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"Manipulative behavior."
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The morality of spin
The Morality of Spin explores the ethics of political rhetoric crafted to persuade and possibly manipulate potential voters. Based on extensive insider interviews with leaders of Focus on the Family, one of the most powerful Christian right organizations in America, Nathaniel Klemp asks whether the tactic of tailoring a message to a particular audience is politically legitimate or amounts to democratic malpractice. Klemp’s nuanced assessment, highlighting both democratic vices and virtues of the political rhetoric, provides a welcome contribution to recent scholarship on deliberative democracy, rhetoric, and the growing empirical literature on the American Christian right.
eBook
Shining a Light on Dark Patterns
Abstract
Dark patterns are user interfaces whose designers knowingly confuse users, make it difficult for users to express their actual preferences, or manipulate users into taking certain actions. They typically exploit cognitive biases and prompt online consumers to purchase goods and services that they do not want or to reveal personal information they would prefer not to disclose. This article provides the first public evidence of the power of dark patterns. It discusses the results of the authors’ two large-scale experiments in which representative samples of American consumers were exposed to dark patterns. In the first study, users exposed to mild dark patterns were more than twice as likely to sign up for a dubious service as those assigned to the control group, and users in the aggressive dark pattern condition were almost four times as likely to subscribe. Moreover, whereas aggressive dark patterns generated a powerful backlash among consumers, mild dark patterns did not. Less educated subjects were significantly more susceptible to mild dark patterns than their well-educated counterparts. The second study identified the dark patterns that seem most likely to nudge consumers into making decisions that they are likely to regret or misunderstand. Hidden information, trick question, and obstruction strategies were particularly likely to manipulate consumers successfully. Other strategies employing loaded language or generating bandwagon effects worked moderately well, while still others such as “must act now” messages did not make consumers more likely to purchase a costly service. Our second study also replicated a striking result in the first experiment, which is that where dark patterns were employed the cost of the service offered to consumers became immaterial. Decision architecture, not price, drove consumer purchasing decisions. The article concludes by examining legal frameworks for addressing dark patterns. Many dark patterns appear to violate federal and state laws restricting the use of unfair and deceptive practices in trade. Moreover, in those instances where consumers enter into contracts after being exposed to dark patterns, their consent could be deemed voidable under contract law principles. The article also proposes that dark pattern audits become part of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s consent decree process. Dark patterns are presumably proliferating because firms’ proprietary A-B testing has revealed them to be profit maximizing. We show how similar A-B testing can be used to identify those dark patterns that are so manipulative that they ought to be deemed unlawful.
Journal Article
Zero sum game
\"Cas Russell is good at math ... The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight, and she'll take any job for the right price. As far as Cas knows, she's the only person around with a superpower--until she discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people's minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world's puppet master. Cas should run, like she usually does, but for once she's involved. There's only one problem--she doesn't know which of her thoughts are her own anymore\"--Publisher marketing.
Book
Gaslighting, Misogyny, and Psychological Oppression
This paper develops a notion of manipulative gaslighting, which is designed to capture something not captured by epistemic gaslighting, namely the intent to undermine women by denying their testimony about harms done to them by men. Manipulative gaslighting, I propose, consists in getting someone to doubt her testimony by challenging its credibility using two tactics: “sidestepping” (dodging evidence that supports her testimony) and “displacing” (attributing to her cognitive or characterological defects). I explain how manipulative gaslighting is distinct from (mere) reasonable disagreement, with which it is sometimes confused. I also argue for three further claims: that manipulative gaslighting is a method of enacting misogyny, that it is often a collective phenomenon, and, as collective, qualifies as a mode of psychological oppression.
Journal Article
Based on a true story
This sophisticated psychological thriller skillfully blurs the line between fact and fiction, reality and artifice. Delphine de Vigan has crafted a terrifying, insidious, meta-fictional thriller; a haunting vision of seduction and betrayal; a book which in its hungering for truth implicates the reader, too--even as it holds us in its thrall.
BOOK
Factor structure and construct validity of the short form of managing the emotions of others
Emotional manipulation is an important strategy in social interaction. The English version of MEOS-SF has been developed to make the measurement of such manipulation ability more efficient. The purpose of the current study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of MEOS-SF. Explore factor analysis and Confirmatory factor analysis were adopted to examine the Chinese version of the MEOS-SF factor structure in 645 Chinese participants (mean age = 24.68 ± 6.01 years) recruited online. Factor analysis supported a new three-factor model that included Conceal, Prosocial, and Non-prosocial, different from the original English MEOS-SF. Enhance and Divert merged to Prosocial factor while Worsen and Inauthentic merged to Non-prosocial factor because both prosocial and non-prosocial pairs had similar objectives, which would be perceived as the same thing by people in Eastern culture. As expected, MEOS-SF factors were found to be correlated with the Big Five, psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and trait EI. Our results suggested that the Chinese version of MEOS-SF had acceptable psychometric properties and could be used to assess emotional manipulation.
Journal Article