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"Manipulative behavior."
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Intangible Benefactors and the Contribution of Construal Level and Attitude Accessibility in Predicting Gratitude and Expansive Emotions
We tested whether manipulating construal level would change the experience of gratitude or other expansive emotions (gratitude, awe, compassion) and negative emotions. We also examined whether construal level was correlated with the type of gratitude benefactor that participants spontaneously listed, focusing especially on God and non-theistic intangible benefactors compared to tangible human benefactors. We manipulated construal level in 265 U.S.-based CloudResearch participants to test preregistered hypotheses that high-level construals would elicit more examples of gratitude toward intangible benefactors and increase expansive emotions. We conducted additional exploratory analyses, investigating whether attitude accessibility of God as a benefactor was correlated with increases in expansive emotions. High construal level manipulation was associated with more frequently listing non-theistic intangible benefactors. Further, trait construal level predicted expansive emotions. Additionally, attitude accessibility of God as a benefactor was positively related to expansive emotions. We discuss future research possibilities to differentiate between gratitude toward tangible and intangible benefactors and the use of attitude accessibility as an implicit measure of benefactor importance.
Journal Article
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
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
The Video Manipulation Effect
Recent research has identified a number of powerful new forms of influence that the internet and related technologies have made possible. Randomized, controlled experiments have shown, for example, that when results generated by search engines are presented to undecided voters, if those search results favor one political candidate over another, the opinions and voting preferences of those voters can shift dramatically-by up to 80% in some demographic groups. The present study employed a YouTube simulator to identify and quantify another powerful form of influence that the internet has made possible, which we have labeled the Video Manipulation Effect (VME). In two randomized, controlled, counterbalanced, double-blind experiments with a total of 1,463 politically-diverse, eligible US voters, we show that when a sequence of videos displayed by the simulator is biased to favor one political candidate, and especially when the \"up-next\" video suggested by the simulator favors that candidate, both the opinions and voting preferences of undecided voters shift dramatically toward that candidate. Voting preferences shifted by between 51.5% and 65.6% overall, and by more than 75% in some demographic groups. We also tested a method for masking the bias in video sequences so that awareness of bias was greatly reduced. In 2018, a YouTube official revealed that 70% of the time people spend watching videos on the site, they are watching content that has been suggested by the company's recommender algorithms. If the findings in the present study largely apply to YouTube, this popular video platform might have unprecedented power to impact thinking and behavior worldwide.
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
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