nancylebov | Influence and ethics

In the course of poking around in my head, I found that I'm very cautious about influencing people and being influenced. I feel very strongly that there's something unsavory about being moved very much by outside influences. It's entirely possible that I'm overdoing the boundary thing.

So, what sort of influence are you uncomfortable exerting? What sort of influence do you dislike having used on you? Do the goals matter? Are there types of influence that you like being on the receiving end of?

I probably don't have enough of a handle on the range of the subject to even ask all the questions that would elicit worthwhile stuff, so feel free to free associate.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

siderea

I think it probably matters enormously what one means by "influencing".

As I would mean it in a colloquial sense (1) I have no limits as either influencer or influenced and (2) your sentence "What sort of influence do you dislike having used on you?" doesn't actually make grammatical sense, so maybe we're talking about different things by "influence".

From:

nancylebov

I mean that I don't like oratory unless I distance myself from it-- it feels like a effort to con me into doing something which will probably be bad for me.

Here's an example of sharply focused influence which I still think was illegitimate. Quite some years ago, a therapist (god knows why, probably that I seemed to be in so much pain about the subject) thought it was really important for me to spend some time with my mother. So he pushed one of my buttons-- he said that I could learn something from spending Thanksgiving with my family.

It's hard to express how comprehensively I spaced out when I agreed to do it. There was a piece of being impressed that the therapist could do it so effectively.

I didn't discuss that piece of manipulation with the therapist. In retrospect, I wish I had.

The actual visit wasn't especially traumatic, but I don't remember learning anything.

From:

siderea

Huh! Neither of those is something I would have expected to hear described as "influence". When I think influence, I think more like the cleverness displayed by the high-end women's clothing store I went to that provided cookies and newspapers and a comfy place to sit for any non-shoppers (e.g. husbands) waiting for someone in the fitting room trying things on (e.g. wives) -- my b.f. thinks the place is the bee's knees and would be entirely happy to drive me over there again if I want to do more shopping at that store, thereby dramatically improving the likelihood I will shop and spend money there again, unlike all the other places where he would be physically uncomfortable or bored.

I also think about unintentional and quasi-intentional forms of influence, like the effect of living next to a bar on a recovering alcoholic, or the way one's social circle normalizes behaviors not normal to the matrix culture, from volunteering in charities to committing crimes.

Your examples have to do with more direct appeals to reason. Sounds like you don't like it when people try to convince you of things, i.e. deliberately through words attempt to enlist you in agreeing to a course of action. Yes?

From:

nancylebov

Your examples have to do with more direct appeals to reason. Sounds like you don't like it when people try to convince you of things, i.e. deliberately through words attempt to enlist you in agreeing to a course of action. Yes?

I'm not sure about appeals to reason, but "attempt to enlist" seems pretty accurate.

From:

siderea

Myself, I find there's ways of attempting to convince me of things which are perfectly fine, and there are ways that I find really irritating. I suspect our preferences slot out somewhat differently, because I get the impression that you feel like you don't have as much defense against convincing as you'd like, and your dislike of it stems from the feeling that it's a threat you're imperfectly guarded against. Is that fair? I don't find convincing at all threatening; the attempts at convincing I find irksome are ones that, shall we say, cause collateral irritations, such as wasting my time, or otherwise being so inept I wonder if the would-be convincer is attempting to insult me.

For instance, hard-sells irritate me not because I am likely to acquiesce to a hard-sell, but because I'm so easy to soft-sell in the right situations, and if this bozo had just not acted like a bozo, they'd be making a commission right now, and the sheer needless incompetence of it makes me want to light the bozo on fire. "I WANTED TO GIVE YOU MONEY, WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME HATE YOU INSTEAD???"

A 1/2 funny story. I now know two work places that have screwed this up in exactly the same way: an old temp agency and my current clinic. In both places, my employer couldn't bill their payers (temp agency: the client, clinic: the insurance company) until their employees filed their time cards. Both places wanted the time cards in by end of day Friday. So both places sent out memos to their staff saying, "Dear staff, if you don't get your time cards in by end of day Friday, you won't get paid until the following pay-period."

So of course, there were employees (including me) who read those memos and thought, "No problem! I don't live hand-to-mouth, and it's no trouble at all for you to take an extra week or two or three to get my pay to me, so I'll go right on submitting them when I get a Round Tuit." This would lead to escalating memos, each time stressing "OR YOU WON'T GET PAID IN A TIMELY FASHION!" completely oblivious to the fact that was a meaningless threat.

What they really wanted to say was, "Please get your time cards in on the Friday of the work done so we can bill the customer the following week. You may be surprised to learn that this is actually impacts our ability to keep the lights on and the coffee hot, but that is indeed the case. It actually is a very big help to our company when you get your time cards in the same week. If you'd like to learn more about the issues of how accounts receivable and cash-flow solvency impact our company's financial stability, please talk to Margret in accounting who would be pleased to explain it. We greatly appreciate your assistance in getting this done."

But doing that involves having some trust that someone else (one's employees) might do something just because they thought themselves on the same team as you, and wanted to do right by you. Many people aren't comfortable with that; they prefer to believe in a dog-eat-dog world in which the only reason someone might do something was because it was, in the crudest, most material sense possible[*], in their own self-interest.

[* Such people have no trouble imagining that employees would be motivated by the short-term self-interest of being paid promptly, but disbelieve that employees would be motivated by the long-term self-interest of wanting to keep the goose laying their golden eggs alive. There's something to be said about being dubious about random American's ability to even perceive their long-term self interest (*rolls eyes*) but I've generally found they'll get it if you explain it to them. The success of the "what's good for corporations is good for workers/why do you need unions?" rhetoric on the right would seem to prove it in an unfortunate way.]

From:

siderea

And even my examples are too narrow. When I think about "influence", I'm not primarily thinking about behavioral outcomes, but in how externalities shape internalities.

For instance, if an employee is dealt with ethically scrupulously by her boss, that employee is more likely to comport herself ethically with others around her, including her fellow employees. This starts a virtuous cycle of ethical conduct which, without necessarily anybody making any principled decisions to induce or promulgate ethics, results in ethical conduct with customers and vendors and everyone they deal with.

And contrariwise, if the employee detects that her boss is treating her in an ethically shady manner, her own inclination to treat others ethically will be diminished, even if she has high principles. This starts a vicious cycle of ethical debasement, that expresses as less ethically rigorous treatment of fellow insiders and of outsiders.

Influence of this sort is constant, omnipresent, incredibly powerful, and widely discounted. This is why it matters so very much the contexts one exposes one's self to. And is Zimbardo's whole point.

From:

redbird

Do things like playing unfamiliar-to-you music while you're present (in shared space, or while visiting someone) because someone thinks you might like it count as influence?

I'm guessing that people publishing book or movie reviews don't count (though I could be wrong there); how about someone going on, without being asked, about how wonderful a particular book, movie, author, etc. is? Or going on at similar length about how bad the work or person is?

From:

nancylebov

Do things like playing unfamiliar-to-you music while you're present (in shared space, or while visiting someone) because someone thinks you might like it count as influence?

No, because I don't feel as though there's a significant amount of push behind it.

I'm guessing that people publishing book or movie reviews don't count (though I could be wrong there); how about someone going on, without being asked, about how wonderful a particular book, movie, author, etc. is? Or going on at similar length about how bad the work or person is?

I don't think so. Arguably, I should be more sensitized to implications that people's moral value can be deduced from their tastes. Instead, either I get hooked (less as the years go on) or I don't.

This gets odd, because I can (could?) enjoy an authoritative voice in fiction (Rand, Lewis, Heinlein)-- I think the difference is whether I feel as though I'm being told I ought to do something, rather than the vision of How Things Ought to Be exiting more or less walled off in my imagination. (I'm very much an ex-fan of Spider Robinson-- I've gotten so sensitized to the degree of smugness in his work that I don't expect to be able to enjoy it again. I used to love his stuff.)

Thanks for asking those questions. The influence issue seems to be entangled with my feeling of not having much energy to spare and fear of making mistakes-- and this clarifies why getting pushed to do things I don't want to do seems like a threat.

Edited Date: 2011-01-29 03:27 pm (UTC)

From:

kgbooklog.livejournal.com

I strongly dislike the whole concept of haggling, even when it's part of a game (like Monopoly). I'm just not comfortable with talking someone into doing something that benefits me at their expense.

From:

richardthinks.livejournal.com

I'm suspicious of being influenced too, but that only means I have my guard up against certain kinds of influence I can see.

I also dislike haggling. And I have a long-running query about gift giving - I guess it's my cultural background that wants gifts to look like spontaneous expressions of generosity rather than reciprocal chess moves; I'm trying to figure out if that's what everyone feels, who is part of a gift-giving culture, or if Trobriand Islanders and African kings and whatnot are just comfortable with the exchange and don't wish it was any other way.

I rather like flattery because I've pretty much never been exposed to it, but I understand it gets old quickly. I loathe the very phrase "moral suasion." And like Proust I'd like to be pampered and caressed, but I probably wouldn't be able to relax into it because I'd be waiting for the petition...

From:

madfilkentist

I try to influence people only by appealing to their self-interest, understanding of what's right, and sense of logical consistency. I don't care to use guilt or other forms of emotional manipulation to get them to to things.

From:

bemused-leftist.livejournal.com

Yes. My preferred approach is to give someone information that he didn't have. Which, when plugged into his CURRENT values and energy, will enable him to get a result he already wants. And/or, I show a method/means to do something he has been wanting to do.

Wikileaks comes to mind as a current example: giving people who already WANT to blow a whistle, a safe whistle to blow.

As for using this approach to get people to do things I want ... well, that means looking for people who already want the same results I do. ;-)