Talk:Manipulation (psychology)

Renaming article
Renamed article from "Psychological manipulation" to "Manipulation (psychology)" to be constant with the clinical and common used term for this subject and to follow the Wikipedia naming convention for delineating terms with multiple definitions. "Manipulation" was not available as it is a disambiguation page.

Psychological manipulation is not a thing. It's an obscure term that has somehow made its way into the Wikipedia lexicon and if you Google the term, mostly (only) Wikipedia articles come up. It's a Wiki-word. It's often substituted at Wikipedia for the simple word "manipulation" that appeared in the original article citations.

This term "Psychological manipulation"" is not used in psychology, not generally used in the media, it does not appear in the DSM or or mental health catalogs, it is not in the English or APA dictionaries.

It is occasionally used for it's sensational effect in books like |Mindf_cking, A Critique of Mental Manipulation but these are not considered "reliable resources".

Wiki-psyc (talk) 16:46, 11 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Note: Checking back - since name change, readership has increased from 1-3 reads per month to 375 a day Wiki-psyc (talk) 19:56, 16 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Note: Pageviews are now 400-500 a day. Wiki-psyc (talk) 14:03, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Broken article littered with "elyse"
I don't know how to edit a wiki without breaking things but this one is littered with an apparent find and replace error "elyse". Not sure how to fix that. Help? 217.122.169.235 (talk) 11:12, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Nevermind, I guess someone alrdy got this fixed. Heroes!

It’s just vandalism Mvbaron (talk) 11:15, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Content discussion/dispute
See Wiki-psyc's talk page for an ongoing discussion of this article's content. Darcyisverycute (talk) 08:34, 12 May 2022 (UTC)


 * @Wiki-psyc Can you please explain the content removal not mentioned in the edit summary of | this edit? Also, I ask that you reread our diacussion on your talk page, as most of the discussed issues have not been fixed in the article.
 * For example, the "manipulation and mental illness" section continues to use only a DSM citation for unsupported and contentious claims, and the vulnerability/description table uses two 20 year old citations, one about unrelated ASPD and the other self-proclaimed as a self-help book and not an academic resource. Wikipedia is not a space for the unencyclopedic promotion of self-help material over academic peer-reviewed material, and the article continues to over-rely on self-help citations to the detriment of factual accuracy - especially in the lead and "motivations" sections. Darcyisverycute (talk) 20:14, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I apologize for not posting a more comprehensive edit comment.
 * At the time of publication, emotional intelligence assessments did not specifically examine manipulative behavior or Machiavellianism and were instead predominantly focussed on Big Five personality trait assessment. In the context of this article, what the study didn't include is irrelevant.
 * The MEOS has also been used for assessing emotional intelligence, and has been compared to the HEXACO model of personality structure, for which the capacity for inauthenticity category in the MEOS was found to correspond to low honesty-humility scores on the HEXACO. In the context of this article, a comparison to HEXACO is without context.
 * Darcyisverycute, manipulation is not a pathology, it's a normal human behavior. It is true that some people with a pathology manipulate but that is best covered in the articles about the pathology. This is just like the article Horsepower, there is no discussion of Lucid or Bugatti, automobiles with enormous amounts of horsepower. I know you don't see it that way, but that is the reason. As for the accusation of promoting self-help material, you will see that those citations were in this article 10 years before my participation and the content is written at an appropriate level of this topic/audience. I am not a fan or proponent of either author, but in this context, their work is accurate and fitting. Wiki-psyc (talk) 23:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * This is an article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that covers the topic of manipulation "Forms of influence like those listed above are commonplace in ordinary life." Wiki-psyc (talk) 23:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Wiki-psyc Thank you for your reply.
 * I think our central point of disagreement is on the pathology of manipulation. So, I will make a case for my position: "manipulation has both clinical and subclinical manifestations, and for both of these there exist epidemiology, etiology and accurate measurement/assessment resources."
 * I can find a number of informal sources which claim manipulation is not "normal", eg: Manipulation is common. No such thing as “normal”, really …. given the diversity of human beings. BUT there IS such a thing as “functional” vs. "dysfunctional" and I think this is more accurate as a description. My opinion is, nothing is "normal" in psychology; there are only epidemiology statistics.
 * There is even compelling evidence to suggest it is inaccurate to the point of being harmful, to describe manipulative behavior as normal: People in toxic relationships need to hear counterpoints somewhere. They are conditioned to think the interactions are normal. Someone needs to help them break out of that assumption.
 * I have also previously found and added a number of peer reviewed sources which indicate both the capability for manipulation, and the clinical and subclinical manifestations of behavior. Here are some sources which state unambiguously manipulation can only be performed presupposing certain skills/abilities: [1-3] -- it seems most of the added citations in | my edit, which were later removed, covered this idea in detail. This is crucial to understanding of the behavior and is not covered at all in self-help sources related to manipulation. The assessment section and the edits I had made were in part aimed at distinguishing this.
 * I think this would be useful to discuss: what is the purpose/context of the article? In my opinion, I think it is appropriate to discuss the behavior as it corresponds to underlying highly correlated personality traits such as machiavellianism and the Big Five and the HEXACO, especially considering my statements are an attempt at paraphrasing from existing conclusions in the review articles.
 * This is an article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that covers the topic of manipulation The citation you provide is compelling. However, it states the view that manipulation is common, not necessarily normal. More importantly, it is a philosophy and ethics source, not a psychology source, which I don't consider reliable for a psychology article since it is from a different field and does not consider epidemiology or etiology. The source is cautious about its claims, not asserting this is a mainstream view: it quotes another author saying it is possible to interpret manipulation as a normal. I am not famaliar with the philosophy around manipulation; maybe a case is to be made for a separate article on that topic, but I don't think it belongs in a psychology article.
 * In my experience from skimming self-help material on this topic, it seems designed to educate a general population on recognizing manipulation rather than defining it and discussing its etiology and epidemiology; my opinion is that in a Wikipedia article, defining the phenomenon takes priority over what essentially constitutes a set of instructions (WP:NOTGUIDE) for recognizing manipulation. The lack of consideration towards empirical data on etiology and epidemiology in self-help material, in my opinion, also constitutes controversy within the field of study that should certainly be documented in the article.
 * I have also tried to find reliable sources backing your claim that manipulation is normal/common and have had difficulty in doing so. Based on this, I think the disproportionate inclusion of self-help citations to the detriment of clinical and subclinical papers could constitute a fringe theory according to WP:NPPOV -- we must represent content proportionately to the weight of reliable (academic) citations supporting the claim. According to WP:SOURCETYPES, When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources. This does not explicitly mention self-help books, although I don't believe self-help books are subjected to the same level of peer-review scrutiny as journal publications which I have used.
 * Lastly, to compare this case to the horsepower article: horsepower is a unit of measurement, not a phenomenon. In a way, I think the horsepower article demonstrates the importance of comparing metrics and correlates of phenomena such as manipulation. Much of the horsepower article is on definitions and measurement, compared to the current state of the manipulation article which thoroughly discusses neither of these concepts.
 * [1] Hyde, Jane; Grieve, Rachel (July 2014). "Able and willing: Refining the measurement of emotional manipulation". Personality and Individual Differences. 64: 131–134. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.02.036. ISSN 0191-8869.
 * [2] Abell, Loren; Brewer, Gayle; Qualter, Pamela; Austin, Elizabeth (January 2016). "Machiavellianism, emotional manipulation, and friendship functions in women's friendships". Personality and Individual Differences. 88: 108–113. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2015.09.001. ISSN 0191-8869.
 * [3] Bereczkei, Tamas (October 2015). "The manipulative skill: Cognitive devices and their neural correlates underlying Machiavellian's decision making". Brain and Cognition. 99: 24–31. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2015.06.007. ISSN 0278-2626.
 * Darcyisverycute (talk) 23:35, 3 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Appreciate your diligence in this matter. It's not surprising that there is not a plethora of journal articles on manipulation - its an elementary topic more likely to appear in a textbook. For example, Manipulation is fundamental to triangulation which is a tenet in Family Theory. The textbook example is a child in conflict with one parent, enlisting the other parent to get their way. Manipulation manifests itself in all the fields of activity  of  the  individual,  basically  in  all human  relationships,  even  in  love,  religion, philosophy, science, art, etc. This article focuses on all these aspects, proving that manipulations in itself represents an inherent social phenomenon for the contemporary human being. In addition to the Standford reference above, you might also want to read this article in the International Journal of Communication Research;  or this APA article  or this article from Dartmouth's Joel Rudinow PhD in Ethics . Wiki-psyc (talk) 19:07, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Wiki-psyc To analyse your recently posted citations. The first one is published from an author in a military academy and discusses philosophy, ethics and theology, and not once uses the word psychology. The second citation published in 1987 is relevant, which seems to describe a theory connecting object manipulation with social/psychological manipulation. To quote the first sentence of its abstract: "This article proposes three key mechanisms by which personality and social processes are intrinsically linked." This appears to support my claim that discussing personality trait correlates is relevant for manipulation as a social process, for which evidence has existed for decades. Besides that, the citation is fairly old, and the data there is easily superseded by newer citations which I had previously added. The third citation is also far to old to hold any weight over 2010s and 2020s papers on psychology, as it was published in 1978, in an ethics (not psychology) journal.
 * Manipulation is fundamental to triangulation which is a tenet in Family Theory. You are welcome to add a theory section in WP:SS in the manipulation article to describe content in Triangulation (psychology) and possibly also expand the aforementioned linked article -- you claim manipulation is fundamental to triangulation, and the page does not mention manipulation, so I encourage you to add content and citations there.
 * It's not surprising that there is not a plethora of journal articles on manipulation - its an elementary topic more likely to appear in a textbook. I am using these citations not just to show that these publications exist -- I am using it as evidence to support my view of current scientific consensus on manipulation in psychology, which I intend to use as the basis for rewriting the manipulation article: "manipulation has both clinical and subclinical manifestations, and for both of these there exist epidemiology, etiology and accurate measurement/assessment resources." This, along with the citations I have provided, are in contradiction with the claim that (psychological) scientific consensus considers manipulation to be "normal". Hence my efforts at discussion to establish consensus before editing the article again. I can see from the references you've provided there is probably enough content to write a wikipedia article on manipulation ethics as a social phenomena. However, this does not belong in the psychology page for manipulation.
 * I want to add back the content I wrote that was removed since I think I have sufficiently justified its inclusion. If you do not have objections to my doing so, or my central claim here in bold, I will removing the claims supported by low-quality citations and restore the content of my edit (and probably continue at expanding the article at some point). If not, I am not sure what more I can say on the topic without repetition, at which point I think it would make sense to use a dispute resolution service like WP:3O.
 * Also, I want to mention I understand you did not initially add the self-help material; my objection is the reversion of its removal and replacement. Darcyisverycute (talk) 09:07, 8 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Clinical manipulation is a term typically used to describe physical therapists and chiropractors. In psychology, manipulation does not have a clinical and subclinical classification.
 * Two of references you cited in your last "article edit" speak to manipulation in the context of a disease state. It is the disease state, not the behaviors that have clinical and subclinical presentations. One of your citations was about BPD and one was ASPD. In ASPD, for example, manipulation is one of a cluster of common behaviors that if 6 of 7 are expressed in an unhealthy way is partially indicative of the disorder. In this list are manipulativeness, callousness, deceitfulness, hostility, impulsiveness, and irresponsibility. These behaviors are not pathologies, in and of themselves.
 * As for operant conditioning, that is a normal learning process, not something unique or dark about manipulation. Operant conditioning occurs in all types of learning and can be seen in raising children, motivational programs, coaching, teaching, training, management, criminal corrections, rehab etc. This material is best suited for the Operant conditioning article.
 * Using the strict definitions of mental illness in the DSM (not accounting for subclinical conditions), 28% of the US population has either a mental illness or addictive disorder in any given year. This high percentage has received a lot of criticism from medical community about the over pathologizing of human behaviors by the psychology community. If we add in all the "pseudo pathologys" popularized by non-professionals on the Internet, it would suggest that the majority of the US population is mentally ill (or victims of the mentally ill). One of the concerns is that this encourages a lot of feelings of victimization and blaming of others rather than helping people recognize what is true illness and what is just uncomfortable behavior that we need to learn to navigate.
 * Presenting manipulativeness, callousness, deceitfulness, hostility, impulsiveness, or irresponsibility as pathologies is inappropriate and misleading. Wiki-psyc (talk) 20:54, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

I personally think being interdisciplinary nature of wikipedia articles is valuable... so don't really like arguments along the lines of "this is a psychology not philosophy". But think the article should be structured so that it clear where information comes from. I note the "psychology" in the title, but think this is mostly there to distinguish from other uses of the word (e.g. "manipulation of joints", "manipulation of an object"). I'd throw in that there is probably a whole bunch of content from the study of discourse and the humanities. Talpedia (talk) 14:55, 8 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm all for making a separate anthropology/philosophy article, I just think it belongs separate from modern psychology research, and probably my biggest concern with the article right now is the self-help material. I would also make a note that early research into manipulation in psychology did compare it to physical manipulation as well, so there is historical context to cover there.
 * Since WP:3O didn't get picked up I am going to leave a  tag on the page, and request WP:DR to see if that can hopefully help resolve the disagreement between wiki-psyc and myself (here). Also,  I will note that the summary I left on WP:30 which was later moved to the top of the talk page subheading by you, was meant to be neutral and I ask that you don't copy my signed messages to move to different pages in future (see WP:TPO for talk page guidelines) Darcyisverycute (talk) 05:18, 10 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the notice. I don't have anything to more to add here. Thanks again. Wiki-psyc (talk) 15:48, 10 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm all for making a separate anthropology/philosophy article Hmm, I don't really see why this can't be dealt with through sections given how short the article is. I guess above a certain size trying to interleave covering different sources could make reading the article short. But given how short the article it feels a bit like we are arbitrarily limiting the scope of the article... and I can't really see a valid reason why? Talpedia (talk) 10:01, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
 * You raise a good point, reconsidering with its current length I think it would be fine to add it as a section in this article, just that it might difficult to write a cohesive history of the topic by interleaving references as you mention. My reasoning here is I think it's important for the reader to know which information is being sourced from philosophy/ethics/anthropology, and from different branches of psychology, since historical and modern perspectives can disagree fairly significantly about it. I was thinking that a separate article for anthropology/philosophy history would have enough literature coverage to meet notability for a separate article, better to wait until it gets expanded to that point if content actually needs to get migrated I suppose. Darcyisverycute (talk) 14:43, 11 July 2022 (UTC)


 * What you have been advocating is to convert this article to one that describes "manipulation" as a mental illness/pathology. As you have said "pathology of manipulation in psychology" The literature doesn't support this and therein lies the dispute. The length and organization of the article seems like a back foot to describes "manipulation" as a mental illness/pathology. I would suggest taht instead, you would need to find a substantial piece of work that supports your [WP:ORIGINAL] and if you can, you could then suggest modifications to the mental health section of the article. Wiki-psyc (talk) 15:31, 11 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I guess my hope would be that the section titles, article structure, and wording could make clear where information comes from. Whether it is clinical or theoretical or philosophical etc. Often you'll get a short section on philosophy at the end, kind of the like the "Criticism" section on some articles. I suppose I'm a bit nervous about any fields "owning" concepts and pushing out other fields. Sometimes it's valid to push perspective out of an article, for example COVID media stories from the covid articles. Sometimes starts getting a bit more sketchy - like psychiatry pushing out psychology, ethics and patient experiences. Talpedia (talk) 15:34, 11 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Darcyisverycute is seeking dispute resolution. We have a senior moderator stepping in to help out. It might be best to continue our discussions here: Dispute resolution noticeboardWiki-psyc (talk) 19:43, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Manipulation is both abnormal pathological behavior and normal human behavior, depending on the severity and context (i.e., within a DSM-5 disorder). As such, both views should be included. The abnormal aspect should be included. BooleanQuackery (talk) 06:02, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology Capstone
— Assignment last updated by Savannaj13 (talk) 02:58, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology Capstone
— Assignment last updated by Rahneli (talk) 16:30, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Confusing and poorly written
This article needs to be re-written by someone with a thorough understanding of human psychology’s history and the ability to write in a clear and relatively objective way. As it stands, the article seems to be pushing unsubstantiated opinions. I could not say with certainty that the author is fluent in english. 2601:602:8000:2536:2096:CC07:BC55:229 (talk) 22:33, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Localiser mon cell now le monde me hack
Je suis hacker par tout le monde 142.127.27.54 (talk) 05:46, 24 December 2022 (UTC)