Social Science - Philosophy Assignment 272
Manipulation: Theory and Practice
Christian Coons (ed.), Michael Weber (ed.)
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199338207.001.0001
Published: 2014 Online ISBN: 9780190228446 Print ISBN: 9780199338207
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CHAPTER
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199338207.003.0003 Pages 51–72
Published: August 2014
Abstract
Keywords: manipulation, psychological manipulation, emotional manipulation, nonrational persuasion, Robert Noggle
Subject: Social and Political Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
2 What Is Manipulation? Anne Barnhill
An account of manipulation is accessed by building on Robert Noggle’s account of manipulative action
as the attempt to get someone to fall short of the ideals that, in the view of the in�uencer, govern the
target’s beliefs, desires, and emotions. Through a series of cases, the chapter modi�es Noggle’s
account, concluding that manipulation is directly in�uencing someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions such
that she falls short of ideals for belief, desire, or emotion in ways typically not in her self-interest or likely not
in her self-interest in the present context. Certain ways of making someone fall short of ideals—certain
ways of turning her psychological settings away from the ideal, as Noggle puts it—are manipulative,
but other ways aren’t manipulative. Manipulation is moving someone’s settings away from the ideal in
ways that are typically not in that person’s self-interest, or likely not in her self-interest in the present
context.
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I. Analyzing Manipulation
Manipulation is often not de�ned in work on the ethics of manipulation. Some philosophers have o�ered
analyses of manipulation, but often these analyses are either under-inclusive or over-inclusive. Under-
inclusive analyses of manipulation consider only one variety of manipulation—for example, manipulation
that is covert—when in fact manipulation comes in many varieties. Over-inclusive analyses of manipulation
classify too broadly a category of in�uence as manipulation—for example, classifying all in�uence besides
rational persuasion as manipulation, when in fact there are many kinds of non-rational in�uence that are
not manipulative. An account of manipulation must strike the right balance: de�ning manipulation broadly
enough to include the many varieties of manipulation, while not so broadly that non-manipulative forms of
in�uence come out as manipulation.
Another challenge for an account of manipulation is accommodating cases of paternalistic manipulation.
Manipulation can be paternalistically motivated, and can advance the manipulated person’s interests. At the
same time, a distinctive feature of manipulation as a form of in�uence is that it typically subverts self-
interested motivation. An account of manipulation will, ideally, capture both features of manipulation.
In this chapter, I develop an account of manipulation that attempts to meet these two challenges. In section
II, I detail the many varieties of manipulation that must be accommodated. In section III, I consider several
accounts of manipulation, illustrating with cases how these accounts are either under-inclusive or over-
inclusive. The most promising candidate is Robert Noggle’s account of manipulative action as the attempt
to get someone’s belief, emotion, or desire to fall short of the ideals that in the view of the in�uencer govern
the target’s beliefs, desires, and emotions; this is discussed in section IV. Though the central insight of
Noggle’s account is correct, I question whether manipulation must be intentional, and whether the
manipulator’s ideals are the relevant ideals for attributing manipulation. Another limitation is that Noggle
does not grapple with the complicated relationship between manipulation and self-interest. Through a
series of cases (presented in section V), I try to clarify this relationship. I conclude:
p. 52
Manipulation is directly in�uencing someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions such that she falls
short of ideals for belief, desire, or emotion in ways typically not in her self-interest or likely not in
her self-interest in the present context.
It’s not an elegant account of manipulation. But it does, I think, have intuitive plausibility. Certain ways of
making someone fall short of ideals—certain ways of turning her psychological settings away from the
ideal, as Robert Noggle puts it—are manipulative, but other ways aren’t manipulative. Manipulation is
moving someone’s settings away from the ideal in ways that are typically not in her self-interest, or likely
not in her self-interest in the present context.
Before I begin, a note: the methodology that I employ in this chapter—using cases to zero in on the correct
analysis of manipulation—raises two issues. First, there are di�erent kinds of behavior that we refer to as
manipulation. We must get clear about which of these behaviors we’re trying to analyze and which we are
leaving for another day. In section II, I distinguish these distinct kinds of manipulation: (1) manipulation of
an object as opposed to manipulation of a person; and (2) manipulation via a non-ideal response, as
opposed to manipulation via an ideal response. Our topic in this chapter is the manipulation of people via
non-ideal responses. This kind of manipulation comes in multiple varieties: intricate vs. blunt
manipulation, paternalistic vs. non-paternalistic manipulation, manipulation targeting emotions vs.
manipulation targeting beliefs; and so on.
Second, there is a problem with using cases to zero in on the correct analysis of manipulation. There exists
signi�cant disagreement about whether speci�c cases are cases of manipulation. We disagree in our daily
lives, as we accuse each other of manipulation and dispute the charges. Philosophers theorizing
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Manipulation of People vs. Manipulation of Objects
Manipulation of a Situation vs. Direct Manipulation of a Person
Manipulation via a Non-Ideal Response vs. Manipulation via an Ideal Response
manipulation also disagree about speci�c cases, as I’ve learned in the process of writing this chapter. I
might assert that something is an instance of manipulation and get puzzlement or a con�dent “No, it’s not”
in reply. Alert to this problem, I endeavor to use only relatively clear-cut cases in much of this chapter.
However, to put my cards on the table, I recognize that the cases I employ in section V, to tease out the
relationship between self-interest and manipulation, are not clear-cut. Depending upon whether the reader
considers these cases to be manipulation or not, she will be led to accept or reject the conclusions that I
reach about self-interest and manipulation.
p. 53
There is an upside to all this disagreement about manipulation. It gives us something to explain, and it gives
us a desideratum for an account of manipulation: this account should explain in general terms why there is
so much disagreement about speci�c cases of purported manipulation, and should help to illuminate the
contours of our disagreement in speci�c instances.
II. Varieties of Manipulation
We manipulate people, and we also manipulate things other than people—for example, we might claim that
the Chinese government manipulates its currency, keeping it arti�cially weak so that Chinese products are
relatively cheap compared with others, or we might claim that a violinist expertly manipulates her violin.
Our focus here is the manipulation of people, not the manipulation of other things.
1
In some instances, manipulation changes the options available to a person or changes the situation she’s in,
and thereby changes her attitudes. In other instances, manipulation changes a person’s attitudes directly
without changing the options available to her or the surrounding situation. An example of manipulation
that changes a person’s attitudes directly is a manipulative guilt trip that lays on guilt in order to induce
acquiescence to the manipulator’s wishes. An example of manipulation that changes the options available to
a person is this hypothetical case:
2p. 54
Camping Trip: Your partner wants to go on a family camping trip, but you don’t. While you’re
discussing it, your partner calls out to your children, “Hey, kids! Who wants to go on a camping
trip?” The children cheer. You correctly judge that it’s better to go on the camping trip (despite its
drawbacks) than to disappoint your children. You agree to go on the camping trip.
In this case, your partner changes the options available to you: at the beginning of the conversation, you had
the option of refusing the camping trip without disappointing your kids, but your partner eliminated that
option by involving the kids.
In some cases of manipulation, the manipulated person is caused to have a non-ideal response of some sort.
Consider, as an example, a manipulative guilt trip that induces compliance with the manipulator’s wishes.
Rather than discussing reasons for and against a course of action, and rather than just expressing her
emotions, a guilt-tripping manipulator performs her emotions—which might be sadness, fear, or a variety
of other negative emotions—in a way that induces excessive guilt or acute guilt. The guilt trip makes it
emotionally di�cult not to comply with her wishes, and induces acquiescence.
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Manipulation that Targets Emotions vs. Manipulation that Targets Beliefs
Manipulative Emotional Appeals vs. Non-Manipulative Emotional Appeals
In other cases, manipulation does not consist of causing the manipulated person to have a non-ideal
response. The manipulation consists, instead, of changing the surrounding situation. For example, suppose
that in Camping Trip, agreeing to go on the camping trip is the ideal response once your kids’
disappointment is on the line. The way that your partner manipulated you into going camping is that he
changed the situation (i.e., he got the kids excited about camping), such that the ideal response for you to
have is his desired response (i.e., agreeing to the camping trip). We can distinguish:
• Manipulation via a non-ideal response: Making someone have a non-ideal response, either by in�uencing
her directly (e.g., saying or doing something to her) or by changing the situation in a way that will
cause her to have a non-ideal response to the new situation.
• Manipulation via an ideal response: Changing the situation so that the target’s ideal response to the new
situation is the manipulator’s desired response.
p. 55
The phenomenon we are analyzing in this chapter is manipulation via a non-ideal response. I suspect that
this is the core notion of manipulating people, and this is why many analyses of manipulation identify, as
de�nitive of manipulation, a speci�c kind of response considered non-ideal; for example, manipulation
involves inducing inappropriate emotions, or manipulation involves tricking someone.
For the sake of brevity, manipulation via a non-ideal response will hereafter be referred to simply as
“manipulation.”
Manipulation comes in multiple varieties. Some manipulation plays on our emotions. For example,
manipulative guilt trips target our propensity to feel excessive guilt and acquiesce as a result.
But manipulation does not always target emotions. Bob Goodin notes that some kinds of manipulation take
advantage of our cognitive limitations; an example is overloading people with information so that “they will
be desperate for a scheme for integrating and making sense of it,” and then giving them an interpretive
framework that serves your purposes.3
Some ways of targeting people’s emotions are manipulative, but others are not. Consider this hypothetical
case:
Embezzlement: Janice has embezzled money from the company she works for. Janice’s father, Mike,
�nds out. Over the course of a weekend together, Mike repeatedly says things like, “I didn’t raise
you to be a thief” and “You should return the money.” This makes Janice feel very guilty and a
result, she returns the money.
p. 56
To my mind, Embezzlement is not a case of manipulation. Even though Mike is trying to make Janice feel
guilty, he is not manipulating her. Mike is targeting Janice’s emotions—he is not providing her with
arguments, he’s not trying to change her beliefs, he’s just trying to change how she feels—but not in a
manipulative way.
An account of manipulation should be able to distinguish between manipulative appeals to emotion and
non-manipulative appeals to emotion, and explain why the former are manipulative but the latter are not.
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Paternalistic vs. Non-Paternalistic Manipulation
Manipulating Behavior vs. Manipulating Mental States
Intricate Manipulation vs. Blunt Manipulation
Manipulation is sometimes in the target’s best interests. For example, consider this hypothetical case:
Medicine: A patient is being stubborn and won’t take his heart medicine even though it will greatly
reduce his chances of a repeat heart attack. A nurse gets him to take his medicine by saying
�irtatiously, “You’re not going to make me beg, are you?” He smiles and takes his medicine.
Though Medicine is manipulation in the target’s best interests, often manipulation is not in the target’s best
interests. Manipulators are often unconcerned with their targets’ interests, or knowingly act contrary to
their interests. To give an extreme example, the investor Bernie Mado�, whose Ponzi scheme defrauded
investors of $50 billion, lured new investors with manipulative sales tactics. Mado� presented his fund as
an exclusive opportunity open only to the elite and lucky investor. Falsely presenting a product or
opportunity as open only to a limited group of people, or available only for a limited time, can motivate
customers to act quickly (and perhaps act rashly), rather than lose the opportunity.
4
p. 57
In some instances, manipulation aims to change what someone immediately decides or does. For example,
in the case Medicine, the nurse aims to make the patient take his medicine right away. But in other
instances, manipulation aims to change how someone thinks or feels, without aiming to change what she
immediately decides or does. For example, Bob Goodin considers it manipulative that the United States
federal government renamed the War Department the “Department of Defense.” Goodin writes: “Of course,
defense presupposes a threat—one can only defend against something. The implicit assertion is that
someone is threatening the nation, but by being implicit, this assertion escapes the questioning it
deserves.”5
This manipulative use of language is meant to change how people think and feel about the War Department,
but is not meant to immediately change what they decide or do.
Manipulation is sometimes intricate—it plays on the details of someone’s personality. Consider, as an
example, this hypothetical case loosely based on purported fact:6
Cowboy: President X is unsure about some of the Vice President’s proposed policies— approving
the torture of prisoners, wiretapping phones without court approval, and invading other countries.
The Vice President plays on President X’s “cowboy self-image” in a �attering way, saying
things like: “You’re the kind of man who makes the tough decisions that other people—who are
too concerned about being popular—aren’t courageous enough to make.” President X is insecure
and needs to identify with being a tough guy. President is motivated by the Vice President’s words
to make decisions he sees as “tough” decisions—approving torture and illegal wiretapping, and
invading Iraq.
p. 58
In this case, the Vice President has a manipulative strategy that’s �ne-tuned to President X.
But manipulation is not always intricate and does not always play on the details of an individual’s
personality. For example:
Open House: Your house is for sale. Before holding an open house for prospective buyers, you bake
cookies so that the house will smell like cookies, knowing that this will make the prospective
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Covert Manipulation vs. Overt Manipulation
Manipulation as Deceptive Influence or Covert Influence
buyers have more positive feelings about the house and make them more inclined to purchase the
house.7
This case of manipulation does not play upon the details of an individual’s personality, but it relies upon
widely shared psychological dispositions.
A key feature of some manipulation is that the manipulated person does not realize the way in which she’s
being in�uenced. For example, we could imagine that President X, in the case Cowboy, is not aware that
the Vice President is intentionally playing on his need to see himself as making “tough” decisions, and that
the Vice President’s tactic would not succeed were President X aware of it. Some instances of manipulation,
like Cowboy, are covert.
p. 59
In other cases, manipulation is entirely overt. For example, manipulative guilt trips can be obvious and still
be very e�ective. We can be lucidly aware that we’re being manipulated into feeling guilt, even as we feel
guilt and act on it.
III. Accounts of Manipulation
An account of manipulation (that is, an account of manipulation via a non-ideal response) will, ideally,
accommodate the varieties of manipulation identi�ed above: covert and overt manipulation; intricate and
blunt manipulation; manipulation of behavior and manipulation of mental states; paternalistic and non-
paternalistic manipulation; and manipulation that targets emotion as well as manipulation that does not.
An account of manipulation will also, ideally, allow us to distinguish between emotional appeals that are
manipulative and those that are not.
Some theorists analyze manipulation as deceptive or covert in�uence of some sort. Robert Goodin observes
that manipulation carries “especially strong connotations of something sneaky” and that manipulation
characteristically happens unbeknownst to its victim. According to Goodin, manipulation is deceptively
in�uencing someone against his putative will. Alan Ware also de�nes manipulation as a kind of covert
in�uence; one feature of manipulation, according to Ware, is that the manipulated person “either has no
knowledge of, or does not understand, the ways in which [the manipulator] a�ects his choices.”
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Though covertness is a key feature of some cases of manipulation, manipulation is not always deceptive or
covert. Manipulative guilt trips, for example, can be plain as day. Deceptiveness or covertness might be a
favorite technique of manipulators—manipulation is more likely to succeed if its target doesn’t realize
what’s happening—but manipulation needn’t be deceptive or covert.
p. 60
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Manipulation as Defective Persuasion
Manipulation as Non-Persuasive Influence
Rather than covert in�uence, some theorists analyze manipulation as defective persuasion of some sort.
According to Claudia Mills, what’s distinctive about manipulation is that it purports to be legitimate
persuasion that o�ers good reasons, but in fact bad reasons are o�ered. Mills writes that “a manipulator
tries to change another’s beliefs and desires by o�ering her bad reasons, disguised as good, or faulty
arguments, disguised as sound—where the manipulator himself knows these to be bad reasons and faulty
arguments.” Mills writes: “Manipulation may then be understood as a kind of persuasion manqué, as an
attempt at internally directed and non-physically-based in�uence that deliberately falls short of the
persuasive ideal.”13
Manipulation as persuasion manqué is too narrow an account of manipulation. Though some cases of
manipulation are cases of changing someone’s beliefs and desires by o�ering bad reasons disguised as good
reasons, in other cases the manipulation changes someone’s beliefs or desires without o�ering reasons or
arguments at all. Consider Open House, the case in which prospective home buyers are made to have more
positive feelings about a house because it smells like cookies. This is not an instance of purporting to o�er
reasons or arguments; it’s an instance of changing background conditions so as to have a predictable
psychological e�ect. Even on a capacious understanding of o�ering reasons, this is not an instance of doing
so.
p. 61
According to other theorists, what’s distinctive about manipulation as a form of in�uence is not that it
involves distinctive means (e.g., covert means of in�uence, or bad arguments disguised as good arguments)
but that it has a distinctive e�ect on its target (e.g., it plays on the target’s weaknesses, or it in�uences her
without improving her understanding).14
Ruth Faden and Tom Beauchamp identify three distinct kinds of manipulation: the manipulation of options;
the manipulation of information; and psychological manipulation, which is the notion of interest here.
Psychological manipulation is “any intentional act that successfully in�uences a person to belief or
behavior by causing changes in mental processes other than those involved in understanding.” For Faden
and Beauchamp, psychological manipulation as a form of in�uence is contrasted with persuasion:
persuasion improves someone’s understanding of her situation, but manipulation does not.
15
16
Faden and Beauchamp see psychological manipulation as “a broad heading” including “such diverse
strategies as subliminal suggestion, �attery and other appeals to emotional weaknesses, and the inducing of
guilt or feelings of obligation.” In my view, their understanding of psychological manipulation is too
broad. It counts as manipulation all in�uence that does not change the target’s understanding. But there are
many types of in�uence that do not change someone’s understanding yet are not manipulative in�uence.
One may in�uence someone by instilling a desire, motive, or emotion in her; while some ways of instilling
desires, motives, and emotions are manipulative, others are not. For example, in Embezzlement, Mike makes
his daughter Janice feel guilty for embezzling money, but he does not manipulate her. To give another
example, expressing your sadness to an empathetic person could cause her to feel sad on your behalf, and
decide to help you; this needn’t be manipulative. Contra Faden and Beauchamp, there are ways of
in�uencing people that do not persuade—that is, do not improve someone’s understanding—yet are not
manipulative.
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p. 62
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IV. Manipulation as Making Someone Fall Short of Ideals
Mills’s analysis of manipulation as defective persuasion is under-inclusive, since not all manipulation is
persuasion, and Faden and Beauchamps’s analysis of manipulation as non-persuasive in�uence is over-
inclusive, since some instances of non-persuasive in�uence are not manipulation. In both cases,
manipulation is analyzed as in�uence that fails to be rational persuasion: manipulation fails to be rational
persuasion either because it is non-rational persuasion or because it is not persuasion at all.
In my view, manipulation is not best understood as in�uence that fails to be rational persuasion. What’s
de�nitive of manipulation as a form of in�uence, in my view, is that it induces a non-ideal response.
However, the best way to characterize this non-ideal response is not in terms of rational persuasion. This is
one of the central insights of Robert Noggle’s analysis of manipulation.
Noggle analyzes manipulative action as the attempt to get someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions to fall
short of the ideals that govern beliefs, desires, and emotions. More speci�cally, according to Noggle,
manipulative action is the attempt to get someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions to fall short of the ideals
that in the view of the in�uencer govern the target’s beliefs, desires, and emotions; see more about this
below. In explaining this analysis of manipulation, Noggle uses the metaphor of “adjusting psychological
levers”: manipulative action attempts to adjust psychological levers away from what the manipulator
thinks are the ideal settings for the target.
19
p. 63
Noggle gives us an account of manipulative action as the attempt to get someone’s beliefs, desires, or
emotions to fall short of ideals. We can slightly modify Noggle’s account from an account of attempted
manipulation into an account of manipulation:
Manipulation is intentionally making someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions fall short of the
ideals that in the view of the in�uencer govern the target’s beliefs, desires, and emotions.
Manipulation can make someone fall short of one ideal while causing her to meet another ideal—that is,
manipulation can move one psychological lever away from an ideal setting, while moving another
psychological lever toward an ideal setting. For instance, paternalistic manipulation often makes a
manipulated person’s resulting desires or motives more ideal, but does so through a process involving non-
ideal emotions, desires, or decision making. As an example, the �irting nurse in Medicine makes the patient
more ideal in one respect (he’s now willing to take his medicine), but does so through a process involving
non-ideal emotions and decision making.20
Noggle emphasizes that manipulation is not non-rational persuasion. Whereas manipulation intends to
make its target fall short of ideals for beliefs, desires, and emotions, there are many instances of non-
rational persuasion that are meant to make the target’s beliefs, desires, and emotions more ideal. Noggle
writes:
Suppose you remind me of starving children in Rwanda, and describe their plight in vivid detail in
order to get me to feel sad enough to assign (what you take to be) the morally proper relevance to
their su�ering. Surely you have not manipulated me, though you may have engaged in non-
rational moral persuasion....Or if a psychologist uses conditioning to instill desires that conform to
the patient’s beliefs about what there is reason to do, then she is engaged in therapy rather than
manipulation. These examples show that trying to move someone toward that person’s ideal
conditions is not in itself manipulative, even when it takes place by “non-rational” means. Rather
it is what we might call “non-rational counselling.”21
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According to Noggle, the category of manipulation is orthogonal to the category of non-rational persuasion.
Whether in�uence is manipulation doesn’t depend on whether the in�uence is non-rational persuasion.
Rather, whether in�uence is manipulation depends on whether the in�uence is intended to make the person
fall short of ideals for belief, desire, and emotion.
p. 64
For example, in Open House, the smell of cookies is meant to make prospective buyers feel more favorably
toward the house and be more motivated to buy the house. Being motivated to purchase a house because it
smells good on the day you visit is non-ideal motivation. What’s manipulative about Open House is that
prospective buyers are made (by the smell of cookies) to fall short of ideals for desire, emotion, and
motivation. But it need not be manipulative to use the smell of cookies to in�uence someone if this
in�uence does not make her fall short of ideals for belief, desire, and emotion. For example, suppose that
the smell of cookies is used to whet the appetite of a patient who ought to eat more but is disinclined to eat
because her illness has ruined her appetite. Using the smell of cookies to instill a desire to eat cookies is not
manipulative in this instance, and that is because it makes the patient’s desires more ideal rather than less
ideal.
A virtue of Noggle’s account is that it can distinguish between manipulative appeals to emotion and non-
manipulative appeals to emotion, and can explain why the former are manipulative but the latter are not.
For example, manipulative guilt trips involve instilling excessive guilt or making someone feel guilty in a
manner that causes inappropriate acquiescence, both of which are ways of making someone fall short of
ideals for emotion. But other ways of making someone feel guilty can get her closer to ideals for emotion,
and thus are not manipulative. For example, in Embezzlement, Mike causes Janice to feel what he believes to
be appropriate guilt about embezzling money. Because he believes that he’s making her emotions more
ideal, he is not manipulating her.
Noggle’s account must be modi�ed to exclude certain non-manipulative ways of making people fall short of
ideals for belief, desire, and emotion. Consider the following example:
Ecstasy: A car salesman wants to convince a customer to buy an expensive car that the customer is
ambivalent about. He covertly gives the customer the drug ecstasy, which makes her much more
agreeable to buying the car. The customer agrees to buy the car.
In this case, the salesman intentionally makes the customer fall short of ideals for emotion, motivation, and
deliberation, yet this does not seem like a case of manipulation. Drugging someone is undoubtedly a
problematic form of in�uence but not a manipulative form of in�uence. Similarly, hitting someone over the
head so that she can’t think clearly is a problematic form of in�uence but not a manipulative form of
in�uence. As Claudia Mills notes, manipulation involves changing someone’s mental states by targeting her
“beliefs and desires, her goals and plans, her values and preferences.” Manipulation changes beliefs,
desires, and emotions by targeting emotions, beliefs, and desires. Drugging someone changes her beliefs,
desires, and emotions by causing a global drug-induced psychological change, not by targeting her beliefs,
desires, and emotions. Similarly, hitting someone over the head changes her beliefs, desires, and emotions
by causing cognitive impairment, not by targeting her beliefs, desires, and emotions.
p. 65
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Let me suggest this modi�cation to Noggle’s account: manipulation is directly in�uencing someone’s beliefs,
desires, or emotions so that she falls short of the ideals that in the view of the in�uencer govern the target’s
beliefs, desires, and emotions. The notion of “directly in�uencing” someone’s beliefs, desires, or
emotions should be understood to exclude in�uence such as drugging or brainwashing someone, but to
include cases like baking cookies in order to make prospective buyers like a house.
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Whose Ideals?
The core of Noggle’s account of manipulation is correct: manipulation is making someone fall short of
ideals for belief, desire, and emotion. However, I’m uncertain whether all the details of Noggle’s account are
correct. Speci�cally, is manipulation making someone fall short of the manipulator’s ideals for belief, desire,
and emotion? Or making someone fall short of objective ideals? And must manipulation be intentional, as
Noggle thinks, or can there be unintentional manipulation?
According to Noggle, manipulation is making someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions fall short of the ideals
that in the view of the in�uencer govern the target’s beliefs, desires, and emotions. Noggle identi�es several
such ideals, including the ideal of attending to all and only true and relevant beliefs; the ideal that desires
conform to one’s beliefs about what there is most reason to do; and the ideal that emotions make salient
what is most important or most relevant to the situation at hand. These ideals include, according to Noggle,
rational ideals and moral ideals. Since people disagree about which beliefs are true beliefs, which emotions
are appropriate emotions, what’s most relevant to the situation at hand, and so forth, people thereby
disagree about which beliefs, desires, and emotions are ideal.
p. 66
According to Noggle, the in�uencer’s conception of which beliefs, desires, and emotions are ideal for the
in�uenced person is what’s pertinent to determining when manipulation has occurred. Manipulation
occurs when the in�uencer intentionally makes the in�uenced person fall short of the ideals that the
in�uencer believes hold for the in�uenced person. Thus, Noggle concludes, “a racist who attempts to incite
racial fears may not intend to move the other person away from what he—mistakenly—takes to be the other
person’s ideal condition, and so we cannot accuse him of acting manipulatively.” If a racist believes that
holding racist fears is ideal, then he does not act manipulatively in trying to induce those fears in others.
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According to Noggle, when making a determination of manipulation, the objectively correct ideals for
beliefs, desires, or emotions are not relevant and the in�uenced person’s ideals for belief, desires, and
emotions are not relevant. I think our concept of manipulation is more complicated than Noggle allows.
Though I agree with Noggle that the ideals of the in�uenced person are not pertinent, I disagree with Noggle
that objective ideals are also irrelevant. On the contrary, our willingness to label in�uence “manipulation”
depends upon both the in�uencer’s conception of what’s ideal and our own conception of what’s
objectively ideal. We invariably consider in�uence to be manipulation when it intentionally causes someone
to fall short of ideals that are both the objective ideals (in our opinion) and the ideals that (in our opinion)
the in�uencer believes apply to the in�uenced person. However, when an in�uencer’s ideals deviate from
what we consider the objective ideals, then our usage of “manipulation” is inconstant, varying from case to
case and from person to person. Consider this case:
p. 67
Guilt Trip: Janice has booked a vacation trip to New York City. Janice’s father, Mike, doesn’t want
her to go because he thinks that New York City is too dangerous a place. Over the course of a
weekend together, Mike repeatedly says things like, “If you go, your mother and I will be sick with
fear!” knowing that this will make Janice feel extremely guilty. Mike thinks that it’s appropriate
for Janice to feel extremely guilty for making her parents worry so much. This makes Janice feel
very guilty and as a result, she cancels the trip.
Is this a case of manipulation? People disagree. Some think that since Mike believes he’s making Janice feel
an appropriate amount of guilt (i.e., Mike thinks he’s making Janice more ideal rather than less ideal), this is
not manipulation, even though Mike is in fact making Janice feel an inappropriate amount of guilt. Though
they might conclude that Mike has the wrong standards for what counts as appropriate emotion, they don’t
think that Mike has manipulated Janice. But other people are inclined to call Mike’s behavior manipulation,
since Mike makes Janice feel what they judge to be an inappropriate amount of guilt. For these people,
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Must Manipulation Be Intentional?
Mike’s ideals and intentions are not conclusive in determining whether Mike has manipulated Janice; it’s
also relevant whether Mike has in fact made Janice fall short of rational ideals. Consider another case:
Narcissist: Maria is an extreme narcissist. She will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She
has no opinion about what is rationally and morally ideal for other people, because she doesn’t
conceive of other people as agents to whom rational and moral ideals apply. Maria regularly
employs guilt, �attery, and deception to get other people to do what she wants.26
Does Maria manipulate other people? According to Noggle’s account of manipulation, Maria does not
manipulate: she never intentionally makes people fall short of the ideals for belief, desire, and emotion that
she thinks apply to them, since she lacks a conception of what ideal belief, desire, and emotion is for other
people. Consistent with Noggle’s view, we might be tempted to say Maria doesn’t manipulate other people
because she doesn’t really understand what manipulation is. On the other hand, a very natural response to
this case is to judge that Maria does manipulate others and, in fact, is a master manipulator. She treats other
people like instruments rather than rational and moral agents. The fact that she acts with disregard for
rational and moral standards does not seem to render her behavior non-manipulative; to the contrary,
that’s what’s makes her a master manipulator.
p. 68
Thus, contrary to Noggle’s account, it is not clear that manipulation is making someone fall short of the
ideals that the manipulator believes govern her beliefs, desires, and emotions, as opposed to making
someone fall short of objective ideals for belief, desire, and emotion. There appears to be disagreement on
this matter.
Must manipulation be intentional? One reason for doubt is that we’re willing to call in�uence
“manipulation” even when we’ve little knowledge of the in�uencer’s intentions. When we notice that a
competent-seeming adult A is in�uencing someone B such that B falls short of the rational ideals that we
think apply to B, we’re un-self-conscious about calling this “manipulation” despite our ignorance of A’s
precise intentions. Does this suggest that manipulation need not be intentional?
An alternative explanation is that we attribute manipulation so liberally because we make certain
presumptions about the purported manipulator A: we assume that A shares our rational ideals, that he is
aware of his e�ect on B, and that he is acting intentionally. When we notice A in�uencing B in ways that
make B fall short of the ideals that we think apply to B, we assume that A is intentionally making B fall short
of the ideals that A thinks apply to B.
If our uninformed attributions of manipulation are based upon such presumptions, then this would explain
why there is, not infrequently, disagreement about whether manipulation has occurred in speci�c cases.
The explanation of this disagreement is that we vary in our willingness to make these presumptions about
purported manipulators.
p. 69
In addition, if our uninformed attributions of manipulation are based upon presumptions about the
purported manipulator, presumably we’d be willing to abandon a charge of manipulation when our
presumptions proved false. This does sometimes happen. Upon examining a case of purported manipulation
more closely, we sometimes conclude that the purported manipulator A was clueless (that is, unaware that
he was making B fall short of the ideals that A thinks apply to B) or conclude that A has di�erent ideals than
us (and hence disagrees that his e�ect on B is to make her less ideal). Some people then conclude that A did
not manipulate B after all. But others are still inclined to conclude that A manipulated B, albeit
unintentionally. Our intuitions seem to vary somewhat, from person to person, on this point.
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Another interesting observation is that some people are inclined to call clueless A (the person who
unwittingly makes person B fall short of the rational ideals that we think apply to B) a manipulative person
even if they are not willing to say that clueless A engaged in manipulation. This use of language—referring
to people as manipulative even though their behavior doesn’t quite amount to manipulation—actually
makes sense. Person A is making others fall short of rational ideals and hence is a social threat, even if he’s
doing so unwittingly. Referring to A as “manipulative” usefully identi�es him as a social threat of that sort.
27
To return to the question that opened this section, must manipulation be intentional? That depends upon
who you ask. Some people allow that there can be unintentional manipulation. Others think that
manipulation must be intentional, but allow that a person who lacks the intention to manipulate might
nonetheless be a manipulative person.
V. Manipulation and Self-Interest
Noggle’s central insight about manipulation is correct: manipulation is making someone fall short of ideals
for belief, desire, and emotion. But Noggle’s account does not capture the complicated relationship between
manipulation and self-interest.
Consider the following hypothetical case:p. 70
Reelection: President X has moral qualms about some of the Vice President’s proposed policies—
approving the torture of prisoners, wiretapping phones without court approval, and invading other
countries. His political advisor wants him to approve these policies because she believes that
making decisions that appear to be “tough” decisions will increase his popularity and ensure his
reelection. She tells the President, “If you make decisions that appear to be ‘tough’ decisions, this
will increase your popularity and ensure your reelection,” because she believes that he wants to be
reelected and will therefore be motivated to make decisions he sees as “tough” decisions, despite
his moral qualms about these decisions. Because he wants to be reelected, President X is motivated
by his advisor’s words to make decisions he sees as “tough” decisions (e.g., approving torture and
illegal wiretapping, and invading other countries).
Does the advisor manipulate the President in this case? My intuition is that she does not. But this is a case of
causing someone to fall short of ideals for belief, desire, or emotion. The advisor appeals to and stokes the
President’s self-interest, causing him to feel excessive self-interest. This excessive and inappropriate self-
interest crowds out his moral qualms and crowds out other emotions that he ought feel, such as guilt or
compassion for the victims of war or torture; the advisor’s in�uence makes him fall short of ideals for
emotion. Let’s stipulate that the advisor recognizes these ideals and believes that they apply to the
President. Thus the advisor intentionally causes him to fall short of ideals that she thinks apply to him and
that are (very plausibly) objectively correct ideas, ful�lling our de�nition of manipulation. Yet this does not
seem to me like a case of manipulation.
Notice that this case, Reelection, is the mirror image of a manipulative guilt trip. In a manipulative guilt trip,
a manipulator causes someone to feel excessive guilt, and this excessive guilt dampens her self-interested
motivation. In the case of Reelection, President X feels too little guilt and has an excessive amount of self-
interested motivation. In both cases, someone is caused to fall short of ideals for guilt and self-interest. But
the guilt trip (too much guilt, too little self-interest) seems like manipulation, whereas Reelection (too much
self-interest, too little guilt) does not seem like manipulation. What explains this di�erence?
A tempting explanation is that Reelection is not manipulation because President X is made to act in his best
interests. Perhaps manipulation is directly in�uencing someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions such thatp. 71
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she falls short of ideals for belief, desire, or emotion, and such that she does not act in her best interests. The
idea—to return to Robert Noggle’s metaphor—would be that adjusting someone’s psychological settings
away from the ideal settings is manipulation, but only if this adjustment away from the ideal is not in her
best interests. But this cannot be correct. Manipulation sometimes is in the manipulated person’s best
interests. Recall the case Medicine, in which a patient is manipulated into taking his medicine, which is in
his best interests.
To complicate the picture further, consider another case:
Reelection II: The President’s political advisor believes that it is in President X’s best interests to be
reelected, but is worried that he is not su�ciently motivated. She knows that, as a graduate of Yale
University, he feels an intense competitive malice toward graduates of Princeton University. In
order to motivate him to do what it takes to win reelection, she reminds him that his opponent is a
graduate of Princeton University.
In this case, the President is falling short of various ideals. For example, in feeling intense competitive
malice toward someone merely because of his alma mater, he is feeling an inappropriate emotion. Let’s
stipulate that his political advisor recognizes as much. Is it manipulative for her to stoke the President’s
intense competitive malice in this way? I’m of two minds. When I imagine his intense competitive malice as
a settled part of his personality—as something that’s under his control, and that doesn’t prevent him from
pursuing his other goals and acting on his settled decisions—then it doesn’t seem manipulative for his
advisor to stoke his intense competitive malice in order to motivate him. But when I imagine the intense
competitive malice as a hot emotion—an emotion that’s not fully under his control—then it does seem
manipulative for his advisor to motivate him by appealing to his intense competitive malice. What could
explain these intuitions?
Perhaps manipulation is adjusting someone’s psychological settings away from the ideal settings in ways
that are typically not in her self-interest. But adjusting someone’s settings in ways that typically promote
her self-interest is not manipulation. This would explain why the question of whether the advisor
manipulates the President, in Reelection II, depends upon the kind of non-ideal malice she stokes. If she
appeals to a cold, competitive malice that’s under his control, then he does not manipulate him, because
feeling controlled, competitive malice, and making decisions on the basis of it is likely to be in his self-
interest. However if she stokes a hot competitive malice that’s not tightly controlled, then she does
manipulate him, since feeling and acting on not-tightly-controlled malice is typically not in one’s self-
interest. Similarly, when she stokes his excessive self-interest in the previous case, Reelection, she makes
him fall short of ideals, but in a way that’s likely to be in his self-interest. Thus she does not manipulate him
in Reelection.
p. 72
Consider one last case:
Reelection III: The President’s political advisor is a turncoat: she’s secretly working for his
opponent in the reelection campaign. She knows that if the President is motivated by competitive
malice during a debate, this will turn o� voters and they will stop supporting him. She knows that,
as a graduate of Yale University, President X feels an intense competitive malice toward graduates
of Princeton University. She reminds him that his likely opponent is a graduate of Princeton
University, in order to make him manifest his intense competitive malice and thereby help his
opponent win the election.
When the advisor motivates the President by appealing to cold competitive malice in this case, it seems like
manipulation—even though motivating someone by appealing to cold competitive malice is typically in his
self-interest. Why is it manipulative to appeal to his competitive malice in this case but not in the previous
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Notes
case? Perhaps because it is not in his interest, in this case, to be motivated by cold competitive malice. Thus
our account needs one last modi�cation:
Manipulation is directly in�uencing someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions such that she falls
short of ideals for belief, desire, or emotion in ways typically not in her self-interest or likely not in
her self-interest in the present context.
This �nal account of manipulation captures, I believe, the complex relationship between manipulation and
self-interest. Certain ways of intentionally making someone fall short of ideals—certain ways of turning
her psychological settings away from the ideal—are manipulative, but other ways aren’t manipulative.
Moving someone’s settings away from the ideal in ways that typically are not in her self-interest, or not in
her self-interest in the present context, is manipulation. But moving someone’s settings away from the
ideal in ways that typically are in her self-interest, and furthermore are in her self-interest in the present
context, is not manipulation.
1 Paul Krugman. “The Chinese Disconnect,” New York Times, October 22, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/opinion/23krugman.html?_r=1&hp.
2 Ruth Faden and Tom Beauchamp recognize a similar distinction. They define manipulation as “any intentional and successful influence of a person by noncoercively altering the actual choices available to the person or by nonpersuasively altering the otherʼs perceptions of those choices.” Ruth R. Faden and Tom L. Beauchamp, A History and Theory of Informed Consent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 354. Marcia Baron identifies multiple types of manipulation, including applying pressure, browbeating, and wearing someone down, and manipulation of the situation so as to artificially limit the other personʼs options. Marcia Baron, “Manipulativeness,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 77, no. 2 (2003): 37–54.
3 Robert Goodin, Manipulatory Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 58–61. 4 As reported in the New York Times:
Then, he and his promoters set sights on Europe, again framing the investments as memberships in a select club. A Swiss hedge fund manager, Michel Dominicé, still remembers the pitch he got a few years ago from a salesman in Geneva. ʻHe told me the fund was closed, that it was something I couldnʼt buy,̓ Mr. Dominicé said. ʻBut he told me he might have a way to get me in. It was weird.̓ Dozens of now-outraged Mado� investors recall that special lure—the sense that they were being allowed into an inner circle, one that was not available to just anyone. A lawyer would call a client, saying: ʻIʼm setting up a fund for Bernie Mado�. Do you want in?ʼ Or an accountant at a golf club might tell his partner for the day: ʻI can make an introduction. Let me know.̓ Deals were struck in steakhouses and at charity events, sometimes by Mr. Mado� himself, but with increasing frequency by friends acting on his behalf.
Diana Henriques, “Mado� Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders.” New York Times, December 19, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/business/20mado�.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
5 Goodin, Manipulatory Politics, 100. 6 The journalist Jane Mayer wrote a book, The Dark Side, detailing the Bush Administrationʼs war on terror. The case Cowboy
is inspired by this passage from Mayerʼs book:
A�er losing the battle to uphold the Geneva Conventions, [Secretary of State Colin] Powell concluded that Bush was not stupid but was easily manipulated. A confidant said that Powell thought it was easy to play on Bushʼs wish to be seen as doing the tough thing and making the “hard” choice. “He has these cowboy characteristics, and when you know where to rub him, you can really get him to do some dumb things. You have to play on those swaggering bits of his self-image. Cheney knew exactly how to push all his buttons,” Powell confided to a friend.
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: Inside the Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (New York:
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Doubleday, 2008). 7 A website for home sellers advises: “Welcoming scents can also create a good first impression. Bake a loaf of bread or
some cookies before potential buyers arrive, and let the odor wa� through the house. Or scatter some cinnamon on a cookie sheet and place it in a warm oven during the open house.” Louisa Pavonne, “Ten Tips for a Sellerʼs Open House,” April 1, 2007, http://voices.yahoo.com/ten-tips-sellers-open-house-262866.html.
8 Goodin, Manipulatory Politics; Alan Ware, “The Concept of Manipulation: Its Relation to Democracy and Power,” British Journal of Political Science 11 (1981): 163–181 10.1017/S0007123400002556 .
9 Goodin, Manipulatory Politics, 9. 10 Goodin, Manipulatory Politics, 7–23 . 11 Ware, “The Concept of Manipulation,” 165. 12 In “Manipulation,” Joel Rudinow notes that manipulation need not involve deception, as does Robert Noggle. Joel
Rudinow, “Manipulation” Ethics 88, no. 4 (1978): 338–47. Robert Noggle, “Manipulative Actions: A Conceptual and Moral Analysis,” American Philosophical Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1996): 43–55.
13 Claudia Mills, “Politics and Manipulation,” Social Theory and Practice 21, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 97–112, esp. p. 100 10.5840/soctheorpract199521120 .
14 According to Joel Rudinow, “A attempts to manipulate S i� A attempts the complex motivation of Sʼs behavior by means of deception or by playing on a supposed weakness of S.” The complex motivation of behavior is motivation that one presumes will alter the personʼs projects/goals. Rudinow, “Manipulation,” 346.
15 The three kinds of manipulation are identified by Faden and Beauchamp: manipulation of options, in which options in the environment are modified by increasing or decreasing available options, or by o�ering rewards or threatening punishments; manipulation of information, in which the personʼs perception of options is modified by non-persuasively a�ecting the personʼs understanding of the situation; and psychological manipulation, in which the person is influenced by causing changes in mental processes other than those involved in understanding; Faden and Beauchamp, History and Theory 354–68.
16 Faden and Beauchamp, History and Theory 259, 261, 354–68. 17 Faden and Beauchamp, History and Theory 366. 18 One might counter that these examples are instances of increasing someoneʼs understanding of her situation—Janice now
understands that she did something wrong, and the empathetic person now understands that you are sad—and thus are not instances of manipulation, on their account. However, we can describe such cases so that they are not instances of increasing someoneʼs understanding. For example, Janice already understood that embezzling was wrong, she was just failing to feel appropriate guilt; and the empathetic person already understood that you were sad, and your expression of sadness changed her desires and motives not by increasing her understanding but just by causing an empathetic emotional response in her.
19 Noggle, “Manipulative Actions.” 20 Noggle acknowledges this sort of case in fn. 20 of “Manipulative Actions.” 21 Noggle, “Manipulative Actions,” 49. 22 Claudia Mills, “Politics and Manipulation,” 99. 23 The beliefs, desires, or emotions that are directly influenced neednʼt be the ones that fall short of ideals. Manipulation can
intentionally influence a belief, desire, or emotion without directly targeting that belief, desire, or emotion—e.g., in distracting people with soaring rhetoric, youʼre making someone fall short of ideals for belief not by targeting those beliefs, but by influencing her emotions
24 Noggle, “Manipulative Actions,” writes: “What makes a form of influence manipulative is the intent of the person acting, in particular the direction in which she intends to move the other personʼs psychological levers” (49). “Even if the influencer has a culpably false view of what is our ideal, the influence is not a manipulative action so long as it is sincere, that is, in accordance with what the influencer takes to be true, relevant, and appropriate” (50). “O�en children (and some adults as well) have an inflated sense of their own importance; they genuinely believe that their pains and projects are (or ought to be) more significance significant than those of other people, not only to themselves but to others as well. Such cases are somewhat intricate morally. On my view such an agent does not in fact act manipulatively” (50).
25 Noggle, “Manipulative Actions,” 50. 26 I thank Kate Manne for suggesting this kind of case. 27 As Benjamin Sachs expressed it (in conversation with me), manipulation is about intention but manipulativeness is about
e�ect.
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