Ethics

As I mentioned on the previous page, one scholar, Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer, provides us with a taxonomy of levels of influence--the basis of the continuum presented below. Notice that upon examination, the continuum defies simple right-or-wrong categorization.

Continuum of Influence
  Education Advertising Propaganda Indoctrination Thought Control
Relationship & Exchange Limited consensual relationship; logical thinking is encouraged. Instruction & emotional manipulation which target can ignore. An authority attempts to persuade the masses. Authoritarian & hierarchical but also consensual & contractual. Authoritarian, hierarchical, without target awareness, for indefinite time.
Deceptiveness Infrequently deceptive if teacher has no agenda. Selective information, sometimes deceptive. Exaggeration, selective, may be deceptive. Infrequently intentionally deceptive, often selective.  Deceptive.
Methods Instructional; indoctrination can occur when the teacher has an agenda. Mild to heavy persuasion. Heavy persuasion, compliance tactics. Coercive compliance (punishment) condoned. Unethical program of influence.
 Goals Productive & capable citizenry, actualization. Indoctrination, if an agenda exists. Sale of product or service. Political power & control. A cohesive & effective group. Perpetuation of the group for money or power.
Introduction
Why Influence?
Everyday
Modern
Definitions
Ethics I
Ethics II
Disciplines
Approach
Bad Info
Structure
Mindfulness
Mindlessness
6 Principles
Matrix
Cults I
Cults II
Cults III
Framing I
Framing II
Framing III
Framing IV
Framing V
Framing VI
Framing VII
Framing VIII
Bibliography
Links
Although we can all agree that education is good and thought control is bad, what about advertising, propaganda, and indoctrination? Take the latter for example. The idea of being indoctrinated by a group seems unsavory. And yet, we all enjoy the benefits of security provided to us by our armed forces--which rely on indoctrination to form effective groups of soldiers who protect us. And I haven't met many Marines who are unhappy they were indoctrinated into an elite group of warriors.

Given the complexity of the issue, is there no simple guide to ethical influence? I believe there is. Here is the one-sentence guide I use:

"If an influence principle isn't inherent in the situation, don't invoke it."

This is a meager distillation of a much more elegant and comprehensive treatment of the topic proposed by my mentor, Dr. Robert Cialdini, who treats the subject at some length in the third edition of his book, Influence: Science and Practice. I've excerpted a section from chapter 8, Instant Influence: Primitive Consent for an Automatic Age. Of course, I encourage you to read the following in the context of the original chapter, but these paragraphs quickly illustrate the ethical and unethical uses of influence:

Let's take an illustration from what is perhaps our most frequently used shortcut. According to the principle of social proof, we often decide to do what other people like us are doing. It makes all kinds of sense since, most of the time, an action that is popular in a given situation is also functional and appropriate. Thus, an advertiser who, without using deceptive statistics, provides information that a brand of toothpaste is the largest selling has offered us valuable evidence about the quality of the product and the probability that we will like it. Provided that we are in the market for a tube of good toothpaste, we might want to rely on that single piece of information, popularity, to decide to try it. This strategy will likely steer us right, will unlikely steer us far wrong, and will conserve our cognitive energies for dealing with the rest of our increasingly information-laden, decision-overloaded environment. The advertiser who allows us to use effectively this efficient strategy is hardly our antagonist but rather our cooperating partner.

The story becomes quite different, however, when a compliance practitioner tries to stimulate a shortcut response by giving us a fraudulent signal for it. The enemy is an advertiser who seeks to create an image of popularity for a brand of toothpaste by, say, constructing a series of staged "unrehearsed interview" commercials in which an array of actors posing as ordinary citizens praises the product. Here, where the evidence of popularity is counterfeit, we, the principle of social proof, and our shortcut response to it, are all being exploited. In an earlier chapter, I recommended against the purchase of any product featured in a faked "unrehearsed interview" ad, and urged that we send the product manufacturers letters detailing the reason and suggesting they dismiss their advertising agency. I also recommended extending this aggressive stance to any situation in which a compliance professional abuses the principle of social proof (or any other weapon of influence) in this manner. We should refuse to watch TV programs that use canned laughter. If we see a bartender begin a shift by salting the tip jar with a bill or two, that bartender should get no tip from us. If, after waiting in line outside a nightclub, we discover from the amount of available space that the wait was designed to impress passersby with false evidence of the club's popularity, we should leave immediately and announce our reason to those still in line. In short, we should be willing to use boycott, threat, confrontation, censure, tirade, nearly anything, to retaliate. 
--R. B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice.

I'm pleased you took the time to read about the ethical use of influence. Let's continue the survey by examining the different disciplines in which one can study various facets of influence . . .


Defense Shield

If your interest is primarily in resistance to persuasion, you'll want to view the following:

The Cult Defense Page
The Frame Defense Page
The Defense Linksp research, social influence, social psychology, speaker, speech, spin, statistics, steven covey, strategy, survey, technique, tom peters, trial, voir dire, workshop.