Honesty is the best policy... except when it's not

March 9, 2013 2:34 PM

Manpulationfilter: how do I subtly get other people (or myself) to 'come up' with or believe in ideas? In other words how does one perform Christopher Nolan style inception IRL?

Hey askmefi,

This sounds super stealthy and manipulative I know (and it probably could be), and I'm not asking with a specific purpose in mind but I was just wondering if you had ever done this, and if so... How? I know this is super broad, and partly a question about persuasion, but I am really curious and if refined Ithink that this could totally be an interesting super power! Let me know!

Or alternatively how could you raise suggestions up while sidestepping the defence mechanisms of the other person which usually causes them to say 'no'? I have seen virtually two people raise the same suggestion to the same audience with completely opposite results but I can't quite put my finger on why, and as a procrastinating daydreamer urgently need to have answers!

E.g. of scenarios where you want to persuade/incept someone off the top of my head:
school
-you wish your teacher would decide to go on a field trip which is kind of relevant to your course or to play a documentary/movie that you want to watch anyway
-you want your teacher to consider nominating your friend for a scholarship or a role in a play

romantic
-you want your friend to stop liking/notice the bad parts of someone who you had a crush on first
-you want a love interest to start seeing you in a different context (either from romantic to non-romantic, or vice versa)

friendships
-you want your friend to ask you to encourage you to join his football group
-you want your friend to introduce you to someone she knows
-you want your friend to feel more confident and stop obsessing about her hair or body shape

workplace
-you are at a job interview and want your interviewers to think that you would be a good asset to the team
-you want your boss to move you to a different team because there is someone on your team you work really badly with

self-inception
-you want to trick yourself into internalising something you know is true on a rational level but nonetheless find hard to put into practise (or self-limiting beliefs)

TL;DR how do I incept/persuade people with ideas?

posted by dinosaurprincess to human relations (23 answers total)

Have you tried asking them?
posted by 4bulafia at 2:38 PM on March 9 [2 favorites]

re:4bulafia
'how could you raise suggestions up while sidestepping the defence mechanisms of the other person which usually causes them to say 'no''
This is part of the question! (How to ask them in the right way)
posted by dinosaurprincess at 2:50 PM on March 9

You're doing this wrong. People live their own lives, they don't try to influence others to live parts of them instead. It simply doesn't work like this.

You can try to convine and/or persuade. If you're really behind the idea you want to convey, you may score a hit. Otherwise, there's nothing one can do, at least if you want to keep being well educated and polite.

(Also, many people are smart, you know...especially people who have a tendency to be manipulative themselves will pick up on your techniques, and the results are rarely nice and tidy)
posted by Namlit at 3:00 PM on March 9 [2 favorites]

Jedi Mind Tricks?
posted by AlliKat75 at 3:02 PM on March 9

I have seen virtually two people raise the same suggestion to the same audience with completely opposite results but I can't quite put my finger on why

This has happened to me so many times with guys. Like if a guy suggests something it is taken way differently than if I suggest it. So, often if I know that's going to happen, and it doesn't matter to me who the idea is credited to I just want it to happen, I just ask a guy to suggest it to make things easier.

About some of the other things, you can have more success if you can figure out what the person wants, what is in that person's own best interest. Because most people mainly care about their own best interest. For example, when I was in high school, we had trouble convincing our parents to let us drive their cars. We noticed that we had way, way more success asking to drive in situations where, if our parents refused, that would mean they would have to get up and drive us in scenarios where they were really tired or just did not feel like it. Suddenly it was a way more palatable idea to them. So at first we only asked under those conditions. Then when we had done that many times and did not wreck their cars, we were in a much stronger position to ask at other times.
posted by cairdeas at 3:03 PM on March 9 [2 favorites]

1) You say the same thing 500 times and then bite your tongue when they think it up "all on their own!" Or high five them and tell them it's a great idea, if you can pull it off sincerely/convincingly.

2) Timing is everything. You wait for the right moment and don't bring it up until you have that moment available, knowing that saying it earlier will work against you.

3) What's in it for them? Give them a reason to think it is a good idea. Avoid emphasizing why you want it. Frame it in terms of why they should want it, genuinely, not superficial manipulation.

4) Address their objections up front, before they can have them, in a way which does not make it into An Issue. In other words, instead of saying "I know you are a cheapskate and won't spend over $10 on this, but this one is only $9.99!" you say something like "I have researched it extensively and while these things usually sell for $20 to $40 plus shipping and handling, this one is on sale locally for $9.99, no shipping or handling costs involved."

5) Recognize the subtext/patterns of behavior and address their real concerns instead of their stated concerns.
posted by Michele in California at 3:05 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]

This is mostly about charisma, in my opinion. Be confident, learn how to spin a few good yarns, and really seem like you're listening when other people talk to you. Those three things will develop your charismatic appeal. Being super attractive doesn't hurt, either.

Also, don't take no for an answer. Just give up on people who say no to you or who push back until you get what you want.

I do not actually advocate these things. Being a manipulative person is a very empty game, I think (speaking as someone who was heavily and repeatedly manipulated by a very charismatic and charming man). It's hard to form meaningful relationships when your only goal is to get what you want out of the interaction.
posted by sockermom at 3:07 PM on March 9

I think that the examples you gave are so different and the answers so contextual that it's impossible to respond in any meaningful way to the question as put. Some of these things are ethically immoral/flat out deceitful (the crush example), some are things that you should just ask the person directly (the teacher example) and would simply require tact and diplomacy in method of request; and some are an issue of effective communication skills/effective framing/advertising of your opinion or perspective ("here's why you should hire me" with truthful reasons attractively framed, *not* attempting to manipulate/con them into hiring you when you know you're not what they're looking for).

Another big element that you are missing, is the other person's prerogative to say NO or to disagree with you. That is not some irritating little inconvenience you need to work around - it's their essential right, and if you manage somehow to manipulate/persuade/"incept" them into agreeing with you for the moment, at some point they are going to resent you and it's going to bite you in the ass when you gain a reputation for it.
posted by celtalitha at 3:19 PM on March 9 [5 favorites]

Given the framing of the question ("manipulationfilter" and the implication that this would involve dishonesty) and some of the really negative responses, let me suggest you look for some good resources on negotiation instead of manipulation.

"Getting to yes" and "The mind and heart of the negotiator" are both research based and excellent sources.

The difference between this and manipulation is that if both parties know effective negotiating techniques, both sides get more from cutting a deal. But manipulative tactics rely on taking advantage of what the other party does not know, at their expense. I am not manipulative nor dishonest. If anything, I am frequently too honest for my own good. But I am good at a lot of the things you list. Dishonesty and manipulation are not required. In fact, when push comes to shove, during the worst times when I need the benefit of the doubt the most, I frequently get it because I am honest, etc.

So maybe part of the problem is your bald assumption that getting your needs met requires you to screw over someone else. It doesn't.
posted by Michele in California at 3:34 PM on March 9 [8 favorites]

I am not endorsing it, but its practitioners would say that the answer to your question is neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
posted by Wordwoman at 3:36 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]

Ok. More serious answer:

The art of communication that is involved in persuasion, advertising, etc, is a tricky and powerful tool, not to be used lightly or indiscriminately. Even if you completely omit any intentional deception, you can easily go too far or push too hard, and this can backfire in ways you can not always foresee - including poisoning relationships, ruining your reputation, or simply making you into a person who is so used to justifying/convincing yourself and others of various things on a superficial level that you are no longer in touch with your actual core feelings or opinions.

Some aspects to the art, each with it's own contextual moral/ethical issues:

Presentation and Self-image - how do you look? how do you carry yourself? are you outgoing, introverted, do you speak fast or slow? what is your gender/race/job title/social standing? how does this translate to the other person's impression of you or potential stereotypes? how does this influence your likelihood to be taken seriously in a rational discussion, versus your ability to influence their emotions?
Framing - how are you presenting the issue to yourself, and how do you want the other person to see the issue? Are they likely to see it from a different perspective, and is there another, valid, way to conceptualize the topic that is more likely to be conducive to what you want to explain or convey? Re. convincing yourself, is there another way of looking at the problem that might present different solutions, reactions or feelings than your habitual ones?
Logical argument - how are your socratic discussion skills? how is your formal logic? do you know how to build premises into conclusions without making flying leaps of nonsense? Are you sure? In my experience, most people are waaaaaay worse than this than they think they are. By far most people. Read, think, write, think some more. Read heavy material, then read some heavy material of the opposing opinion. op-ed pieces don't count. use your brains.
Emotional appeal - this is what we usually think of as "manipulation," but even this can be used ethically - sometimes. what does the other person care about? what do they hold dear? is there anything about your issue with which they might personally relate? is there any aspect to your suggestion that might benefit them, their family, etc personally? do the two of you have any common interests or bonds that you can work from to build empathy for your cause?
Tone are you coming across challenging, confrontational, angry, entitled? is your voice either too serious or too jokey for the context of the conversation? Are you using inflection in the right places? Do you sound demanding or wheedling/whining? do you talk too quietly, too loudly, or too monotone? in writing, do you use bad grammar and punctuation (like I have for most of this post)??
Word choice are any of the words in your talk (or self-talk) triggery or charged with a meaning/impression/history that is non-conducive to your purpose? is anything offensive? are you using the "dialect" and language familiar to your audience or are you talking about things in your own way? do you know for sure that the other person is interpreting words and phrases in the same way you do? is there another way to word it that might be more clear?

These are just a few aspects I've thought of off the top of my head - there are more. As stated above, most of them can be used in good and bad ways, ethically or not, and in fact opinions vary EXTREMELY on where the line should be drawn on a lot of them.

Disclosure: My university majors were linguistics and political science, and my primary area of study was the intersection between psychological operations and journalism in international relations. My thesis was on the ethics of information distribution, so that's the history I'm workin' with here...
posted by celtalitha at 3:53 PM on March 9 [5 favorites]

Heavy manipulation tactics would draw in very highly suggestible people -- depending on what you are trying to persuade them to do or believe, marks (in con terminology) or dependent, needy or desperate personalities (easily converted to the woo-woo theory of the moment). Do you want to be around such people?

To be fair, I don't think that's what you have in mind.

See The Hidden Persuaders (I know it's old, parts may be disproved).

(the Amazon link does not mean I am trying to get you to buy it.)
posted by bad grammar at 3:58 PM on March 9

Ok some of these responses are making me feel defensive about my question, so just to defend and to clarify: I guess manipulation was the wrong word, and it does sound very negative, I can see that now, I was asking in the context of a short story I am writing. But even the type of response I have received kind of reiterates the power of phrasing, and delivery, and style, and diplomacy, and presence in getting people to see your point of view.

It doesn't have to be negative, maybe'negotiation' would have been more appropriate because I don't mean for it to completely override another person's decision making process (to assume that anyone has the power under normal circumstances to do so is insulting to human intellect and free will, I agree), nor to infringe on someone else's right to choose, nor to get my interests necessarily at the EXPENSE of anybody else.

But it CAN be done, see Hitler, see Stalin, see Martin Luther King, see Gandhi. People have persuaded others to change their minds (usually not everyone, but in certain cases, many) wherever their arguments lie on the spectrum of validity! So I am asking about form, rather than content. In fact I am writing a short story where I am trying to describe a character who I want to portray as fabulously manipulative in a mad men-esque way, but also so that we can think about it and have this in our personal toolbox in case we ever feel strongly about a cause and want to propound it.
posted by dinosaurprincess at 4:16 PM on March 9

I like what you're doing here; you're asking about ways you can be aware of and modify your own behavior to improve your chances of convincing and swaying people. I think the majority of the backlash is the way you've worded it - you call it stealthy and manipulative and dishonest, when it's really not! It's a skill we all subconsciously make use of whether we like it or not - I mean, I doubt you talk the same way to a friend you're trying to convince to come out with you to an event versus say, a telemarketer who you want to stop bothering you. So to rephrase your question a little, I think you're not as much as asking "how can I manipulate people" as you are asking "how can I be aware of, and modify my rhetoric consciously so that I better connect with people?" Again, I like that question - it rightfully suggests that charisma is something that can be actively learned rather than something innate, and I think that is definitely true. Especially since it echoes my experiences.

I'll structure this by giving tips and then applying them to the scenarios that you've presented in your questions:

Realize that people may not be the best communicators at times, including internally towards themselves. A lot of the time, a person will want to do something, but will talk themselves out of it. Try to restructure/redirect their own thoughts, giving them a fresh perspective, if you think it may be helpful.
This question! I noticed you didn't 100% articulate your thoughts properly, and you were putting yourself down with some negative self-talk about being manipulative. I seized the initiative to reframe your question in a more positive light. I'm assuming that made you a lot more receptive to the message - people love positivity for sure, and especially when that positivity is directed towards reinforcing their own thinking. In your example of trying to get your friend to see your crush's good points, you might rephrase your friends' complaint that he agreed that her jeans made her look fat as an example of how honest and straight-forward he was.

Positivity is the key in getting people to listen to you. You must first prime them to be receptive to your message if you want your message to have any chance of getting through; if you make them defensive from the very start, no matter how well thought out your points are, they will not pay attention.
Playing devil's advocate is a strong example of this. If you want to contradict a point that someone made previously in the argument, they'll likely pay a lot more attention if you make several things clear from the start - that you see their point and you can definitely see where it worked/not, that you're not attacking them but just want to make something clear, etc. For instance, in your example of you wanting to be moved to another team because you don't get along with someone on your current team, instead of going ahead and yelling about how you don't get along with so-and-so, speak of it in terms of opportunity - while you like your current team you think you may have better dynamics with the other team and here's why.

Keep in mind what messages you are conveying beyond what you're strictly saying. How might the other party interpret it?
Going back to the example of you trying to get moved onto another team by your boss, if you started talking about how bad your current team is, you're also essentially calling your boss incompetent because he made the teams in the first place (presumably).

Reinforce messages frequently. Not everything has to be a short-term thing.
In the case of a friend having self-esteem, pay attention to the observations that you have about your friend that you normally internalize and instead can be turned into compliments. For instance, if you notice that your friend is wearing a dress that particularly flatters her today, instead of just shoving away that compliment into the back of your head, actively vocalize it. So in this manner, you're not offering compliments that are insincere, which is glaring obvious, but modifying your own behavioural patterns to make things more obvious for someone who's in need of it.

If the topic is on something you'd expect someone to have gotten a lot of advice/comments on already, break the mold already by delivering a message they wouldn't have heard before, OR just recognizing that you don't have anything to contribute.
If you're trying to get your friend to stop smoking by talking about the negative health effects of smoking, even if subtly, you'd be the twentieth person they've met today who has tried.

Get people to think for themselves.
Asking earnest questions that a person might not have thought about already can be a strong persuasive tool. If your low self-esteem friend is moaning about how ugly they feel, you might want ground them back in reality by asking about from an objective perspective, why they think they're ugly.

Oddly enough, being forthright about your own intentions from the very start is quite powerful.
People are smart. In many cases, if you try to keep your intentions concealed, they'll know something is up. In the case of you trying to suggest that you teacher play a film that you want, you might want to start off as saying, "I might be biased in my opinion, because I personally really like this film and want to see it, but I feel that showing this film as part of our syllabus would benefit the whole class as well because..." Even if your intentions are completely selfish, just ask while being forthright about that - you'll be surprised at the responses you'll get.

Just off the top of my head. I don't feel that's particularly well articulated, because I'm really just talking about vague generalizations in response to your topic, which is pretty general, so if you wanted to pose more specific examples, I can comment more precisely. As others have pointed out - it really does depend on the situation a lot.
posted by Conspire at 4:26 PM on March 9 [4 favorites]

And on preview - don't stud your message with red herrings/unintended focal points that end up distracting from your persuasive point. For instance, don't mention Hitler as an example of what you want to aspire to be, even if it's just on one of his character traits.
posted by Conspire at 4:30 PM on March 9 [3 favorites]

The short version is that there is no simple answer to your question. TV and movie plots make it look easy to manipulate people. It is not as easy as all that, and even people who are good at it may not know what makes them good.

A lot depends on the person, the place, and the circumstances. Many of the people you mention were influential precisely because of the time and place they were in, their affiliations, and because they truly believed in what they said. In different circumstances, those same people might not be persuasive at all.

I'd read some great books on influence and salesmanship. For example, try Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, Cialdini's Influence, Drew Westen's The Political Brain, Daniel Pink's To Sell is Human, and maybe Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Sale.

Take any of the techniques mentioned with a grain of salt, and realize it can never be used blindly and must always be adjusted to the circumstances. As someone wise once said, when the right thing is done by the wrong person, it's the wrong thing.
posted by shivohum at 4:47 PM on March 9

Real life examples of things you asked:

I want friend to stop obsessing about their weight/appearance: Validate the ways they are attractive, talk about cultural bias (white American culture can be super bad about promoting thinness as critical to attractiveness), and then genuinely focus on something else rather than on their looks. If their husband is the issue and you know they are divorcing, the future ex is an idiot and who cares what he thinks? Plenty of men would hit that. Validation has to come from a place of sincerity. It cannot be empty words. So find something nice to say which you genuinely mean. It helps if you have let go of a lot of the personal and cultural BS typically behind such behavior.

Getting moved to a different team at work: I privately discussed my issue with my boss and got very quietly moved to another team shortly thereafter as part of a general departmental reshuffling, thus calling very little attention to the situation. (The individual I wanted to get away from was fired a couple of years later for reasons similar to my privately expressed concerns.)

Trying to get a romantic interest to see me differently: I have tried this from both directions. I have found it very challenging and frustrating. For any negotiation, you need fertile ground to cast seeds upon. Most of the time, a person who wants to peg you as X, whatever X is, is not fertile ground of that sort. Some men are very hardline about categorizing a woman as either romantic interest (aka "sex object") or someone to be taken seriously. Some men who were very impressed with my brains promptly treated me as just a sex object once that became part of our relationship.

I think this is one of the most challenging examples you have listed. If you can write a good fictional example of how to do this, I would love to read it. I feel like I still cannot get it right. Men (who are attracted) still want to see me as vulnerable and someone to be taken care of, not highly competent and worthy of respect for how well I cope with serious handicaps.
posted by Michele in California at 4:49 PM on March 9

"This is part of the question! (How to ask them in the right way)"

OK:

If you want:

"-you want your friend to introduce you to someone she knows"

Ask:

"Can you introduce me to that girl you know?" And then say why.

If you want:

"-you wish your teacher would decide to go on a field trip which is kind of relevant to your course or to play a documentary/movie that you want to watch anyway"

Ask:

"Can we go on a field trip?" And then explain where you want to go and why you think it's a good idea.

Etc.

You can't make anyone do anything, but you can ask.
posted by 4bulafia at 5:02 PM on March 9

I am not endorsing it, but its practitioners would say that the answer to your question is marketing.
posted by flabdablet at 6:02 PM on March 9

It is interesting that your question, and some of the responses to it, themselves illustrate how framing and other techniques can influence people's perceptions of what is being asked of them, and by extension, their willingness to comply. For example, by mentioning manipulation in your set-up, you triggered questions about whether information given to you would be used for evil rather than good. If you had framed it as "how can I better persuade people, or set things up so they are better-disposed to saying yes to things that are beneficial to us both," you might have gotten more info from some readers.

In general, I have found it helps to frame questions around the other person. For example, rather than asking the boss if I can have Monday off, I will ask "can you do without me on Monday?"this sets up the subtle requirment that to say no, he has to have a reason that he needs me, as opposed to just denying an external request.
posted by rpfields at 3:42 AM on March 10 [6 favorites]

A lot of the art of persuasive actions and words is covered in sales 101. Read "Selling for Dummies" as a good start, and realize that the "close" that is spoken of in sales is really nothing more than a successful persuasive attempt. Both in commercial sales and interpersonal persuasion you need to (1) find the solution that is a win win for both of you- figure out how what you want can benefit the person you are trying to persuade and (2)overcome their objections- be prepared, try to think of all the possible objections they could raise and have gentle redirections or explanations to knock them down. That's really all there is to it.

Oh and the most important wisdom: you don't get anything without asking and a big BIG part of closing the sale is simply being brave/bold enough to ask. I get a lot of things that I desire by being willing to stand up and boldly ask for them- people hate to say no.
posted by TestamentToGrace at 7:25 AM on March 10

Since you are asking not just how to make people agree with you, but how to make people think they came up with the ideas themselves, it might help you to read some popular books on subliminal thinking. I am fond of the works of Dan Ariely. (Some of his assertions seem silly to me. He's claimed-- in an article, not a book, as I recall-- that ebooks are just obviously superior to paper books, that kind of thing. But I like him anyway.) There's also Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow.

I think an awful lot of explicit persuasion is how you present yourself. Artistotle said that the three components of persuasion are ethos, pathos and logos: ethos being the character of the person speaking. What kind of person do you appear to be? (Authoritative and honest, but also generally worthy of consideration.) And can you appeal to the kind of person your audience wants to be? You can actually see Dan Ariely on YouTube and I think he is a good example of someone whose ideas people are apt to buy into.
posted by BibiRose at 8:04 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Teech, I think this field trip is quite relevant to our course. It covers subject X, subject Y, and subject Z, all of which we are focusing on this semester.

If Teacher says no, I go on my own field trip or watch the movie on my own.

- Teech, I think it would be good to consider Friend for this scholarship. The criteria are X, Y, and Z, and Friend has consistently shown X and Y in this class and gave a really outstanding performance in Z at the showcase on Friday. [note I didn't say "I think you should consider" but "I think it would be good to consider" because Teacher is above me in the hierarchy and I don't tell my superiors what they "should" do]

romantic
- Comport myself with style and grace and accept that Crush will either make a move on me or he won't.
- refer to The Rules "how to turn a friend into a boyfriend" chapter. Ignore the distant retching of ten thousand outraged MeFites. None of the actions prescribed by this chapter are offensive and they will give you the best chance you're ever going to have. In a nutshell: flit about being less available, more mysterious

friendships
- "I'd love to join your football group."
- "Friend, I'd really like to meet 2nd Degree Friend. Could you introduce me to them please?" ["could" not "would" because "could" assumes that if she can, she will, and is therefore just that smidge harder to say no to]
- "Why do you think you're ugly? No-one else does. But obsessing about how ugly you are is really unattractive. You've got to cut it out or people will really get turned off."

workplace
- "I see that your team specializes in big data. I'm very interested in big data and would like to draw on my experience with this giant pile of lots of little datas. If I were part of your team I would pour all the little datas into a double boiler with a little water and some vanilla, let them melt, fold them into the egg mixture, and then stand well back as the data sougfle expanded."
- "Boss, in my experience, my working style isn't very productive in combination with Someone's style. How about I move to Different Team?" [note the entire lack of accusation of either myself or Someone; I also frame it in terms of how it will benefit the boss - productivity - rather than how it will benefit me]

self-inception
- just keep repeating to yourself what you know to be true, keep repeating and repeating it, behave in accordance with what you know, eventually the message will get through. Realize that it's hard to deal with primal emotions. Keep repeating and repeating the rational narrative and then maybe your lower brain will get the idea as a kind of second nature. Eventually.

As you can see, those approaches are scarcely manipulative at all. The thing is that once people realize you are manipulating them, they may very well start to hate you. It is not worth making people hate you when all you want is to see a movie that you could have gotten hold of on your own.

Another thing is to believe that your request is reasonable and that even if you don't get what you want, it's okay that you asked. Basically when you ask for things, you ask for them Like An Adult.
posted by tel3path at 5:16 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]