The Manipulation Pattern

When I was serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Church was using a pinkish, spiral-bound book that contained some training to help young missionaries learn how to interact with people better. The book contained some instruction on how to help people make and keep commitments to change their life. These commitment aides were collectively known as "The Commitment Pattern." Mention that phrase and thousands of former missionaries across the world will give a loving little chuckle.

As you learned about The Commitment Pattern, the book would give you various little vignettes that demonstrated "effective" and "less effective" examples of using the principles taught to help people change. One "less effective" example came to be known to me and my fellow missionaries as "The Manipulation Pattern." In this example the missionary was trying to help someone make a commitment to be baptized into the Church. The missionary in the example says something like this, "You love God, don't you? You want to do what He asks of you, don't you? God wants us all to be baptized. Will you be baptized on such and such a date?" Clearly "less effective." The missionary manipulates the person by first presenting things that any religious person would answer yes to. Then he attaches those first two ideas to the action that he wants the person to take, using guilt to pressure them into acquiescing and belittling their God-given dignity and freedom to choose.

The Manipulation Pattern is alive and well in today's world. There are so many different schools of thought or institutions that enter into the media, the public square, or personal conversations looking for coverts to their cause. They use statements or concepts that nearly everyone would agree on, then they attach those things to their cause. Here are just a few examples:

1. You care about freedom, don't you?
2. You care about the poor, don't you?
3. You care about the environment, don't you?
4. You care about fairness, don't you?
5. You wouldn't judge anyone, would you?

They then go on to say in effect, "We care about 'principle X.' So, if you care about that, then you will agree with us and our ideas. And if you don't agree with us, then you are a bad person that does not care about 'principle X'." Be wary of people who try to guilt you into agreeing with their position on a given issue or topic. The Manipulation Pattern is as wrong now as it ever has been.