Manipulation and Influence : What is the difference?

Out of the two words, manipulation has the most negative connotation. Just imagine Count Dracula staring a potential victim down as a dull red light emanates from his eyes. They then slavishly stumble over to their soon-to-be assassin and offer up their throats. Dracula was using his powers on a victim, but was this influence or manipulation? Probably, for most people, the word influence just doesn't cut it here. Here is a clear manipulation of a human being. This person's free-will is effectively turned off; they can hardly be said to have decided to give themselves to the vampire as under the gaze of this Hollywood monster humans are compelled to obey. We cannot, in fact, disobey. This, then, is the differentiating factor between influence and manipulation. As juicy as it might be to have to power to force people to do my bidding as if I were a cackling villain from a fairy tale, I respect the freedom of others way too much to wish for it seriously. But are we not all tempted by the thought of having influence? With influence, then, there will be people who actually want to do your bidding. This, ethically so much cleaner than it's ugly brother manipulation, has been the coveted aim of advertisers, politicians, teachers and parents alike. Here are some of the fruits of that labour:

Setting the stage: Reputation. Isn't it said that most people form an opinion of you within the first few seconds of meeting you. It is also said that, once ingrained, those first impressions, even the utterly erroneous, are notoriously hard to shift. You might want to develop a reputation as one who tells the truth, one who knows their stuff, and one who can be trusted. This reputation will precede you everywhere you go and set expectations for just such an individual. A reputation might, of course, be a house of cards, but in your case, you must make sure that yours is not. Build your reputation on a foundation of stone. A minimum requirement is the perception of you as a "stand-up" kind of person. Build on that. Add to reputation things like certification, published work or anything, in fact, that might point to your being a person who knows what they are going on about instead of just yet another talking head on social media. We have all seen lot's of them and you must show yourself to be different. This means that if you have a certificate, a qualification or even a boy-scouts badge, make sure everyone knows about it. You can leverage this "authority" principle even if you don't actually have any. How? Oh, the art of the quote: What is the difference between:

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

Which sounds very nice, and...

Winston Churchill said "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" Which sound somewhat more convincing. This works if you know who Churchill is... and even if you don't in some cases. The fact that you quoted anyone at all will give the impression of adding weight to your argument.

Quote Churchill, and you borrow his authority

Well, quite apart from the obvious plagiarism of the first example, the fact of naming a respected (even heroic in British culture) source gives potency to what you say. Don't abuse this lest you become "that dude who can't stop quoting Churchill" and that would never do, would it?

Another thing you can do is refer to studies. This is, oddly enough, not the most influential way to communicate except with a select few who really understand such scientific publications. On the general public, this approach is just not visceral enough. You need to activate the limbic system - the emotional centre, if you want people to get excited about your ideas. Seeing how most people haven't the slightest clue about statistics, those people go into a state of confusion and then switch off all cognitive attention to the statistics. This, some say, is rather dangerous because the confused state may open the door to suggestion. Anyone can just insert their own twisted interpretation of the data, and in the absence of any other possibility, this interpretation is likely to be accepted. Most people know this intuitively and have at least some suspicion of statistics... as well they might. If YOU are going to use statistics, you would do well to find an easy to understand analogy. Make it plausible and then back it up with some emotional appeal, and indeed your chances of the statistics being interpreted the way you want... go up.

There are factors that may surprise you regarding having influence: If you want to ask a favour, do it when the person is well rested and especially if they have just eaten. Part of this is just common sense: If you ask a favour of a person in a foul mood, they will probably say "no"... and a few other words thrown in for good measure. It doesn't take a Carl Jung to work that out. Even so, studies have been carried out. A very well known one was conducted by Jonathan Levav who found that sentencing was lighter after judges had eaten a nice breakfast. Regarding tiredness "You are anywhere between two and six times as likely to be released if you're one of the first three prisoners considered versus the last three prisoners considered." (Levav).

Asking your boss for a pay raise? Maybe if you buy them a donut you can up your chances of the "yes". You don't want to catch them tired or in a rush either.

Hypnosis is an attempt at influence, and in clinical environments can be useful and effective. So you sit down and listen to the voice of your therapist and you obviously give them permission to do so. They attempt to relax you and insert messages that will be of benefit to you. They use a plethora of techniques to make it more effective... (a little too much for this article I'm afraid), and some of which have been adopted by markets and advertisers to try to cash in. The first thing you get in advertising is... distraction or misdirection (just like hypnosis) so you get beautiful people basking in the sunshine in wonderful places. It's quite hard to not have a limbic system response to such images, and that is exactly what they want. If your emotions are peaked, the theory says, you will then associate the emotion to whatever product (invariably incapable of producing such emotions without such images) is set before you. A glorious example of this was an advert back in the 80's in which Michael Jackson, then at his popular peak, danced about for a bit on camera. The screen then went dark and the logo for the sugared soft drink flashed up on the screen. Jackson actually refused to be in shot with the logo. The advertisers didn't care though. They had what they wanted. All they cared about was the emotional impact of the artist on the public perception of the product. Jackson at the time was cool, so no matter what people thought, they FELT that Jackson was cool... and then you get the product. Did it work? Sales went through the roof. Humans are weird, right?

Just a quick mention of the infamous institute of subliminal messaging. Does it work? Kinda... a little. Actually we are not sure. If what you count as a subliminal message is one of those super quiet recordings that a musician might place on a song at a volume too low to hear with the conscious mind. One might put "buy my next album" all though it. But scientific interest in this kind of thing fizzled out some time ago. There seems to be some influence garnered from subliminals... some. Probably not much. They say "your unconscious mind is listening all the time" and yeah... Maybe.

Priming is another thing. Now we are talking... THIS has promise. The idea is this: I can "prime" you by giving you some kind of stimulus (the priming) - probably words, which then will influence behaviour. In one study by Bargh, Chen and Burrows in 1996, subjects were exposed to words concerning old age; grey, wizen, walker, pension, old, and another group were given words associated with youth: dating, discos, fun, energy. After seeing the words, subjects were timed as they walked back to their changing rooms. The findings showed that those who had seen the stereotypically elderly associated words, walked slower than those who had seen the stereotypically youthful words. When interviewed, subjects denied that the words had affected them at all. The research is considered to be slightly "wobbly" however as the replicability of these findings has come under some doubt. But like I say... It has promise. So we are suggestible after all? We are in fact very suggestible.

You are being influenced by forces you are unaware of all the time. You are also influencing people all the time. The messages you give out are either to your detriment or are in your favour. Better to be aware of it. Personally, I prefer to persuade with good arguments and truth but you ignore the realities of influence at your peril.