THE PROBLEM WITH MANIPULATION ⁽¹⁾

Patricia Greenspan

Department of Philosophy

University of Maryland

College Park, MD 20742

pg20@umail.umd.edu

Forthcoming in

American Philosophical Quarterly

There is a well-known scene from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that illustrates what might be considered benign manipulation: Tom has the job of whitewashing a fence but would rather spend the time with friends. By feigning enthusiasm for the job he manages to get his friends to hang around and do it for him. They even pay to do it - with various little items that he later trades for coupons earning a Sunday School achievement award. ⁽²⁾

No harm is done here, and some might dismiss any complaints. Manipulation is often commended in popular literature as a "people-management" skill. In philosophic literature it comes up mainly as a side-issue in work focused on subjects that raise more politically worrisome issues of freedom and unfreedom, such as coercion and exploitation, or questions of psychological unfreedom in the free will literature. ⁽³⁾

It is not clear, however, that manipulation always involves interference with freedom, at any rate beyond what is normal in personal interaction, or that the problem with manipulation is essentially a problem about unfreedom. In the Tom Sawyer case, for instance, besides not having to whitewash the fence, Tom's friends are not in the usual sense misled about the nature of what they are doing. Tom misleads them about his own enthusiasm for the task, but their deliberations about what to do, though influenced by Tom's implied opinion of the alternatives, do not cite his opinion as a reason. His friends simply pick up emotional cues from his behavior and value their options accordingly. His emotions are feigned, but what seems more importantly to distinguish his friends' situation from typical cases of emotional contagion is the fact that the transfer xof emotion here is the result of the other party's plotting, to achieve an end they otherwise would not share.

There are cases of less self-interested manipulation, however, where the manipulated agent (let us call him "the manipulee") may not initially share the end toward which he is manipulated butwould share it if he saw the overall practical picture - though conveying the overall picture to him beforehand would be incompatible with motivating him to act. Perhaps he will even acknowledge this later, after the end is achieved. Consider generating interest in one's academic field among students by ignoring problems with it that might deter a beginner - feigning a kind of uncritical enthusiasm, presumably for the manipulee's ultimate benefit rather than one's own. Or consider cheering up a friend by drawing attention to various positive features of a life that lately has been depressing. If someone in a state of melancholy may be said to want to dwell on his misfortunes, spelling out the end here might undermine the effort.

These are examples of a kind of paternalism, but far outside the legal contexts in which we object to paternalism. In these cases the maneuvers in question seem to be well within the scope of "caretaking" authority accorded to a teacher or a friend. Given the resemblance to strategies of child care, perhaps one should think of this as "maternalism." Indeed, manipulation is often recommended as a strategy particularly for women, or simply is treated as characteristic of women, at least in a world where women cannot act openly to achieve their ends. A further argument for manipulation in these cases appeals to the limits on what is possible in a position of subordination. Other examples, not limited to gender issues, include getting a boss to do something that he would not consider doing if he saw it as your idea. ⁽⁴⁾ Any lies in question in such cases are thought of as "white lies," and manipulation here seems benign.

However, one might suggest instead that manipulation can be justified only when the manipulee would endorse the process, or the means to the end attained, along with the end - as is true in some of the relevant cases (the motivated class, the cheered-up depressive; some spouses or even bosses on some matters) but not all. Perhaps it is enough just to "laugh off" the process, as in various jocular or experimental cases (arguably including the Tom Sawyer case). An example relevant to free will involves a psychology class that conditioned its behaviorist professor to move out of his preferred corner of the room. ⁽⁵⁾ A philosophy student also reports that he was able to get a certain well-known author on free will to direct lectures toward him by manifesting signs of comprehension that he took to be characteristically British. Of course, these strategies could be misused, but in themselves they do not seem objectionable.

Note that, in these last two cases, the manipulee is not exactly deceived - he is not misled into believing something false - though the maneuver trades on his not knowing or noticing everything. In particular, he is not aware of the element of plotting or external control of his behavior. In more serious cases, though, it would be reasonable to resent just this - having your choice situation set up artificially to achieve someone else's end - even where the end is one you generally share, but assuming you have not endorsed it in this instance.

Not only does the manipulee in such cases have a complaint from his own standpoint but there is also something objectionable about manipulative tactics from a more general standpoint, in assessing the quality of human interactions, at least where something serious is at stake. A rich fund of examples in this area comes from institutional practices in academic life: administrative strategies for dealing with faculty, instances of more general issues about ethics in the workplace. There are also common examples from the advertising world and political life. For that matter, interactions within families, couples, and other small-scale interpersonal relationships sometimes deserve scrutiny in these terms, though here we more often endorse an element of manipulation, as in the example of cheering up a friend.

The philosophic literature on related subjects suggests two main ways of approaching issues about manipulation, one roughly Kantian, in terms of the violation of autonomy, one more virtue-ethical, in terms of the violation of trust. They are not incompatible as partial accounts but in fact seem to supplement and support each other. The first figures centrally in explaining cases where a wrong seems to be done to the manipulee, while the second also helps explain cases where group interactions themselves count as objectionable insofar as they involve manipulation. These cases overlap greatly, but they may not be quite the same, to the extent that autonomy is not such a central concern of small-scale interpersonal relationships, even if it is the source of important constraints on them.

Each approach will be considered here in turn. The upshot of this discussion will be something that is a bit different from either approach that unites both. Broadly speaking, the issue of manipulation brings out the importance to moral philosophy of evaluating acts and properties of groups as well as individuals. This is usually the focus of political philosophy, but morally questionable manipulative practices are all too easily justified politically. Underhandedness is not particularly a political vice. It is a personal vice, but ethics is concerned with more than qualities of individual agents. There is a way of combining Kantian and virtue-ethical concepts within moral philosophy, associated particularly with Strawson, that stresses the idea of a moral community and thus shifts the emphasis to social relations. ⁽⁶⁾ According to the argument that will emerge in what follows, the problem with manipulation is that it involves setting up unfair terms of social exchange.

1. Autonomy and Respect for Persons

Kantian notions seem to afford a clear line of objection to manipulative tactics: such tactics involve "use as a means only" to the extent that the ends they serve are optional ends that the manipulee does not share. Where the tactics themselves are the focus of objection, they can be made out as intermediate ends of action that he would not on reflection endorse. To explain what exactly is wrong with this, independently of Kant's overall approach to ethics, one appeals to the notion of autonomy as self-determination.

At the very least, autonomy is an important all-round instrumental good for an individual agent, something whose sacrifice in favor of other goods requires justification. Less minimally, Kant's notions of individual dignity and respect for persons would also accord autonomy a value in itself. Someone who violates our autonomy shows a basic failure of respect for us as agents capable of setting and pursuing our own ends.

Note that manipulation as a violation of autonomy does not clearly involve interference with freedom in the sense that involves putting limits directly on the ability to act or to refrain from action. The behaviorist professor in the example mentioned earlier still has a choice about which part of the room to lecture from. What he is not able to do is to lecture from his preferred corner and get approving facial expressions from the class that is using these means to condition him. His options are artificially limited by the way they are packaged together.

If the alternative to submitting to the will of the class is unsatisfactory for the manipulee, one might suggest that the case involves an element of coercion: the class is threatening him with a withdrawal of their attention or some similar bad outcome if he resists their influence. Cases of manipulation seem to have a foot in both of the usual categories of intentional interference with another agent's autonomy, coercion and deception, but partly as a result, they do not fit squarely into either category. In this case something else at issue besides a threat is the manipulee's unawareness of some of the reasons relevant to his choice - reasons against doing the natural thing and standing wherever he feels he can "connect" best with the class. ⁽⁷⁾ That the class is controlling him, by intentionally weighting his choices with that end in mind, counts as a reason against standing where he otherwise would, to the extent that agents place a value on autonomy in the sense of acting for reasons of their own.

However, reasons of one's own have to be understood rather broadly, as including the normal background of "heteronomous" factors affecting choice: all the little accommodations we unreflectively make to others, or to our own personal or physical needs and tendencies, as in the usual choice to position ourselves where we feel best. It is the decision of the manipulator to capitalize on these features of normal choice that undermines autonomy.

Perhaps manipulative maneuvers typically involve some implicit threat of a bad state of affairs for the manipulee, even if supplied by the manipulee's psychology rather than by the manipulator himself. ⁽⁸⁾ Though Tom Sawyer's friends have no prior need to participate in the job of whitewashing, Tom essentially sets up a situation in which their envy is provoked, or their curiosity frustrated, unless they do. In general, to the extent that manipulation operates via emotion, it would seem to involve threats of emotional discomfort - or at any rate dissatisfaction, of the sort that results from cutting off an anticipated supply of positive emotion.

However, part of what is at issue here is a mistake on the part of the agent in estimating the threat, resulting from incomplete information about the choice situation (something that does not quite amount to deception, as was pointed out earlier). ⁽⁹⁾ The stakes in both these cases would be seen very differently if they were seen for what they are - if Tom's friends, or the behaviorist professor, were aware of the element of prior plotting on the part of other agents.

What the manipulee is deluded about in these cases is the extent to which he is the agent of his action; the agency of others is to some degree "masked." This is so even without the element of prior plotting: there are also cases of unconscious manipulation, such as various analogues of the case of the class conditioning its professor that involve stereotyping. Consider a case of selective approval of women in supportive roles, say, where the manipulator may be unaware (and resistant to becoming aware) of his distorted perception or its influence.

However, "masked" agency, or incomplete information on the part of the manipulee, does not always seem to be a factor in manipulation. There are some interesting cases of group interaction, first of all, where no one may be orchestrating things personally, but habits of decision-making are in play that put pressure on individuals to go along. Examples include faculty meetings in which everyone is expected to announce his vote before the secret ballot as a means to attaining consensus. Group agency might be said to be involved here, but the point is just that it need not be masked. Such tactics may sometimes be justified overall, but they compromise individual autonomy to the extent that they make dissent harder for most people.

Something similar applies to attempts at manipulation that fail because the manipulee happens to be aware of what is going on. Imagine someone who characteristically seeks your agreement on administrative matters by bringing up serious issues "on the fly" - catching you right before a class, say, displaying signs of agitation and urgency of a sort that can be contagious. After a while, you catch on. You then begin to take such encounters as reasons against giving approval without further consideration. But at least assuming you are not immune to the element of contagion - he does succeed in conveying some agitation - your autonomy has been violated.

Both here and in the case of manipulative group strategies to achieve consensus, you may know everything you need to know in order to weigh your reasons properly and yet still have a complaint - not just about what was attempted but also about what was done: your autonomy was violated, just insofar as distracting influences were introduced into your deliberations, even if you knew enough and had sufficient self-control to dismiss their force as reasons.

It is not essential that the distracting influences be annoying in themselves, as with agitation in the case just sketched: appeals to irrelevant positive sentiment or even attempts to "mirror" sentiments you already have (reinforcing them, as a form of ego-boosting) would be subject to the same basic objection. The objection concerns a failure of respect for you as a reasoning agent - not just your "separateness," as political discussion of autonomy as a form of individual freedom tends to convey. In effect, in these cases you happen to be able to unmask an agent who interferes with your autonomy in the relevant sense of rational autonomy. But you are still manipulated to the extent that he interferes.

The mistake people make when they are manipulated successfully typically involves missing the fact of the other's influence - though another example will soon suggest that this is not essential either. The situation shades into coercion, with elements of psychological threat, insofar as we naturally act in light of an automatic negative estimation of such factors as signs of emotional agitation or social friction. But our estimate of the alternatives is here thrown off by others' unnoticed influence: agitation or friction (or unresponsiveness, in the case of the behaviorist professor) would be more easily dismissed as a negative outcome if we knew it had been staged for the purpose of getting us to do things that we otherwise might not want to do. The outcomes in question here do not look quite so threatening when we see them for what they are: the result of interpersonal maneuvers, tantamount to social threats.

Our complaint in these cases is a complaint about unfair terms of social exchange - something on the order of price-fixing. That is why it is undercut when the terms are unfair to begin with (as in manipulation by a subordinate who is blocked from acting directly) or when we set up the exchange ourselves (by allowing someone a role that is designed to operate outside the usual channels of rational deliberation, as with the teacher charged with motivating us or the friend who is supposed to cheer us up). How we estimate or value others' responses, the meaning of their acts for us, is influenced quite appropriately by others' choices. But this power we unreflectively assign to others can be abused. In objectionable cases of manipulation, others are taking unfair advantage of the opportunity for control.

In political contexts such cases come up under the heading of exploitation. They raise issues of trust, to be explored as such below. First, though, note that there are further cases in the same category that need not involve an attempt to deceive, even with regard to unnoticed influences on deliberation, but instead turn on painting someone into a corner in deliberative terms. ⁽¹⁰⁾ An agent can be put into a position where she has to do something - has to morally, by her own lights, or simply to save face or the like. A situation can be set up by others so that you must act to promote some good - or simply to hold your own in promoting the good, or in an argument or other competitive encounter, say.

"You can help this child, or you can turn the page": what if the ad could be made more effective by picking out you in particular? Or more mundanely, consider getting a colleague to take on certain administrative jobs or to work in a field more in line with your own interests by withholding recognition for anything else. The present suggestion is not that manipulation is never justifiable in such cases but just that the manipulee has a legitimate complaint on grounds of unfairness. The complaint need not be that the manipulator is deceiving anyone, but rather that it is unfair for him to impose his own agenda, even supposing that it is a wiser or more worthy agenda or in aid of the common good.

Note that this is not to say that manipulation is always unfair. The point of the suggestion is not to spell out conditions of manipulation but rather just to locate the problem with manipulation where there is one. Manipulation is unfair to the extent that it involves taking more than one's fair share of power over the other party's choice situation - whether by deception or some other means. There are other cases of influence (some even amounting to control) that operate without manipulation, by restricting the terms of choice in a way that is made explicit; whether these are fair depends on whether the options themselves are, in a sense that includes coming within the scope of authority of the person setting them up. But further, there might be unobjectionable cases of manipulation, such as cases in ordinary conversation involving a pattern of broaching topics, giving opinions, or making requests indirectly - dropping hints, steering the conversation around to one's preferred topic, representing one's own view or desires as shared by the other party, and so forth. That is, there is no objection to manipulation here in the sense of a wrong done to the manipulee in a particular case, assuming that one can readily identify and resist such suggestions, as part of what is expected of a socially skilled partner in conversation. At the same time, though, one might prefer straightforwardness or feel annoyed or even personally insulted by an excess of delicate handling of this sort, as suggesting that one is unable to handle straightforwardness.

Where there is an objection to manipulation in the relevant sense - a moral objection, even if trivial in some cases - it can also sometimes be answered by appeal to overall considerations of fairness. The sort of case where manipulation serves to make up for an element of unfairness in the preexisting situation might be said to involve "compensatory" manipulation. But there is another, "role-related" variant of manipulation, where some license to manipulate is granted to an agent who serves in a particular role. The case of group agency described above might be treated in this category insofar as it involves conventions governing group discussion designed to encourage consensus at the cost of some limits on individual autonomy.

In the last case, along with others, manipulation might be thought to be justified, not by overall fairness, but by other considerations in conflict with fairness such as group efficiency - possibly with respect to roles that were not granted by the manipulee but by some external authority, perhaps in a system where the power distribution is unfair. There are complex questions in such cases, beyond the scope of this paper, about just what authority can legitimately be granted to manipulate third parties and what countervailing considerations might override that of fairness. The suggestion of the paper is just that fairness is what is at issue in the manipulee's complaint.

2. Transparency and Trust

Manipulation is typically a violation of trust, though more so in some relationships than others. In some relationships, as noted, we delegate to others a certain authority over the terms on which we operate. This is sometimes even held to be compatible with retaining autonomy. ⁽¹¹⁾ However, there are limits to what we are handing over in such cases that may or may not be respected by the other party. Imagine Ulysses tying himself to the mast to withstand the sirens - but then betrayed by a disloyal crew that takes advantage of the occasion to stage a mutiny. Autonomy has been violated here, though the violation depended on a voluntary transfer. Something similar might apply to the various unreflective choices we make in ordinary interaction, of the sort featured in some of the examples above.

Annette Baier in her well-known treatment of trust has a case of trusting a stranger in the library stacks not to attack us. ⁽¹²⁾ Baier acknowledges in other cases problems raised by the discretionary aspect of trust - the possibility of the trustee's exceeding the authority we grant him - since part of the point she sees in highlighting trust is to avoid the precise spelling out of terms that is typical of contractarian approaches. But we can avoid insisting on precision without eschewing contractarian language, which seems entirely appropriate to cases where we actually "relate to" that stranger in the stacks rather than just passing by.

Assuming we stop short of intimacy (and some would say even then), there is a kind of exchange going on in these cases - a mutual adjustment of boundaries, in the current lingo - that can be labelled as such without slanting things toward an economic model. In fact, it may encourage abuse to leave things too warm and fuzzy. Some manipulative maneuvers of the sort in question in this paper depend on refusing to identify what is going on clearly enough to allow for its assessment as a voluntary transfer. Consider, for instance, tactics depending on flattery or on propping up the ego of someone in a position to dispense benefits. Sometimes such relationships are perfectly acceptable, but for theoretical purposes we have to risk taking the magic out of some of them by spelling out in hard-nosed terms just what transactions they involve.

As was noted above with regard to issues of fairness, discussing manipulation as a violation of trust is not meant to suggest that it always violates trust - we can sometimes set up relationships to allow for manipulation - but just that violation of trust is part of the objection to it, when there is one, from the standpoint of the manipulee. There might also be objections independent of that standpoint - to "stooping to" flattery and ego-boosting, say, as insufficiently self-respecting on the part of the manipulator; or to letting oneself be affected by it, as showing an undue dependence on others' regard on the part of the manipulee.

Baier gives a test of appropriate trust that might seem to explain the objections to being manipulated: appropriate trust is trust that would survive a certain kind of knowledge on the part of the person who extends trust. On an account that allowed contractarian talk, this might be construed as knowledge of the terms of exchange - granting, as Baier also does, that it might not be knowledge the manipulee could have had while the exchange was in process; the point is rather that he would not regret the exchange in light of it. What Baier seems to have in mind, as the relevant form of knowledge of the trusted party's motives, is knowledge of which psychological traits of the one who extends trust (my manipulee) the exchange depends on. ⁽¹³⁾ This might be thought of as a "transparency test" of appropriate trust in the sense that the motives of the trusted party have to be able to be made transparent to the one who extends trust.

For a case that would pass the test, though, as formulated in terms of psychological traits rather than fair terms of exchange, but that still seems to count as objectionable manipulation, consider a case where some trait a particular agent values is used selectively by those in charge to achieve an outcome that makes her the agent of what really are their deeds: a "front-man." For instance, because of a reputation for high academic standards, she is put on in charge of a committee to decide on the tenure of a female candidate whom other faculty do not want to be seen as criticizing. She might know exactly what is going on here - and endorse the general traits of hers that it plays on, along with the consensus view of the candidate - and still resent being used in the role of puppet.

Another set of cases involves staging a public choice-situation in order to make certain choices harder for the manipulee - forcing her to decline an annoying task in the context of a faculty meeting, say, or to air interpersonal conflicts in a situation in which she feels socially constrained. The list would also include various maneuvers familiar to teachers dealing with students - teachers, that is, in the role of manipulee - along with other cases of "the tyranny of the weak": attempting to put someone in a position, for instance, of either taking abuse in a wimpish fashion or responding in a way that would be seen as aggressive, in a group likely to identify with the manipulator. But there are also cases of private interaction that rest on putting the manipulee in a position calling for supportive behavior - in response to tears or expressions of vanity or sales-hype, say - where refusing to supply what is wanted would come out in the social situation as an unsympathetic rebuff.

For immediate purposes, the point about all these cases is that the manipulee might well endorse, at least in general terms, those traits of her own that the maneuver depends on. These include politeness, sympathy, reserve, and the like - and in some further cases, moral values or a sense of responsibility: we should not forget guilt-manipulation, including a variant directed toward getting the manipulee to take responsibility in forward-looking terms (for a student's inability to cope with course material, say). Any entry on the standard list of personal virtues might be exploited as a way of painting someone into a moral corner.

Just when and to what extent manipulation may be justified by powerlessness - or for that matter, by reasonable uses of power - is another complex issue. The suggestion of this paper is simply that such maneuvers are prima facie objectionable from the standpoint of the manipulee. However, we can also see at this point that the nature of the objection, as a violation of the assumptions on which we extend trust, may be something that compromises the moral worth of an interpersonal relationship and thus at least qualifies such claim as a group might otherwise have on the loyalty and commitment of the manipulee.

The issue depends both on reasonable expectations of individuals and on what sort of relationship is in question - what individuals would reasonably expect in entering into it. Consider "good cop/bad cop" maneuvers, first in the cases they literally refer to, where the idea is to get a suspect to flee gratefully to the good cop as a refuge from the bad. The manipulee might not have a reasonable objection to such tactics where he is someone who gives signs of being intractable to more straightforward means of persuasion. If not, though, he can legitimately resent a failure of respect for him as a person capable of responding appropriately to identifiable reasons.

Where the labor is divided, he has a complaint against the good cop as well as the bad. To shift to less literal uses of "good cop/bad cop" tactics: there is growing attention in emotions research and related fields to "bullying" or "mobbing" in the workplace, and to institutions that sponsor or at least tolerate such abuse. ⁽¹⁴⁾ Supplying an alternative - a good cop to flee to - would not clearly get them off the hook. In any case, an individual boss with a variable enough personality can supply both cops on his own.

For a more purely manipulative case (without actual episodes of bullying behavior), consider a boss who simply insists on describing onerous tasks he assigns as alternatives to even worse tasks he might have assigned instead. In a variant case reported by a student, employees were also made to speak in language that suggested they had volunteered for any jobs they took on. Whether or not justified in context, such tactics would naturally lead to alienation and suspicion - at a minimum, some eye-rolling - on the part of employees.

In what sense are the tactics in question unfair? The main problem in this case, and what it brings out about the others discussed above, is that one of the requirements imposed by the boss on employees is that the terms of exchange (just what is being done for whom, and why) be kept inexplicit - off the bargaining table, where they might be subjected to scrutiny and disagreement. If the terms were made explicit, some of the cases would reduce to cases of inappropriate pressure and be subject to objection on those grounds. Some, on the other hand, might be quite appropriate. But it is hard for the manipulee in context to tell which is which - or to raise an objection, if he does know - and that is the point of the maneuver. Keeping the terms of exchange inexplicit need not hide them from view, but it bans them from open discussion in a way designed to make them harder to challenge. In the case just described, part of the deal is that the boss must be treated as a benefactor, even where he is actually dispensing burdens.

As long as the manipulee's appropriate complaint in these cases is left in the language of rational autonomy, indifference may be a likely response on the part of a manipulator. Why should he care about treating the manipulee as a deliberator capable of deciding on the basis of reasons? What is added by a reference to trust is not just an admirable feature of interpersonal relationships but also something that the manipulee has in his power to withhold, if he does not endorse the terms of interaction. It is something the manipulator needs, at least to some extent, to continue operating. This is a reason why talk of trust actually favors contract terminology.

Stated in terms of trust, the objection to manipulation would be that it betrays the sort of trust taken for granted in certain interpersonal interactions. Athough this is a prima facie objection only, from the standpoint of the manipulee, it affects what the group can ask of him. In some relationships or on some matters the manipulee either forfeits or waives considerations of rational autonomy. Perhaps one could not live reasonably without waiving them in at least some contexts - though we might accuse those who waive them in inappropriate contexts of a failure of self-respect. But in a context where interpersonal trust depends on mutual respect among deliberating agents, manipulation is unfair insofar as the manipulator takes it upon himself to dictate some of the terms of contract by controlling how the other party frames and assesses his options.

To sum up briefly the argument of this paper: manipulation does not fit squarely into the usual categories of interference with freedom or autonomy, namely coercion and deception. It overlaps with both of these, but the objection to it seems to involve more fundamentally a kind of unfairness in setting up the terms of social exchange. As an interference with rational self-governance, the problem with manipulation is not just that it fails to respect some notion of personal separateness or boundaries between persons but rather that it undermines a basic assumption of interpersonal trust in groups that make claims on their members on grounds of fraternity among reasoning agents. Appeal is made here to a communitarian ideal, but it depends on appropriate respect for individuals.

1. 1. This paper benefitted from comments by David DeGrazia, Gregory Ealick, Karen Jones, Michelle Mason, and Brian Ramsay.

2. 2. See Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (New York: Modern Library, 2001), pp. 14ff.

3. 3. See P. S. Greenspan, "Behavior Control and Freedom of Action,"Philosophical Review, 87 (1978), 225-40, esp. 236ff.

4. 4. This example, along with the talk of "masked" agency below, is due to Karen Jones (personal communication).

5. . See Greenspan, "Behavior Control and Freedom of Action," p. 237.

6. . See esp. P. F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London, 1959), ch. 3, and "Freedom and Resentment,"Proceedings of the British Academy, 48, pp. 1-25.

7. 7. Cf. Gerald Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), e.g. pp. 15ff. Note that, unlike the Tom Sawyer case, the manipulee's reasons for action in this case might well refer to the manipulator's reactions (the kind of harmony with others' feelings that is implied by the notion of "connecting" with the class).

8. . Understood in purely positive terms, "enticement" would seem to misrepresent what is involved in typical cases, e.g. of seduction. There is a need that enticement brings into play, in the sense that involves seeing something as hard to do without. The novel makes it clear that Tom Sawyer's maneuver trades on calling up various negative emotions, not just representing what he is doing as a lot of fun.

9. -

10. 10. David Estlund brings up such cases in "I Will If You Will: Leveraged Enhancements and Distributive Justice" (unpublished). For an earlier discussion cf. Claudia Mills, "Goodness as a Weapon," Journal of Philosophy, 92 (1995), 485-499.

11. 11. Cf. Dworkin, Theory and Practice of Autonomy.

12. 12. Annette Baier, "Trust and Antitrust," Ethics, 96 (1986), 231-260; page-references below refer to the reprint of this article in John Deigh, Ethics and Personality: Essays in Moral Psychology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 11-40.

13. 13. See Baier, "Trust and Antitrust," esp. pp. 37-38.

14. . For a popular book on the subject see Garie Namie and Ruth Namie, The Bully at Work (Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2000).