Manipulation at Work (M)

A-Z Series at Psychology@Work

Manipulation at Work? Really?!

In over a decade as an organizational psychologist and educator, I’ve often taught students how to positively influence others—whether as leaders or negotiators. Yet every now and then, a curious student raises their hand and asks, "Dr. Sinha, are you teaching us how to manipulate people?" My first reaction is always an emphatic "Absolutely not!" But this question has come up enough times to prompt some serious reflection (and mild anxiety!). Let's unpack what exactly we mean by manipulation and how it differs from genuine influence or control.

What Exactly is Manipulation? 🤔

When we say "manipulation," images of cunning masterminds or sneaky coworkers usually come to mind. But interestingly, the term first emerged in 1827, simply meaning "to handle skillfully by hand"—like pottery or cooking (or handling kids on a sugar high!). Over time, though, it evolved into something darker: skillfully managing people to serve one's selfish interests.

Trying to distinguish between influence and manipulation is a bit like trying to tell the difference between a supportive friend offering exercise advice versus someone deliberately making you feel insecure so you'll buy their fitness program. Both might result in you working out more, but the intentions, methods, and outcomes for your wellbeing couldn't be more different!

In simple terms, manipulation is sneaky. It involves exploiting, deceiving, or even emotionally controlling someone else for personal gain. Unlike genuine influence, which can be healthy and mutual, manipulation is self-serving, exploitative, and often concealed behind charm, misdirection, lies, or subtle coercion, to hide the manipulator's ill intentions.

What then is Influence, Control, and Power? ⚡

Influence denotes a neutral term to indicate a person's capacity to have an effect on another person. Influence on its own is neither negative nor positive. What makes influence a manipulation is an underhanded and exploitative effect on others which is driven by the ill intentions of the manipulator. All influence need not be manipulation.

You can influence others for good causes. You can influence politicians, community members, and your own family and friends to adopt fairness, justice, and honesty.

Control, on the other, is an action or behavior that limits another person's activity. Influence can happen by encouraging others to do more or less of something, while control is about creating constraints, order, and rules to stop something from happening. Both control and influence are more likely when a person has power over you.

Power is the asymmetric control of valued resources in any social relationship. For example, you could say that I have power in the classroom as a teacher over my students. That may be true because I may be seen by my students as possessing some valued resources more than them (i.e., I have asymmetric more knowledge on the topic; ability to grade their assignments; credibility of being the professor). Let us say this is true. Now, if I have this potential power – then I could use it to "Control" behaviors (not allow anyone to come in late; restrict talking in class, etc.) and/or "Influence" them (by creating a climate for learning; encouraging voice and questions).

As a teacher, I could potentially "Manipulate" my students. Let's say I had the ill intention of manipulating them to give me good teaching evaluations. I could engage in tactics like "superficial charm" (praising and boosting their self-esteem beyond what is true) or "Comparisons" (mentioning how they are more special than any other class I have had in my career). The reason I am giving these examples and making it personal to myself is to show you that when you have to differentiate between "control," "influence," and "manipulation," you have to make judgments about both the "tactics used" and the "motives and intentions" of the person involved.

The Machinery of Manipulation

In the workplace context, manipulators can exist at any level (subordinates, colleagues, or bosses). To help you identify manipulation, here I outline some of the known ways manipulators use tactics to change your perceptions of them. You can know that your manager is manipulating you when they use the following tactics to get you to do things:

1.      Casting self-doubt: This is when your manager overtly nags you, criticizes you, or verbally abuses you for not doing something. It can also take the form of gas-lighting, where they make you question your own beliefs about yourself negatively. This type of behavior is what is a form of incivility. It can also manifest as passive-aggressiveness, microaggressions, or silent treatment (ignoring and avoiding you) targeted at making you feel guilty and casting self-doubt about your skills to make you do things differently. Often this tactic is used to make you "stop doing something." For example, suppose the manager reacts like this when you do something independent of them. In that case, you are likely to be motivated to stop working independently on new ideas to avoid upsetting the manager, which is how they can manipulate you.

2.      Superficial Charm: This is when your manager uses praise, compliments, small favors, and excessive public recognition to get you to accept responsibilities beyond your role – i.e., to start doing more things. Often public praise and glory followed by requests to do additional work is a way the "Charm" manipulation tactic can manifest. This is when you feel obligated to reciprocate with a "yes" even if saying yes is not conducive to your success and mental health.

3.    Comparisons: This is when your manager constantly talks about the strengths of others in front of you or discusses some form of an ideal employee to indicate to you the role model you should be emulating. This subtle approach can make you feel inadequate and push you to do things their way.

4.    Misinformation: This is when your manager feeds you with misinformation about others in your workplace and makes you develop negative perceptions of others. Often manipulators criticize others and repeatedly provide you with alternative facts in ways that you cannot verify. The more they repeat the misinformation, the more that information feels authentic to you. This is one way for the manipulator to build trust with you and make you feel fortunate that you are working for them and not those other people they tell you about.

Who is likely to manipulate? 🧠

Studies have shown that different personality traits influence the manipulation strategies we adopt. For example, those who are high on extraversion (sociable, gregarious) and have an increased need for monitoring their public appearance tend to use more varied influence tactics. Research shows that people who are high on emotional intelligence (i.e., able to read the room in terms of others' needs and emotions); have a heightened sense of self (narcissistic, self-serving beliefs) are more likely to use manipulative strategies. At work, these manipulators are often called "narcissists."

I'll confess something slightly embarrassing: Despite teaching about manipulation for years, I recently found myself saying 'yes' to joining yet another committee at work when I was already overwhelmed. The superficial charm tactic works even on those of us who study it! It took my colleague asking, "Didn't you just say that you are already on many other committees?" for me to recognize what had happened. We're all works in progress when it comes to psychological immunity.

How to know you are dealing with a manipulator? 🚩

Your manager at work may be genuinely praising you because they think you work hard and have talent. Your manager may be ignoring you because they are genuinely hurt about something you did. If you read the manipulation tactics I mention above, there can be instances when people act in those ways not because they have some ulterior ill motive but because that is just how they feel. So, how then are you to know if you are being manipulated?

The detection of manipulation lies in how often these manipulation tactic patterns repeat at work. If you find your manager always using this approach, you may be dealing with a manipulator. Another way to know if you are dealing with psychological manipulation is to see your manager's reaction when you confront them about how a specific behavior makes you uncomfortable.

A key characteristic of manipulators is that they will minimize their behaviors and impact on you even when you tell them that it troubles you. They may even deny that they ever did what you say they did. They may sometimes even interrupt you when they feel that you may be trying to address their manipulative behaviors and may preemptively threaten you either mildly or overtly.

Another way manipulators minimize your concerns is by playing the victim card or using humor/sarcasm to make you doubt your own perception of being manipulated. If all else fails, manipulators are likely to feign innocence and pretend to be confused about your feedback. If you see these signs, you can be sure that they engage in manipulation.

Pro Tip for Spotting Manipulation ⭐

When you feel confused after an interaction ('Did I just agree to something I didn't want to do?'), try the quick replay technique: Mentally replay the conversation while imagining you're watching it happen to someone else. Our brains often detect manipulation more easily when we're not in the emotional center of it. This slight perspective shift can activate your psychological immune system before the manipulation takes hold.

How can we minimize one's vulnerability to manipulation? 🛡️

What is unfortunate is that manipulation is most likely to occur in relationships where the person knows you well. Research shows that close relationships are more susceptible to manipulation because the parties involved know each other's vulnerabilities, desires, needs, and weaknesses. It would be a lonely world if we distanced ourselves from everyone because we feared being manipulated. The best idea is to learn some techniques to lower your susceptibility (boosting your cognitive immunity) to manipulation and check in with yourself and the other person every once in a while to assess if certain behaviors you have noticed are inclining towards manipulation.

Assess the motives of the person 🔎

Remember not all acts of influence where someone wants to persuade you or affect you is manipulation. You need to be looking out for the intention behind the influence actions. Here are some "motives/intentions" you need to look out for – if you find yourself answering yes to most of these questions – you may be dealing with a manipulator.

Three questions you can use to detect and assess manipulation:

1. Is the person trying to control or influence you merely to make personal gains for themselves? Are they trying to make you move away from your own needs and desires and make you focus solely on their own goals? Are they trying to reduce your choices by shooting down all those linked to your needs and goals?

2. Is the person driven by superiority and a strong need for control? Does this person want you and others to accept that they are inferior to them to maintain some power imbalance in the relationship?

3. Is this person someone who does not have integrity (i.e., lies about small matters; disregards moral values and rules in general; is morally disengaged), and has acted maliciously with others?

Assess your own vulnerabilities to manipulation 🪞

If you find yourself answering yes to the above three questions and you have noticed that the manipulator uses the tactics I have mentioned before – then you are most likely the target of manipulation at work. Another way you can get out of this cycle is by understanding your own vulnerabilities that may have made you susceptible to manipulation. When you know and accept these vulnerabilities, you can work on moving beyond them and protecting yourself in the future.

Five questions to detect and assess your vulnerability to manipulation:

1. Do you have a high need to please others? Are you always concerned about how this one person thinks and feels about you- do you seek their approval and acceptance more than others?

2. Are you often concerned about not upsetting people? Do you do things to avoid this person from getting angry or annoyed?

3. Do you find it difficult to say "no"? When this person asks for something, do you find yourself saying "yes" even when you want to say "no"?

4. Do you find yourself justifying the motives and putting a positive spin on their actions? When others point out this person's flaws, do you find yourself denying their ill motives and always giving them the benefit of the doubt by coming up with some potential logical reason for their manipulative behaviors?

5. Do you feel you have no option but to remain in your current relationships? Do you need to sustain and protect relationships even when they are hurting you?

What can you do if you are sure that you are a victim of manipulation? 🛠️

The questions I have outlined above are merely the first steps to detect, identify, name, and assess the motives of the potential manipulator and your own vulnerabilities. The next step is to do something about it. To start the process of getting out of manipulative relationships and protecting yourself from future manipulations, you can do the following:

1. Deliberate on these questions and collect evidence: We can live within manipulative relationships because we do not stop to notice it and deliberately collect and evaluate the evidence. You need to keep track of the pattern and see the tactics' frequency on you. The answer to whether you are being manipulated can never come from another person. But, others can notice things that you may unconsciously deny or overlook. Ask a friend, share with close others to gather evidence, and create counterfactuals for what you observe. Evaluate the reliability and validity of the data you are using to make judgments about others.

2. Give weight to your own instinct: Often, the victims of manipulation know deep in their minds that there is something off. But they let go of that feeling when it arises. When you are confused or annoyed – it is an emotional cue that you need to stop and deliberate. Even if you trust easily and see the positive in others, there is no reason for you to assume that everyone is indeed trustworthy and cheerful even when all evidence speaks against it. Calibrating your trust judgments is a sign of maturity and can protect you from manipulators. You are ruled by your assumptions and personality when you always go with your "default" answer and assessment – sometimes, it helps to question your default assumptions about others.

A Final Reflection 💭

So, to answer my student's question more thoughtfully: No, teaching influence skills is not teaching manipulation—provided we emphasize the ethical foundations that separate the two. Understanding the psychological machinery of how humans think, feel, and act can allow us to influence others in ways that make relationships flourish. It becomes manipulation only when that knowledge is weaponized to exploit others.

What about you? Have you encountered manipulation tactics in your workplace? Or perhaps you've caught yourself accidentally using one? I'd love to hear your experiences in the comments below!