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ABSTRACT
Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that naturally occurs as a part of social interactions. While commonly regarded as immoral and harmful, manipulation is influence that is different from coercion and rational persuasion. Acts of manipulation can sometimes be beneficial and lead to positive outcomes, which renders the concept ethically ambiguous, especially when viewed in relation to fields like human intelligence (HUMINT). This essay will focus on manipulative influence in the HUMINT context, flesh out its characteristics and relate it to ethical principles in order to explore the difference between legitimate (harmless) and illegitimate (harmful) forms of manipulation.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank Dr. Gerhard Conrad and Dr. Susanne Fischer for insightful discussions and vital feedback on this manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. See for example Brandon et al., Science‐based interviewing, 133-148.
2. See Bellaby, The ethics of intelligence, chapter 4; and Kleinman, Kubark counterintelligence interrogation review, 95-140.
3. Bellaby, The ethics of intelligence, 107, 110-126.
4. Clark, Intelligence Collection, 65.
5. See Powers, Persuasion and coercion, 125-126.
6. Among those authors are Skinner, Contrived reinforcement; Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation; Nys and Engelen, Judging nudging; and Noggle, The ethics of manipulation.
7. See Quinlan, Just intelligence, 1–13; Godfrey, Ethics and intelligence, 624–642; Perry, Partly Cloudy: Ethics in War; Omand and Phythian, Ethics and intelligence: A debate, 38–63; and Omand and Phythian, Principled spying.
8. For example Omand and Phythian, Ethics and intelligence: A debate, 38-63.
9. Ibid., 42, 47.
10. See Patry, Experimente mit Menschen; Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of biomedical ethics.
11. Patry, Experimente mit Menschen, 33-35.
12. Meslin et al., Principalism and ethical appraisal, 404-405.
13. See Meslin et al., Principalism and ethical appraisal, 412; and Patry, Experimente mit Menschen, 35.
14. For more details see Omand and Phythian, Ethics and intelligence: A debate, 38–63; and Omand, Ethical limits of intelligence gathering, 290-301.
15. Omand and Phythian, Ethics and intelligence: A debate, 51.
16. For the negligible risk increase see Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation, 287–288; and evidence on how relative risk changes preferences: Malenka et al., The framing effect of relative and absolute risk, 543-548.
17. This is also evident in Powers, Persuasion and coercion, 125-143.
18. Coons and Weber, Manipulation: Theory and practice, 6-8.
19. Ibid., 8; Patry, Experimente mit Menschen, 51; and Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of biomedical ethics, 166.
20. Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of biomedical ethics, 166; and Faden et al., A history and theory of informed consent, 61.
21. Cialdini, The science of persuasion, 75; and Noggle, The ethics of manipulation, first paragraphs; Buss, Manipulation in close relationships, 479.
22. For comprehensive overviews see Coons and Weber, Manipulation: Theory and practice; Noggle, The ethics of manipulation.
23. Coons and Weber, Manipulation: Theory and practice, 1-8.
24. Ibid., 6-10.
25. Ibid., 11.
26. Barnhill, What is manipulation?, 53-59.
27. Ibid., 59.
28. Goodin, Manipulatory politics, 9; Ware, The concept of manipulation, 165; and Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation, 287-289.
29. Ware, The concept of manipulation, 165.
30. Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation, 287.
31. Ibid., 283.
32. Barnhill, What is manipulation?, 60.
33. See also Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation, 283-291.
34. Patry, Experimente mit Menschen, 36.
35. Among those authors are Skinner, Contrived reinforcement; Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation; Nys and Engelen, Judging nudging; and Noggle, The ethics of manipulation.
36. See Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation; Nys and Engelen, Judging nudging; Noggle, The ethics of manipulation; and Schmidt and Engelen, The ethics of nudging.
37. See Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation, 285–287; and also Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow.
38. Petty and Cacioppo, The elaboration likelihood model, 1-24.
39. For this see Petty et al., To think or not to think, 81-116.
40. This argument can be found in various sources, like Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation; and Noggle, The ethics of manipulation; Schmidt and Engelen, The ethics of nudging.
41. See Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow.
42. See Schmidt and Engelen, The ethics of nudging; Bellaby, What’s the harm?.
43. See Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation; and also Lau and Hiemisch, Functional freedom.
44. Lau and Hiemisch, Functional freedom.
45. Gigerenzer, The adaptive toolbox, 113-143.
46. Slovic et al., Risk as analysis and feelings, 311-322.
47. Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation, 285-287.
48. Ibid., 286, 290.
49. See Nys and Engelen, Judging nudging; and also Schmidt and Engelen, The ethics of nudging.
50. Petty et al., To think or not to think.
51. Lau and Hiemisch, Functional Freedom, 2 of 18 to 8 of 18.
52. Ibid., 8 of 18.
53. See Schmidt and Engelen, The ethics of nudging; and Noggle, The ethics of manipulation.
54. Noggle, The ethics of manipulation.
55. Lau and Hiemisch, Functional Freedom, 7 of 18, 6 of 18.
56. Nys and Engelen, Judging nudging, 203.
57. Ibid., 206.
58. Ibid., 206.
59. Ibid., 207.
60. Mappes and Zembaty, Biomedical ethics, 30.
61. Ibid., 30–31; and Patry, Experimente mit Menschen, 40-41.
62. Bellaby, What’s the harm?, 98.
64. See Bellaby, What’s the harm, who argues that these trade-offs will occur naturally within intelligence collection.
65. Frankena, Ethics, 45.
66. Mappes and Zembaty, Biomedical ethics, 30.
67. Omand and Phythian, Ethics and intelligence: A debate.
68. As seen in this informal blog post discussion: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201312/the-intriguing-upside-manipulation.
69. Buss, Manipulation in close relationships, 477-499.
70. Hofer, Manipulation in the antisocial personality, 91-101.
71. Paulhus and Williams, The dark triad of personality, 556-563.
72. See Paulhus and Williams, The dark triad of personality; and also Jones and Paulhus, A brief measure of dark personality.
73. Jones and Paulhus, A brief measure of dark personality, 2.
74. Baron, A welfarist approach to manipulation, 290.
75. Omand and Phythian, Ethics and intelligence: A debate, 41, 52.
76. Ibid., 53-54.
77. See Bellaby, The ethics of intelligence, 1-11.
78. See Cialdini, The science of persuasion; and Cialdini, Petrova and Goldstein, The costs of organizational dishonest.
79. Cialdini, Petrova and Goldstein, The costs of organizational dishonesty, 67-71.
80. Ibid., 68.
81. Ibid., 68-70.
82. Bellaby, What’s the harm?, 108-116.
83. See Petty and Cacioppo, The elaboration likelihood model.
84. See Bellaby’s related argument to differentiate the severities of violations, What’s the harm?, 107f.
85. Nys and Engelen, Judging nudging, 203.
86. Ibid., 208.
87. Paulhus and Williams, The dark triad of personality; and McDermott, Experimental intelligence, 82-98.
88. See Meissner et al., Developing an evidence-based perspective on interrogation, 438-457.
89. See Redlich, Kelly and Miller, The who, what and why of intelligence gathering, 817-828.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Stephan Lau
Stephan Lau is a junior professor of psychology at the Federal University of Administrative Sciences, Faculty of Intelligence in Berlin, Germany. He worked as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Greifswald, where he received his PhD in 2013 for a dissertation on the psychology of human freedom. After working for two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Baumeister/Tice-Lab at Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA, he started his current position in 2019, where he shifted his focus to the psychological processes surrounding intelligence collection. Among his research interests are rapport-building and intelligence interviewing, social influence and reactance, as well as the junction of intelligence practice and quantitative social science.