Page 23 - How To Analyze People: 13 Laws About the Manipulation of the Human Mind, 7 Strategies to Quickly Figure Out Body Language, Dive into Dark Psychology and Persuasion for Making People Do What You Want
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be their friend and then using information shared in confidence against
them.
Whether in our personal or professional lives, there is one fact which
remains. No one likes knowing they have been manipulated. No one. With
such negativity associated with this hard, it becomes almost impossible to
believe that there is a possibility manipulation could be used for a good, or
even that it could possibly bring about change for the better.
As surprising as it may sound, manipulation is not all bad. Manipulation
exists all around us, and you often don’t have to look very far to find
evidence of it. Take marketers and advertisers for example, with their
constant messages telling us to buy this, buy that, stop doing this, and stop
doing that. They’re all trying to manipulate our decisions in one way or
another. Which forms of manipulation though, are in fact trying to get us to
change for the better?
Ads that tell us to stop smoking and eat healthier are trying to manipulate
our decisions, but in this case, they’re trying to do it to incite positive
change. Quitting smoking is for your own benefit. So it eating healthy. If it
is for your own good, doesn’t that make it a positive form of manipulation?
Governments around the world manipulate their people. So does religion.
Yet, we sometimes choose to ignore it because it comes from a more
“authoritative” source, so to speak. Businesses manipulate their customers
all the time, by creating products to boost their sales figures and then telling
consumers “they cannot live without it”.