Do you think it is immoral to subversively manipulate a person’s behavior through psychological means if you don’t think it’s harmful to the individual? I’ll give you a real-life example from my life that happened today.
My wife and I had a spat today, a really minor one, a little yelling and bitching back and forth but not a big blowout and not over anything important, more just getting on each other’s nerves. My wife then left in a huff and went to the store, still angry with me but I wasn’t really angry at her anymore. Although I’ve known about the so called Benjamin Franklin effect for a little while, I never gave it much thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect, it suddenly occurred to me that this was a chance to try it out and see if it worked. Its supposed to be counter-intuitive but supposedly if you ask someone to do you a personal favor that either doesn’t like you or is just angry with you at the moment, instead of being annoyed after fulfilling the favor for you they like you or come to an agreeable state of behavior toward you. So I called my wife who answered the phone angrily and I asked her to run some errands for her and to my astonishment its like her whole mood suddenly changed and she was talking to me happily, it’s like she was suddenly glad to be able to do something for me.
For what its worth even though she might not be consciously aware that this is a researched phenomenon that has a name, I’m pretty sure my wife has unknowingly used this technique on me as well such as times when I was angry at her and she’s asked me to help her build something, fix her computer, drop off something at her parent’s house, and it had the same effect on me I think, suddenly I was cooperative and in a good mood although I didn’t know why at the time.
So do you think there is something wrong with trying to consciously manipulate a person’s behavior in this way if it is essentially harmless to either of the parties in this way? I think my justification is that it not only helped us get along, even if only in the short-term and it allowed my wife to not fixate on negative feelings and put her in a good mood. I think most people do things like this just on intuition without knowing it has some researched merit to it.
I don’t think it is wrong but I’m willing to stand corrected and I want to know what others think about this behavior.
I’m having a hard time drawing a line between what does and does not count as “psychological manipulation.” Interpreted broadly enough, a vast portion of what human beings do every day could be labeled such.
And I think that, just like so many other skills (e.g. social skills, logical reasoning), it comes more naturally to some people than to others. So if you’re learning about it and consciously using it, it may be not so much an unfair advantage as a leveling of the playing field.
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So I called my wife who answered the phone angrily and I asked her to run some errands for her
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This makes my brain hurt.
If I’m getting the gist right. Basically, what you did is offer your wife the olive branch. Which is something couples have been doing since the dawn of time.
Sure, if it is for cases like the above, I say “WONDERFUL!”
If you can change a person’s behavior to being less angry or reduce their stress (or do some other positive good), then you are actually helping the person’s health. (Not to mention reducing your stress as well.)
Constant stress can cause nasty health problems. So good for you!
LOL. I’m married to a behavioral psychologist. This is my every day life.
The difference, maybe, is that I know what’s he’s doing.
‘‘Rubs Spice on the back while she’s putting away her dishes" narrows eyes “I know what you’re doing!”
“Who me?”
"You’re shaping me!’’ evil laughter
I don’t consider it psychological manipulation, I consider it evidence-based intervention. I’m not ready to stake my certainty on John Gottman, but he did a lot of research about marriage, what makes it work, what doesn’t. If you use that research to improve your marriage is it wrong? No.
BTW, I ran this by said psychologist husband, and he laughed his ass off. He said, ‘‘I’m just impressed the guy had the balls to ask his wife for a favor when she was pissed, that’s impressive, and not how the Franklin Effect is typically applied.’’
He also said he would totally use it if it would work on me, but it won’t, because I always forget to do stuff.
This reminds me of my first marriage. My wife had been used and abused since childhood, her only sense of self worth came from doing for others and being needed. I could easily have taken advantage of her in this way and she would have been somewhat content with it. I took the opposite approach which was obviously wrong and we divorced after 20 years. I always felt that making her feeling loved even if she wasn’t needed would be appreciated by her. It made no sense to me that people need to be needed. Now I don’t hesitate to give a woman the opportunity to help me with something.
This does have me wondering just how exactly people try to court divorce lawyers, relationship experts, or psychologists/psychiatrists.
You’d either have to be the most skillful of all time, or you’d have to be so attractive to them that they would still be attracted to you in spite of the fact that they know what you’re trying to do with every tactic. Then again, like you said, maybe the very fact that they know, and get it, makes it funny to them.
This. We all do it, pretty much all the time. If it leads to good results – someone no longer being angry – with no costs – you aren’t building up any long-term guilt or anything like that – then, yay! It’s a win-win!
My sister calls this the “fly on your nose” effect. Someone is mad, and fuming and grumbling and frowning, and she’ll look at them funny and say, “Did you know there’s a fly on your nose?” There actually isn’t, but this distracts them, and then they see how funny it is, and – often enough, if not always – it calms everything down. A good non-sequitur can do wonders in a tense situation.
I suppose it depends on the person, because I imagine that many people would be further angered by a “there’s a fly on your nose” when there isn’t, kind of like the “Look!” (pointing in direction) and then when they turn to look, “There’s nothing, haha!”
Velocity: But in that example, the trickster accentuates the hostility by the “Made you look! Ha ha!” addition.
If, instead, they just pointed and said, “Look! The Hindenburg!” or “A baby wolf!” or “I see Vast Social Injustice!” without making it personal, I think it would be less likely to promote further anger.
(However, certainly, you’re right, there will be some people who won’t take it the way it’s intended. People are wildly different, and no single approach will ever work for everyone.)
Well in my case, he married another psychology geek. I’m not a psychologist but I’ve done so much independent research on my crazy-ass self I’m at a comfortable level of general knowledge and I consider it a passion of mine. And in a sense, considering we met at 18, it’s a passion we grew into together. His knowledge has informed my own. We’re both really open to new approaches for things, so it’s kind of a game for us to see how we can use behavioral psychology to improve our lives. I honestly think our geeky openness to change is a huge factor in the endurance of our relationship. We never shoot down the others’ ideas, just, “Sure, let’s try this and see if it helps.”
Listen, marriage is hard. Whatever works for you, run with it.
Well, since I mentioned Gottman earlier, a fly on your nose move would be a bid for attention (in a good way), the proverbial olive branch after a fight. Gottman found that these little reassuring behaviors were more predictive of marital success than even how important the fight was. In this house, we often diffuse tension with absurdist humor (usually Futurama quotes) so I’d say your sister’s onto something.
Look at such things from the view of the other person. What happens if you tell them what you did?
In this case, the other person is going to be very angry and feel tricked and manipulated. Therefore it is definitely not something you should do, esp. to a person you should feel obligated to be honest with.
There’s a large range of such things and the nature of the relationship. Having the boss say something nice and pat you on the back to before being told you’re going to work overtime is quite mundane. Being told that the boss was just setting you up isn’t going to really bother you.
But playing serious Jedi mind tricks with a spouse is not like this. It is definitely not harmless from the other person’s point of view.