Second Edition 1964 (First Edition 1958),The University of Chicago Press

If we were to ask a military officer how he gets his subordinates to do things, he would talk about issuing orders and commands. But if we ask a salesman how he gets people to buy things, or a politician how he gets people to vote for him, or a successful courtesan how she gets mink coats from men - all these are apt to give different answers, but answers that have some common elements. The kind of things we would expect to hear are things like these: "You've got to make them think it's their idea." "You've got to make them like you." "You've got to sell yourself." "You've got to be sincere." "You have to pay attention to their interests and the things that are really important to them." "You've got to make them think they're in charge."

Just how are these answers different - as they obviously are - from the kinds of authoritarian ideas we talked about in chapter 11?

One of the biggest differences, of course, is in the fact that the quotations we just listed pay a great deal of attention to human emotions and human needs. They recognize that human beings are their objects of influence, and that human beings are complex systems with needs for affection, for dependency, for support, for approval and recognition, and all the rest. In this respect they contrast sharply with the authoritarian model, which assumed a kind of rational, hard-headed man who obeys rules and understands abstract justice.

But those quotations have another distinct flavor too. They have a quality of surreptitiousness, of slipperiness, at least in their implications. "You've got to make them think it's their idea," implies, of course, that the idea is really yours, not theirs.

We notice a third quality, too. These are the kinds of ideas or beliefs that any of us might spout in talking about dealing with peers or superiors; but we would be less likely to pay much attention to them when dealing with our subordinates.

They differ from the authoritarian ideas in another way too. The person using an authoritarian model is likely to be fairly open and direct. When your boss tells you to do something right now there's nothing very secret about his motives or objectives. He says clearly what he wants. But when the salesman, or the courtesan, or the politician sidles up to you, then you begin to suspect some unannounced motives, some hidden purposes.

This last point probably gets at the heart of the manipulative problem. It is the reason that so many of us want to reject it and retaliate against it. For this kind of attitude, the I-will-make-you-think-it's-your-idea attitude, is seen by most of us as an effort to degrade us, to play us for suckers. If A succeeds, then B never realizes he was manipulated and A wins. But if A fails and if B realizes suddenly that he is being manipulated, then B is apt to retaliate rather violently.

The manipulative models have been with us for a long, long time. They show up in the writings of Machiavelli and even earlier. Since 1930 or so modern versions have become especially popular in selling and sales training, an understandable phenomenon. For the salesman enters into a relationship of his own initiation with customers who are usually at least as powerful as he is. Authority isn't a very useful tool for him. On the other hand, the salesman has a rather clear and precise objective, which varies very little from day to day or customer to customer. He doesn't want his customers to buy an automobile, he wants them to buy a Ford. So the salesman's problem is very clear. It is to get that man to do what A wants him to do, but to do it without resorting to authority.

Out of this specific problem - the problem of trying to get someone else to do precisely what I want him to do, without using authority - there has emerged a series of sophisticated manipulative models for influence. These models all share five key ideas, although they vary considerably from one to another in other respects. The five ideas are these:

   1. A's motives should not be made fully known to B. A wants to sell magazine subscriptions, but he starts out to convince B that A is really not selling anything at all, just offering free samples. The mistress really wants a mink coat, but the motives she communicates are love and nurturance.

   2. Second, the manipulative models usually use the relationship between A and B as a tool for influence. Most of the manipulative approaches are essentially two-step processes: step 1 is to develop the relationship with B so that B comes to value it; step 2 is to use the now-valuable relationship itself as a bargaining weapon in bringing about change. The magazine salesman tries to develop in his customer feelings of sympathy and support because he is working his way through barber's college; and having thus developed nurturant needs in the housewife, he offers his magazines as a means for her to show her support. The politician offers favors - jobs, little services to the people of his ward; and then asks of them only the little personal favor of their votes. The paternalistic manager takes a deep personal interest in his people, buys them gifts at Christmas; in other ways develops personal feelings between himself and his employees; and then, consciously or unconsciously, he uses that relationship, with its implications of loyalty and friendship, to get what he wants.

Just for contrast, it is worth pointing out that the complete authoritarian we talked about in the last chapter does not move in the same direction at all. The personal relationship is set aside for him. The world is a world of rules, not of men. The complete authoritarian sells the product; the manipulator sells himself.

This manipulation of the A-B relationship can be thought of as an effort to create the kind of dissonance we talked about in Part I. First we make another person feel love and loyalty toward us, and then we demand of him that he change the beliefs he now holds dear. Thus we set up an imbalance. For B to love us and keep his contrary beliefs places him in a dissonant state. So he must choose between his beliefs or his feelings toward us. If we're clever, he changes his beliefs. But if we fail, it is understandable that the failure can be explosive, with the possibility of B shifting from extreme love to extreme hate.

   3. A third and related characteristic of the manipulative models is the exploitation of dependency between A and B. While the authoritarian exploits dependency, too, he does so directly and always downward in the hierarchy, demanding that subordinates perform or get fired, that children obey or get punished. But the complete manipulator exploits dependency differently. He exploits it in both directions in the power hierarchy, using psychological power rather than legalistic authority. The manipulative executive, for example, may make his way upward in his organization by becoming dependent on some higher-level executive, and by trying to make that dependency reciprocal. He searches for a sponsor, someone with whom he can develop a son-father kind of relationship. Then, he feels, as the father's star rises so will his. If he can be successfully dependent on some superior then the superior reciprocally will be dependent on him. Certainly women, in Western society, have learned to manipulate dependency skilfully, even though they seldom have the greater official authority in relationships.

The manipulative executive is likely to exploit dependencies downward, too. He will not count on his impersonal role as the boss, but rather on personal dependency on himself as an individual. He may seek personal, intimate relationships with his people, and then use these deep personal attachments as a base for effecting change.

If he is a really consistent manipulator, he will try to have his superior and/or his subordinates develop very strong attachments to himself, but he will always hold back on the reciprocal end of the deal. A good manipulator never exposes himself completely. Some of his personal motives are always undisclosed. He must never become so entangled either with subordinates or superiors that he cannot abandon them if he needs to.

   4. A fourth characteristic of the manipulative approaches is that they are apt to be extremely sophisticated about the psychology of the individual. While the authoritarian ignores matters of feeling and emotion and is apt to be quite insensitive, the manipulator is extremely sensitive to people's humanity, fallibility, and emotionality. The good manipulator exploits people's needs for approval, support, recognition, dependency, participation. Aware of the potency of these needs in his two-step process, he makes great efforts to sell himself by satisfying other people's needs for recognition and attention. This awareness of widespread psychological starvation in our society is of course precisely what the over-the-line manipulators - the con men - exploit so successfully in old widows and teenagers. But within the law, it can be these same kinds of needs that a manipulative wife can exploit in her husband; currying favor with him, flattering him, providing him with satisfactions that may be hard to come by elsewhere in the world. She thus increases the value of the relationship and the extent to which she may use it as a bargaining weapon. But she is also giving him what he needs.

   5. A fifth related general characteristic of these models, a characteristic that is really just an extension of the two-step process, is gradualness. The manipulator does not move precipitously, nor directly, nor completely. He influences in bits and pieces. Unlike the authoritarian holdup man, the con man moves slowly, establishing a relationship with his prey, letting him win a few hands at poker, and only gradually moving him along to where he wants him. If he is a good con man, he even "cools out the mark" after he has taken him; he takes steps to make the widow feel good after she has been bilked of her funds, so that she will not go to the police or retaliate against him.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that manipulative models not only exploit the relationship between A and B, but also the relationships between B and other people. There is a step beyond the process of developing a relationship between you and me so that I can later press you to do what I want you to do. That next step is the use of group pressures; pressures by other people, C's and D's. The early primitive stages of the human-relations movement represented such a transfer from the exploitation of the A-B relationship to the exploitation by A of the relationship between B and others.

Much of the early talk about group participation, and many of the early experiments on group decisions, represented such an extension of the manipulative models. A still wanted to get people to do what he wanted them to do. And A still kept some of his motives to himself. But now A used group discussion as a tool, and he did not work hard to develop the relationship between himself and the group. Rather he tried to develop cohesiveness and rapport within the group. Then when the group began to move toward a particular direction of behavior, the individual member was pressed by the group to conform to the group's wishes. This device was not new, of course, even several decades ago. Any good rabble-rousing politician knows how easy it is to keep someone from saying "no" in a public meeting after 90 per cent of the crowd has already shouted "yes".

So group participation as a tool for influencing behavior had its problems, too, especially in its earlier forms. One got workers to accept a methods change (a predetermined methods change) by holding group discussions and by getting group commitments to a decision to change. But in our next chapter we will consider some more recent developments on the participative side; collaborative methods for trying to effect change that make large use of groups, but which try to escape from some of the ethical and technical difficulties of manipulation. As we shall see, this third model differs quite distinctly from both the authoritarian and manipulative models.

The manipulative models for effecting change have grown up mostly in settings wherein the use of authority was impossible; settings in which A is a peer or subordinate of B. The several manipulative models share some basic ideas: Manipulative A's withhold some of their motivation from public exposure, Manipulative A's tend to develop close relationships with B, often dependent relationships, and then to use that relationship as a tool. The manipulative models tend to take two steps in the influence process, the relationship step and then the influence step. Manipulative A's are sensitive to human needs and emotions. And they tend to work in bits and pieces, by indirection rather than by direction.

One wonders sometimes whether the industrial game really is played the manipulative way, as most novelists about business like to describe it. If it is indeed such a game, need it continue to be?