation consists of a form of pressure as a full-fledged theory of manipulation, most of the authors just cited hold only that some forms of manipulation consist of pressure.

In particular, most agree with Faden, Beauchamp, and King, that other forms of manipulation are more akin to deception. Thus, it is somewhat artificial to speak of the pressure model as a theory meant to cover all forms of manipulation. It is more accurate to regard the pressure model as claiming that exerting non-coercive pressure is sufficient but perhaps not necessary for an influence to count as manipulative. Our discussion of the trickery and pressure accounts highlights a rather striking fact: If we survey the tactics that seem intuitively to be examples of manipulation, we find tactics that seem best described as forms of trickery as well as tactics that seem best described as forms of pressure.

This is puzzling, since, on the face of it, trickery and pressure seem rather dissimilar. What should we make of the fact that we use the same concept—manipulation—to refer to methods of influence that seem to operate by such dissimilar mechanisms?

Several responses are possible. Second, we might hold that the concept of manipulation is not vague but rather disjunctive, so that manipulation consists of either trickery or pressure.

Indeed, in one of the earliest philosophical analyses of manipulation, Joel Rudinow takes this approach. Rudinow begins with the following thesis:. Rudinow We might then define manipulation in terms of a two-dimensional space bounded by rational persuasion, outright lying, and coercion. Disjunctive strategies that combine the trickery and pressure accounts are appealing because they seem to do a better job than either the trickery or pressure account alone in accounting for the wide variety of tactics that seem intuitively to count as manipulation.

However, this wider coverage comes a price. Of course, it is possible that this question cannot be answered because, as a matter of fact, there are two irreducibly different forms of manipulation. But this seems like a conclusion that we should accept only reluctantly, after having made a good faith effort to determine whether there really is anything in common between pressure-based manipulation and trickery-based manipulation.

On her view, manipulativeness is at the opposite extreme from the vice of. Baron Perhaps, then, we can understand the underlying similarity between trickery- and pressure-based manipulation as manifestations of a common vice, as different ways of going wrong with regard to how and how much we should try to influence those around us.

Finally, it is worth noting two other approaches to defining manipulation. Patricia Greenspan suggests that manipulation is a sort of hybrid between coercion and deception. She writes that.

Greenspan It certainly seems true that manipulators often use both pressure and deception. However, we can also point to relatively pure cases of manipulative pressure or manipulative trickery: Indeed, all of the items on the list above can be imagined as involving either pure pressure or pure trickery.

This distinction in hand, Cave defines motive manipulation as any form of influence that operates by engaging non-concern motives.

This is because the distinction between a concern and a non-concern motive—which is a crucial part of the theory—seems under-described. Are such things as my fear of failure or my desire to retain your friendship concerns? A complete answer to the evaluation question should tell us about the sort of wrongfulness that manipulation possesses: Is it absolutely immoral, pro tanto immoral, prima facie immoral, etc.?

It should also tell us when manipulation is immoral if it is not always immoral. Finally, a satisfactory answer to the evaluation question should tell us what makes manipulation immoral in cases where it is immoral.

Suppose that Tonya is a captured terrorist who has hidden a bomb in the city and that her preferred course of action is to keep its location secret until it to explodes. How would this way filling in the details of the case change our moral assessment of the various ways that Irving might induce Tonya to change her mind? This hardline view would hold that manipulation is always morally wrong, no matter what the consequences.

A less extreme position would be that while manipulation is always pro tanto wrong, other moral considerations can sometimes outweigh the pro tanto wrongness of manipulation. Thus, we might think that manipulation is always wrong to some extent, but that countervailing moral factors might sometimes suffice to make manipulation justified on balance. What might such factors include? It is important to note that, on this view, the fact that an action involves manipulation is always a moral reason to avoid it, even if stronger countervailing considerations render it not wrong on balance.

By contrast, we might hold that manipulation is merely prima facie immoral. On this view, there is a presumption that manipulation is immoral, but this presumption can be defeated in some situations.

When the presumption is defeated, manipulation is not wrong at all i. On this view, we might say that while manipulation is usually wrong, it is not wrong at all in the terrorist scenario. A more complex—but, perhaps, ultimately more plausible—view would combine the prima facie and pro tanto approaches. Such a view would hold that manipulation is prima facie immoral, but that when it is wrong, the wrongness is pro tanto rather than absolute.

On this view, there are situations in which the presumption against manipulation is defeated and manipulation is not even pro tanto wrong. Perhaps bluffing in poker is like this. But where the presumption is not defeated, the wrongness of manipulation is only pro tanto , and thus able to be outweighed by sufficiently weighty countervailing moral considerations.

In such cases, even if it is not wrong on balance to manipulate, it would still be morally preferable to avoid manipulation in favor of some other, morally legitimate, form of influence.

Manipulating a friend into refraining from sending a text to rekindle an abusive relationship might be an example where the pro tanto wrongness of manipulation is outweighed by other considerations.

A view along these lines has been defended by Marcia Baron — Although this view is far less absolute than the hardline view, it retains the claim that manipulation is prima facie wrong, so that there is always a presumption that it is immoral, though this presumption is sometimes defeated.

However, the claim that manipulation is presumptively wrong might be challenged. On this view, whether a given instance of manipulation is immoral will always depend on the facts of the situation, and the term itself includes or should include no presumption one way or the other. Clearly there are non-moralized notions of manipulation.