Language Manipulation In Health Magazines

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword……………………………………………………………………………………….4

Chapter I – What is Linguistic Manipulation?………………………………………………………………….6
1.1 On language manipulation………………………………………………………………..10
1.1.1 Defining the Concept……………………………………………………………………11
1.1.2 Areas of Manipulation/Use……………………………………………………………..13
1.1.3 Features and Patterns of Language Manipulation………………………………………14
1.2. On Journalese…………………………………………………………………………….17
1.2.1 Characteristics of magazine discourse………………………………………………….19
1.2.2 Health Magazines Under Scrutiny………………………………………………………20
1.3 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………….23

Chapter II – ”Positive” Manipulation in Health Magazines…………………………………..28
2.1 On the Concept of Positive Manipulation…………………………………………………34
2.2 Cases in Point……………………………………………………………………………..36
2.3 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………….38

Chapter III – ”Negative” Manipulation in Health Magazines………………………….……39
3.1 What is Negative Manipulation?……………………………………………………………………………40
3.2 Text-Level Analyses………………………………………………………………….….42
3.3 General Conclusions………………………………………………………………….….47

Conclusions……………………………………………………….………………………….50
References……………………………………………………………………………………60

Foreword

The use of language as a tool of manipulation is probably as old as man. And today, because of the media attention needed to maintain power, is an essential strategy. In our time, the above call “deferred compensation” in a roster that continues to pay a dismissed treasurer who threatens to tell secrets: “Etiquette health moderator” to pay for going to the doctor of public health; “Temporary cessation of cohabitation” to a divorce in the royal family; “Slowdown” to a brutal economic crisis; “Exceptional measures to encourage the taxation of undeclared income” tax breaks to the rich; “Ministry of Defence” that is responsible for sending the army to other countries and “competitive devaluation of wages” to decreases in salaries.

There are so many social areas in which the speech is directed to manipulation. From childhood, we are conditioned to understand the world from our parents lexicon imposed on us. Some psychiatrists said that every family determined, first, what can be said, that is, what aspects of community life can be revealed and what should remain hidden and what can be denied because it produced fear. Secondly, they are imposing the speech of those who are no taboo subjects: the right language to name the world. From this theory, many researchers have determined how the familiar jargon gained influence on the mental health of people. An example: in families of adolescents with eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, etc.), more prone to obesity to name a derogatory nicknames and associate thinness with positive adjectives.

Psychiatrist J.A.C. Brown in his book Persuasion Techniques, propaganda to brainwashing states that it “attempts to change the opinions of others which are older than history and originated, it must be assumed, with the development of language (…) thoughts are created and fundamentally change through the spoken or written word, but in the so-called brainwashing words, it can be supplemented by physical abuse and commercial advertising music or pleasant images, it is clear that even in these cases, the main weapons are verbal nature, or any symbolic case and that the desired results are psychological in nature”.

Family, the intellectual world and politics are only three everyday examples where the language is used as a weapon of manipulation.

There are many more: the couple, mental health, the business world, spirituality, advertising, journalism … One of the functions of language is persuasion: we speak or write, in many cases, to convince others of our theories. And it is very easy to end up hogging that need for our text and making us forget other important functions, as transmitting information or to empathize with others. It is the moment when language becomes a weapon of manipulation. Therefore it is important to be alert and know when we are listening or reading a person whose main motivation is to change our ideas. Keep in mind some key features of the language can help us awaken our mind at the time.

The language of a manipulator is fraught with emotions. An example is the abuse of words such as freedom, independence, and creativity: teen clothing ads, means of communication and self-help books are full of phrases that use such words in any context because they are very effective in activating our emotions and we are closer to pronounce them. Although it seems paradoxical that those who want to convince us of something to appeal to our creativity, freedom and independence, if we are feeling (not thinking) we are convinced of it.

The manipulative language frequently uses inadequate phrases, vacuous expressions that seem to say something but in which none of the recipients understand the same. Associations of nice words such as “always tried and my approach is not just living day to day. My actions have always been guided by ethical values ​​that are important to humans” are examples of sentences that can be subscribed by serial murderers, corrupt politicians or abusers.

No argues regarding the best way to manipulate others: to use rhetorical strategies to persuade without giving reasons. There are thousands of oratorical or written tricks for that purpose. An example is the irony. Repeat what someone else has said a sarcastic smile while allowing that individual to take points without an outlined argument. Written it has the same effect without exposing one reason for establishing a critical judgment. The language avoids manipulative reasoning.

The choice of words is still crucial: naming the reality control how we understand the world; that is why I chose this topic with reference to health magazines, due to all the magazines that I have read in the past and the results seen on others around me.

My paper consists in three chapters which include a chapter on linguistic manipulation, one on “positive” manipulation in health magazines and the final chapter on the “negative” manipulation in health magazines, each of them including from three to eight sub-chapters, ending the paper with conclusions and references.

Chapter I

What is Linguistic Manipulation?

More than twenty-four centuries ago, the sophist Gorgias of Leontini (490-380 BC.), founder of the rhetoric concept, stood for the language, the power that defines the human being, the level of divine realities: „The word is a great sovereign, with very small and very insignificant works. „ And experience has been historically showing the success of this intuition about the power of language to the point that, as Heidegger wrote, „Words are often the most powerful things and made history.” Therefore, as already he warned the English poet ST Coleridge (1772-1834), „there are cases where you can learn more and more value in the history of a word, the history of war.”

For several decades, language theorists consider the linguistic behaviour as an action. We know that, in fact, there are actions that can only be accomplished by word such as apologize, promise something, apologizing, complaining, thank you, etc. Austin said that can create relevant social relations (as appointments, commitments, partnerships, etc.), by the persons or institutions, to say the right words at the right place. And in the context of the Christian religion, the words uttered by who administers the sacraments effect what they signify: „I baptize you …” „This is my body …” „I absolve you from your sins …”

But also from classical Greece they have been denouncing the abuses of language, handling, with the consequent effect on the devaluation of the word. Plato's dialogues teach us to recognize that perhaps something can be beautifully said, sharply expressed, written hauntingly, and yet serving essentially be false, petty, miserable and shameful.

In particular, it is often associated with verbal bombast and preciousness with seduction and perversion of language: „Those who skilfully play with words soon make them light” (W. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, III). „He successfully mass is unthinkable without remarkable alloy demagoguery,” said literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki.

Many centuries before text studies (critical text analysis and other contemporary trends) denounced fallacies and manipulations in the uses of language, Christian ethics and moral treated shelled, referring to the eighth commandment of the Mosaic law, a bulky catalogue of „sins of the tongue” (or „word”): perjury, lying, perjury, rash judgment, slander, defamation, slander, flattery, flattery, etc. Some have wanted to see in these enumerations and critical text analysis (Plantin 2009: 57).

The lies and manipulation have always been, therefore, a parasite of language. Proof of this, in recent history; have been the political regimes of the twentieth century (some still exist) built on the Marxist or Nazi ideology, which developed a refined system of propaganda, based on linguistic manipulation. The Nazis coined, among others, the ultimate solution expressions, special treatment, and transfer to describe the genocide of six million Jews. The communist regimes, popular democracy, social rehabilitation, socialist paradise, etc. to justify the removal of around 100 million lives; in China, laogai, which literally means „reform through labour 'really means' imprisonment'; etc. Linguistic cosmetic subjected to ordinary language those schemes have been evident in many literary and scientific works. Valga cite just a few names: Viktor Klemperer (Lingua Tertii Imperii, 1947), George Orwell (with his 1984 novel, published in 1949), the Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago, 1973) and Herta Müller, Primo Levi (If This Is a Man, 1998).

Linguistic manipulation is another important chapter in nationalist ideologies, sometimes contaminated expressions used by terrorists. Without leaving Spain, few have not fallen into the trap of calling to blackmail and extortion „revolutionary tax”; or accepting expressions like „ceasefire” „ceasefire” („The armed organization ETA has declared a permanent truce”), the „peace process” or the words and expressions „war”, „military” command released , street violence, applied to persons or criminal actions.

Moreover, on the basis of the three great masters of suspicion (Marx, Freud, Nietzsche), the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno), with his critical view (read 'Marxist') speech (Hammersley 1997: 238 , 240-242) and deconstructive or next to them thinkers like Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Paul de Man, Richard Rorty, etc., his view of language as a product of a bourgeois mentality, full of concealing fallacies of various forms of subjugation, domination and inequality, have developed a number of strategies (critical text analysis) designed to „emancipate” from „mechanisms domination and cover operating under the surface communication systems, systematization of knowledge, legal and social organization, religious institutionalization, etc. „(Vigo 2005: 275). Result of which is the current predominance in the intellectual circles of the West, of the hermeneutics of suspicion against the hermeneutics of trust (or benevolence or charity).

If all illegitimate extrapolations of Neuroscience are added, we find that many essential everyday words like love, beauty, freedom, truth, courage, loyalty, friendship … have been emptied of content; such concepts are, basically, to an orthodoxy installed in the hermeneutics of suspicion, mere misunderstandings. Cinema has also helped to extend the culture of suspicion. George Orwell already scored in his war diaries: „Nowadays, whatever is done or said, one looks for hidden motives and instantly assumes words mean anything except That what they appear to mean” (April 27, 1942). There is a „crisis of confidence” that it does not escape …”

In recent decades, under the influence of the Frankfurt School and the American Anthropological Association, it has developed, especially in the academic and journalistic EE environments. UU., what is called „political correctness” (PC or mark-up). This trend stems from the idea that if we change the language that some minorities consider discriminatory, change reality (Martinez 2008: 15, Morant Marco 2007). The current radical leftist liberal ideology (feminism, etc.) promotes and nurtures these approaches widely.

Some linguists have emphasized the contrast between what is considered „politically correct” and „linguistically correct” the difference between political correctness and idiomatic language or correction. While linguistic correctness is routed to maintain or strengthen the unity of the standard language with a view to effective communication, usually outside of any ideological consideration, the intent of political correctness is to eradicate attitudes that are considered harmful by the pathway replace words in common use with newly coined neologisms: „Change the words, and things change would become the philosophical-political of many who, not so long ago slogan, still convinced that, revolutionizing the economic structure, be amended accordingly art, law, the mentality of the people, in short, the „superstructure”. In this new consciousness or awareness, correction of reality „(: 39 Martinez 2008) would follow. These are words or expressions -of commonly used by governments, politicians and the media that displace judged denominations „wrong”: Maghreb instead of Moor user of addictive substances instead of junky, rather than sub-Saharan black , collateral damage rather than civilian casualties, timely capture water rather than transfer, instead of slowing economic crisis, rather than blind, repatriation rather than expulsion, ethnic cleansing rather than racist killing, etc.

Consequently, the process of political correctness is also different from that of linguistic correctness; it „is almost always selective. […] Selects prohibits prescribed in some cases and in others, but never any linguistic fact invented „(Martinez 2008: 52-53). The method of political correctness is, instead, substitute: it is proposed to replace terms of the common language „for names of newly minted, unprecedented, devised in cabinets politically correct language” (Martinez 2008: 53). But this way, to emancipate the vocabulary commonly accepted social use, the PC language, rather than communicate, actually does the opposite: excommunicate.

When we speak of politically correct language is often argued, as an example star, expression abortion (IVE acronym). As is evident, the interrupt is a mean. You should use deletion, cancellation or elimination of pregnancy rather because interrupt, in Castilian, has a different meaning, depending on the language dictionaries; namely „make [something, especially a fact] ceases to exist or occur during a certain time and space” (Seco and others, Dictionary of the present Spanish, 1999; emphasis added). Also in the other meanings of the verb interrupt the fact „stop doing for some time what it is doing” is essential. But the lexical precision seems not to matter to those who use the euphemism abortion. It is, thus, an emotional use of language (the adjective voluntary is not idle); have a romantic, seductive use, designed to awaken certain moods (favourable, of course, in this case) on citizens. If such periphrastic expression that contravenes otherwise, the most basic linguistic economy, has had the honour of spending to be called a law passed by Parliament (Law on sexual and reproductive health and abortion, 2010 ), it is not surprising that abortion clinics, which make a killing are covered in the license giving the law to eliminate human beings, centres or reproductive health clinics (!) or clinics call themselves IVE.

Another fertile ground in politically correct expressions is affected by the ideology of „gender”. In Spanish the word gender refers to something (the grammatical distinction masculine / feminine) is cultural, conventional, and arbitrary even: we say that has female hand that foot is male, that is female frog and toad is masculine, etc. Which comes to agree with the core of gender ideology, which asserts that sexual identity of people is a cultural thing? In the words of Simone de Beauvoir: „Woman is not born; it does”. It can be a man with female body, and vice versa, according to Judi Butler, one representative of feminism. If a man or a woman is considered a cultural thing, it emancipated biology, the term gender (that is, as we have seen, cultural character) is better than sex. It did not help that the Royal Spanish Academy ruled against the expression of gender violence, proposing to replace it with domestic violence or gender when the government announced that it would submit a comprehensive bill against gender violence. (By the way, say here perhaps small understatement violence, as when calling terrorists „violent”).

While the ultimate goal is another, which is achieved in fact this measure is to sign the death certificate of the family and marriage words plain, as they have now been emptied of its contents.

In the cases that we analyzed as examples of manipulation replacing ordinary words of language, meaning commonly admitted terms coined by the appropriate cabinet (ideological, political, institutional, etc.) design occurs. But the breakdown of the relationship between language and reality involves the loss of its communicative character. That was the insistent warning the sophists Plato: the language that is emancipated from the object is for that reason necessarily a language without addressee (Pieper 1980: 219). Who goes to someone with a mendacious language „is not really about the other as an equal, not properly respected him as a person” (Pieper 1980: 222); contrary to what the language fails to communicate something to pursue other purposes; ultimately, the word becomes an instrument of power: either to flatter, to sell or to submit.

1.1 On language manipulation

Since antiquity, philosophers and orators have had a primary concern regarding the study of language in order to reveal the secrets of its power and due to man's capacity to communicate is a sine qua non for success in any field. The specific feature of humanity to communicate through words is anything „but sublime”, the words giving the opportunity to give concrete form of interpersonal communication – as tools of thought as emotional „self-discharge” (Roman Jakobson).

Lately communication sciences deal more than the power of words, the consequences of using words in communication. Effect of words in different social environment can be beneficial, but it can be harmful when misuse of words (by distortions semantic change usual meanings excess foreign words instead of the traditional hide / mask reality) leads to diversion communication. The beneficial effects of words are evident particularly in the negotiations, which avoids the sometimes wars or other solutions violence in conflict, but also in therapy orally and in relations between friends, lovers and even the formulas of politeness („small words”), passing unnoticed at times, but without which human relations „squeak” like a swing ungreased On the other hand, the language serves to lie sometimes to persuasion to manipulation. In every age, man has used language to share the truth or lying. „Woe to those who say evil good and good evil, who mixed with the light and the darkness light with darkness,” said the prophet Isaiah. Since ancient times, the powerful have turned to shades hidden language to dominate their peers. Science itself is a field of power and manipulation of language is a form of exercise it despite the opinion of those who give priority to science. Lying gradually becomes insufficient, feeling the need to introduce a new type of language (is what George Orwell called „non-language”), which appears as an indispensable euphemism.

Handling for many of us is a taboo word, preferred terms of influencing, negotiation or persuasion. There is even talk about so-called „positive manipulation” or „influence with integrity”, invoking arguments like: „We have to accept the obvious: handling inherence in any communication of any kind, communication with himself, another, with others … „ (Erica Guilan).

Linguistic manipulation can be considered also as an influential instrument of political rhetoric because political text is primarily focused on persuading people to take specified political actions or to make crucial political decisions. To convince the potential electorate in present time societies, politics basically dominates in the mass media, which leads to creating new forms of linguistic manipulation, e. g. modified forms of press conferences and press statements, updated texts in slogans, application of catch phrases, phrasal allusions, the connotative meanings of words, a combination of language and visual imagery. To put it differently, language plays a significant ideological role because it is an instrument by means of which the manipulative intents of politicians for instance, become apparent.

1.1.1 Defining the Concept

It is important to study language as a tool used by politicians to persuade the public with their assertion of power. In fact language is ideological as speakers can speak in a way that supports their interests. What are the mechanisms of power inherent in language? Language is a powerful instrument employed by leaders. They use linguistic strategies including linguistic manipulation as an influential instrument of rhetoric persuasion for audiences for a specific action. To argue in favour of ideologies and goals, leaders deploy a broad range of manipulative and rhetorical devices at the phonological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic and textual levels in the text or text.

Language is the most ancient persuasion device. The ability to use linguistic resources in accordance with the requirements of each communication type is a valuable skill in achieving personal or public goals. Manipulative language impulses the public either to do or not to do something and one of these two courses is always taken by politicians who address public assemblies. By way of an indirect manipulation of language, skilful speakers have traditionally been able to influence the preconceptions, views, ambitions and fears of the public, to the extent of causing people to accept false statements as true postulates, or even to support policies conflicting with their interests. Authority and the management of power have a strong association with politics. Fairclough (1989) and Thomans & Wareing (1999) study this connection and suggest that the best way for politicians to achieve the “consent” of the wide public –and hence, the necessary license to implement their policies– is to create an “ideology” and to have the public to willingly accept it as their own. According to this line of reasoning, the wide range of potential linguistic choices a politician can make to build up his or her text may have a crucial effect in shaping an ideology that will lead people to more easily accept his or her arguments. Leaders often play with the readers’ presuppositions and the activation of the pertinent mental schemata by selecting or evading certain lexical items or rhetoric strategies in order to increase the credibility of their assertions and to create and diffuse a particular ideology. This often allows most politicians’ claims to be deemed as self-evident within the piece of text they are embedded in, as they are conceived under the same ideology that has been created and nurtured throughout the development of the same discursive event.

Metaphor is a figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object. Metaphor is a type of analogy and is closely related to other rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via association, comparison or resemblance including allegory, hyperbole, and simile. Metaphor helps to simplify concepts in the complex domain of politics. Kumaran Rajandran (2013) argues that metaphor can convey a particular ideology, separate or unite participants on a topic. A simile on the other hand states an explicit comparison by using the words like, as or than, such as: Blind as a bat or as fast as the wind1 An example for using metaphor is the one used in John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address in January 1961: “The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavour will light our country and all who serve it, and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not, what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” George W. Bush also uses a metaphor when (in a State of the Union address) he describes the American faith in freedom and democracy as “a seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations.”

The extract below is taken from speeches of Najib, the current Malaysian prime minister: “…this journey is a marathon and not a sprint” Another Metaphor is “Axis of Evil metaphor” that was used by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address in 2002 to represent Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. On the other hand, the Iranian leader Imam Khoemini used the metaphor „The Great Satan” as a derogatory epithet for the United States of America in some Iranian foreign policy statements.

The term was originally used by Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini in his speech on November 5, 1979 to describe the United States whom he accused of imperialism and the sponsoring of corruption throughout the world. Ayatollah Khomeini also occasionally used the term “Iblis” (the primary devil in Islam) as a metaphor to refer to the United States and other Western countries. For instance, many of the metaphors used in manipulative texts emphasize “faith” as a prominent factor to move the public and induce belief. It seems the leaders in Asian and Muslim countries make more use of the element of religion for the purpose of persuasion.

Repeating certain phrases helps to make the ideas contained in the speech sound like common scene to the audience. This repetition and emphasize will persuade the public to accept the ideas and the concepts that the politician tries to induce.

Repetition is one of the most effective rhetoric tools to activate the mental schemata. Manipulating these schemata creates an “ideology” and persuades the public to willingly accept it as their own.

A particular way of repetition is the “three part list” in which new ideas or information is presented three parts. The first part is supposed to initiate an argument, the second part emphasizes or responds to the first and the third part is a reinforcement of the first two and a sign that the argument is completed assisting the audience by suggesting when it is appropriate to applaud. Famous 3 parts is Churchill’s Blood, Sweat and Tears. Presenting statements in groups of three is appealing, thus, writers use three part lists to augment their arguments. Three-part structures and lists are memorable and resonant in many kinds of text.

1.1.2 Areas of Manipulation/Use

One of the features that are designated as indisputable society of the twentieth century and early twenty-first is the rise of consumerism and the desire for power over things and people. Among the most used way to get it is noteworthy media, especially television and advertising.

Domination and control over personal beings usually carried out by techniques of mind manipulation, which contains serious.

It is well known the strong influence of television in the mindset of the viewers and in shaping their lifestyles. This article is intended to alert and to reflect on the risks of manipulation to which they are subjected usually without being barely conscious. It begins by explaining the concept of manipulation in general, possible perpetrators and the intended aims and the main stages or systems through which he cam out, explaining handlers elements, mental paradigms, the strategic approaches most used and developed procedures that are used. Then it focuses on the notes of the current prevailing culture of the image and, above all, of the TV image, which includes both programming areas such as advertising.

Finally, some challenges are targeted for television viewers expect and want.

1.1.3 Features and Patterns of Language Manipulation

Before embarking on a more theoretical description and analysis of some data, we must be more explicit about the kind of manipulation that we want to study. As suggested, handling as we understand here, it is a communicative and interactional practice, in which the handler has control over other people, usually against their will or against their interests. In everyday use, the concept of manipulation has negative associations-the manipulation is bad-because such a practice violates social norms. Therefore, it should take into account that in the rest of the article, manipulation is a typical category of an observer, for example, a critical analyst and not necessarily a participant category: few users of a language called manipulative to his speeches.

Manipulation involves not only power, but specifically abuse of power, i.e. domination. In more specific terms, then, it involves the exercise of a form of illegitimate influence through text handlers make others believe and do things that are favourable to the manipulator and the manipulated harmful. In a semiotic sense of manipulation, this illegitimate influence can also be exercised with pictures, photos, movies or other media. Indeed, many contemporary forms of communication handling, for example, media, are multimodal, as is the case typically propaganda.

Without the negative associations, manipulation could be a form of persuasion (legitimate). The crucial difference here is that in persuading the partners are free to believe or act as they please, depending on whether or not to accept the arguments of those who persuade, while handling the receivers are assigned typically a paper more passive: they are victims of manipulation. This negative result of manipulative text typically occurs when receivers are not able to understand the real intentions or see the real consequences of the beliefs or actions advocated by the manipulator. This is the case especially when the recipients lack the specific knowledge that could be used to withstand handling. A well-known example is the text of the government or the media about immigration and immigrants, so that ordinary citizens blame the poor state of the economy, such as unemployment, immigrants and not policies government.

Manipulation is a social phenomenon, especially because it involves interaction and abuse of power among social groups and actors, a cognitive phenomenon because manipulation always involves manipulating the minds of the participants and a discursive phenomenon -semiotic because manipulation is exercised through oral or written word and visual messages. As was said earlier, none of these approaches can be reduced to the other and all three are needed in an integrative theory, which also establish explicit associations between different dimensions of manipulation.

To understand and analyze the manipulative text is important to first examine its social context. We assumed previously that one of the characteristics of handling, such as different persuasion, is that it includes power and domination. An analysis of the size to exposure involves the type of control that some agents or social groups exert on others. We have also assumed that this control is first and foremost a mind control, i.e., beliefs receptor and indirectly control the receptor actions based on these beliefs manipulated.

In order to exercise this control over others, however, the social partners need, firstly, to satisfy certain personal and social criteria that allow them to influence others. In this article I will limit my analysis to social criteria, ignoring the influence of psychological, such as personality traits, intelligence, knowledge factors, etc. In other words, here I do not care what could be a manipulative personality or other personal variation of the ways in which other people manipulate, social conditions for manipulative control, therefore, it should be formulated in terms of group membership, institutional position, profession, material or symbolic resources and other factors that define the power of the group or its members. Thus, parents can handle their children because of their position of power and authority in the family, a teacher can manipulate their students because of their institutional position or profession and for their knowledge, and so are politicians handling voters or journalists who manipulate the recipients of media discourses. This does not mean that children can not manipulate their parents or students to their teachers, but this is not due to his position of power, is more like a form of opposition or dissent, or based on personal characteristics. Therefore, the type of social manipulation we study here is defined in terms of social domination and reproduction in everyday practices, including speech. In this sense, we are rather interested in the manipulation between groups and their members, the personal manipulation of individual stakeholders.

A more detailed domination, defined as abuse of power, this analysis reveals that requires special access or control over scarce social resources. One such resource is the preferential access to the media and public discourse, shared by members of the symbolic elites such as politicians, journalists, scientists, writers, teachers, etc. Trivially, to be able to manipulate many others through oral or written text, you need to have access to some form of public discourse, such as parliamentary debates, news, editorials, textbooks, scientific articles, novels , television programs, advertising, Internet, etc. And since this access and control and in turn are dependent on the power of a group (institution, profession, etc.), public text is both a means of social reproduction of that power. For example, politicians can exercise their political power through public text and, through this, can simultaneously confirm and play their political power. The same can be said of journalists and academics and their institutions (media, universities, etc.).

We see that manipulation is a discursive practices of dominant groups directed toward the reproduction of their power. Such dominant groups can do many (other) ways, for example, through persuasion, providing information, education, training and other social practices that aim to influence the knowledge, (indirectly) in shares and receivers their believes. Some of these practices can, of course, be quite legitimate, such as journalists or teachers provide information to their audiences. This means that handling, also in accordance with what was said earlier about their negative characteristics, is an illegitimate social practice and therefore violates the rules or social norms. We define as illegitimate any form of interaction, communication or other social practices that only serve the interests of one party and harm the interests of the recipients. By this we mean a social, legal and philosophical foundation of a just and democratic society and ethical principles of discourse, interaction and communication. Greater discussion of these principles and, therefore, an explanation of why manipulation is illegitimate, are beyond the scope of this paper. We assume that manipulation is illegitimate because it violates human and social rights of those who are manipulated. One could venture a rule that recipients are always well informed about the aims and intentions of the speaker. However, this would be a too strict criterion because in many forms of communication and interaction these intentions and purposes are not explicit but are contextually attributed to the speakers by the receiver (or analysts) on the basis of the general rules of text and interaction.

In fact, one could even postulate a social principle of selfishness, saying that (almost) all forms of interaction or text tend to favour the interests of the speakers. This means that the criteria of legitimacy must be formulated in other terms, namely that manipulation is illegitimate because it violates the rights of recipients. This rule does not necessarily imply that all forms of communication should be in the interests of the recipients. Many types of communication or speech acts are not, as in the case of the accusations, requests, orders, etc. In concrete ways to talk or real texts, however, these maxims are often difficult to implement: people lie, which is not always bad; people tell half the story in some cases for legitimate reasons, and irrelevant conversation is one of the most common forms of everyday interaction.

In other words, the manipulation is not (only) bad because it violates conversational maxims or other rules and regulations of the conversation, although this may be a dimension manipulative speech or text. Therefore, we will accept without further analysis, that manipulation is illegitimate in a democratic society that (re) produces or can reproduce the inequality in the interests of powerful groups and speakers and harms the interests of less powerful groups and speakers. For each communication event it is therefore necessary to detail how these respective interests are handled by manipulative discourse. For example, if the media delivered incomplete or biased in some way about a specific politician during an election campaign to influence the votes of the voters, we would be facing a case of manipulation if we assume that readers have a right to be poorly informed about the candidates in an election. Due to information in this case can be specified as balanced, relatively complete, unbiased, relevant, etc. This does not mean that a newspaper can not support or favour their own candidate, but should do so with arguments, facts, etc., that is, through proper information and persuasion, and not by manipulation, for example, omitting important information, lying or distorting the facts, etc. All these guiding principles, as is also stipulated in the codes of professional ethics of journalists, are part of the implementation of what counts as legitimate forms of interaction and communication. Each, however, are rather vague and need new more detailed analysis. This informal analysis of the social properties of manipulation also shows that if the manipulation is a form of domination or abuse of power, as such needs to be defined in terms of social groups or institutions, not at the individual level of personal interaction. This means that only makes sense to speak of manipulation, as we have defined when speakers or listeners are manipulating others as members of a dominant group or institutions or powerful organizations.

In contemporary information societies, this is especially true for the elites in politics, media, education, among scientists, in the bureaucracy as well as commercial enterprises on the one hand, and the various types of customers (voters, readers, students, consumers, general public, etc.), on the other. Thus, handling, socially speaking, is a discursive form of reproduction of elite power that goes against the interests of the dominated groups and (re) produces social inequality.

1.2. On Journalese

Language obviously need not and often does not catch up to reality in any direct fashion. For example, a sentence as “The Russians have discovered an element lighter than hydrogen” could be anything to worry about. Assuming that it is true, the entire macrophysics of the world we know could be changed, chemical valences would have to be shifted about, and so on. While those technical aspects of our lives would change dramatically, the language does not register apoplexy, nor do we. The sentence stands as utterance whether or not it has any truth value. Even trying to rid ourselves of sentences which are not seen as true is not necessarily a laudable exercise, for how else are new hypotheses to be tried on for size without linguistically constructing the models? The elasticity of language allows us an immediate testing ground to tryout all manner of new ideas in either new leanings or new words in a no-win/no-loss situation. There is a problem arising when there is a conscious attempt to use language to turn our perceptions to specific social and political ends.

The quarrels with public language are, or course, far less severe. And while we expect only candour and clarity in public language, we certainly need not stand passively by and allow the language to use us. The best antidote to the linguistic gymnastics of others is honing our own sense of the language so that we know what it can be used to say. This simply negates any exercise in linguistic deception, and everyone returns to square one in tells of what is really meant. Only as long as a fish is fooled by a lure is that lure still effective; when he is no longer so gullible, one may as well troll with old tires for all the good it will do. Besides, the miscellaneous list of social problems which vex many are not language problems, they are human… problems.

Speaking candidly or correctly solves none of them immediately; speaking clearly might, but those who wish to lie, posture, or evade will likely still do so. And those who do not wish to accept another's views are not likely to do so with any greater alacrity because the one side has spoken clearly.

The problem, one suspect, is not a linguistic one; it is a comment on the human condition. But thinking is not exclusively dependent upon words. While it is true that language manipulations have their effect on us, they do not entirely channel our modes of cognitive behaviour. They may lead –or mislead –us down certain paths, but the ultimate responsibility is ours. Thought and language are not the same, never have been and never will be. And besides, is there really such a place where everyone without exception says what they mean and means what they say? Unfortunately, the society we inhabit is filled with vested interests, like used-car salesmen, ad-men, public relations men, and press secretaries who are all paid to push a product rather than to make sure that all the little nuances are spelled out for us clearly and unequivocally. But, while most of us are intrigued with a society where everyone means what they say, one doubts that having everybody say what they think all the time would be Utopia.

1.2.1 Characteristics of magazine text (syntax, morphology, graphics)

One of the most obvious properties of media news, ignored or neglected in both traditional and more recent approaches to media reporting, is that news reports, whether in the press or on TV, constitutes a particular type of discourse.

The prevailing influence of the social sciences in the study of mass communication has led to a nearly exclusive focus on the economic, political, social, or psychological aspects of news processing. This orientation provided important insights into the (macro) conditions of news production and into the uses or effects of mass media reporting.

The message itself in such studies tended to receive attention only as far as it could provide information about the factors of its various contexts.

Traditional, as well as more recent, forms of content analysis aimed at a methodologically adequate description of selected properties of such media messages with the primary goal to be able to make contextual inferences.

The adequacy of this approach resided more in the reliability of scoring categories and in the sophisticated nature of the statistical treatment of the results than in the systematic analysis and understanding of the media messages in their own right. Against the background of current developments in the new interdisciplinary study of discourse, we are now able to take a different approach.

Central to this new orientation is its perspective on the very core of the process of mass communication, via the mediated discourses themselves. No longer are these discourses merely analyzed in terms of practical, while observable and countable, intermediate variables between properties of sources or production conditions and characteristics of media users or effects.

Media discourses in general, and news reports in particular, should also be accounted- for in their own right, e.g., as particular types of language use or text and as specific kinds of socio-cultural practice. This means, first of all, that such media discourses should be analyzed in terms of their structures at various levels of description.

Such a structural analysis is not limited to the grammatical description of phonological, morphological, syntactic, or semantic structures of isolated words, word groups, or sentences as it is customary in structural or generative linguistics.

Discourses also have more complex, higher-level properties, such as coherence relations between sentences, overall topics, and schematic forms, as well as stylistic and rhetorical dimensions. Both as monological, printed, or spoken, text and as dialogical interaction, media discourses thus receive an integrated account of their more general as well as their more distinctive organization. In this way we are able, for instance, to describe the structures and textual functions of headlines or leads of news reports in the press, as well as the style, ordering, and thematic organization of such media stories. Similarly, news interviews or tan( shows can be analyzed in terms of turn taking, sequencing, or strategic moves in publicly communicated verbal interaction. Yet, this is not all.

The study of text is not limited to an explicit account of structures per se. Developments in the study of text in such diverse disciplines as speech communication, cognitive psychology; social psychology, micro sociology, and ethnography have shown that text is not simply an isolated textual or dialogical structure. Rather it is a complex communicative event that also embodies a social context, featuring participants (and their properties) as well as production and reception processes.

Although a sound structural analysis of media text would already provide important contributions to the study of mass communication, it is this wider, contextual perspective on text that makes it particularly relevant for the study of media discourse. In this way, text analysis can also yield new insights into the processes of production and uses that are justifiably found to be of paramount importance in mass communication research.

New in this approach is that the many factors or constraints in production, from economic conditions to social and institutional routines of news making, can now be related explicitly to various structural properties of news reports.

The same is true for reception processes: Understanding, memorising, and reproduction of news information can now be studied as a function of both textual and contextual (cognitive, social) properties of the communication process.

1.2.2 Health Magazines under Scrutiny

In all eras, some people have sought magical practices means to act on others. It is the same sorcery, from clay statues pierced with needles and to modern methods of propaganda. Nowadays, electronic eye sometimes replaced the TV wizard, and most subtle methods of collective hypnosis are accepted on behalf of social progress. If totalitarian regimes, witchcraft have other aspects, such as for example brainwashing. Pretending is just„information” in the name of science, political propaganda or advertising rather clumsy man hides his need to dominate forever, present in all sorts of magazines, predominantly in health magazines.

The term „brainwashing” was first used in connection with numerous American prisoners (from North Korea and China), which were released from the camp after they became fanatical supporters of the political, social and economic fabric of their opponents. Their convictions were thus turned 180 degrees. Of course there are known cases where people have suddenly become supporters of a cause against which before had risen indignantly. But if these prisoners it was a systematic conversion process, carried out against their will and often proved to be reversible.

 ”Brainwashing” is a scientific attempt to separate evil human being to involve personality and beliefs, attitudes, reactions opposite his old way of seeing people, things, life in general. It includes methods that weaken obviously courage and resistance prisoners at which they wish confessions „spontaneous” interrogations endless and repeated deployed in a blinding light, frequent awakenings at times random or deprivation long sleep, food „scholar” measured or suppressed.

Using electricity, extensively used by the Gestapo as a method of intimidation and persuasion is one of the most popular methods. With time they became increasingly complex and combine physical suffering came to a methodical and gradual disintegration of the individual mental functions. During the Spanish Civil War atrocious treatment of political prisoners who had to „confess” following the alleged crime was „intolerable brightness lamps lit cell whose walls were painted in geometric figures. The prisoners were awakened as they begin to sleep. Fatigue and glare, drawings acquired a hallucinatory character, so that annihilated any defensive reaction to the prisoner; it will completely abandon those who tortured him. „

With this technique, here we are placed in a field adjoining the classical methods of hypnosis, the subject will be annihilated. This process is not sufficient to obtain by force or induce a state of total Obedience intense fear, terror and suffering. „Brainwashing” aimed at destroying not only the subject of mental strength, but rather achieving active allegiance – giving up their beliefs to adopt an ideology of fanaticism unleashed investigators.

In current life, you know you are forced to resort to advertising. It is said that those who do not appear in advertisements or in the media there. Advertising is a kind of playing with people's emotions through verbal or non-verbal messages that reach the emotional depths of our being and directs it in the desired direction. This effect is often one of mercantile, economic – that of buying a particular product or service for which the person concerned did not need before.

Advertising can be defined as an unofficial propaganda, supported by private companies. A citizen of the United States may well refuse to drink Coca-Cola, not to buy a television, show indifferent to the posters that advertise cars, without exposing the smallest official sanction. But the fact remains that countless people will „be in line with the world” and have those objects because everyone has and advertising relies a lot on this.

Ideological propagandas and they knew very well to use, but in a coercive manner so widespread this concept of „being as everyone else.” In China there are no laws or legal decrees obliging citizens to wear „Mao suits” who wore traditional robes were taking agents and taken to jail. But after going a few meters down the street, the man felt ill at the thought that is put „everyone” and they buy yourself a Mao suit.

Advertising effectiveness is based on the fact that no intellectual element is crucial, but action on the imagination and affection. It is based on the same elements and propaganda. Advertising does not have an automatic efficiency, absolute. There are obvious limits of advertising compliance, even if it seems apt to make people blind to some imperative necessity.

In the United States subliminal suggestions have been used in advertising until their ban was requested. The method was infallible in 80% of cases. The principle is to introduce every fifty normal movie images, a slogan like „Drink Coca Cola”. The viewer does not notice anything, but the subconscious is impregnated. The same method was experimented and cinema, where many spectators precipitated the exit to go to drink Coca Cola without understanding where it came from this momentum. Even if the use was banned subliminal suggestions, they are used today. For example watching a scene from a movie where the actor favourite drink Coca-Cola has the same effect. Being caught by the action of the film, the viewer realizes that his mind was imbued with the message of drinking Coca Cola. If neither questioned nor realizes that drink in his hand the movie character or that he had a drink in the scene. Yet during the film or after, you will feel the urge to drink a Coke.

In addition experts found that television has a power soak messages much larger than a cinema show. This is due to the fact that the light radiation coming from the screen. Television gives the feeling of a living presence, even shy people and deleted.

Without knowing, our minds are directed by highly aggressive advertising today. Most of us may not oppose its influence because it penetrates directly into the subconscious. It is necessary to know these issues to defend ourselves what is a true form of modern witchcraft. Witchcraft is lie dominance over another. In this regard, it might say that nowadays she disappeared? Of course not!

1.3 Conclusions

Advertisers use various linguistic devices such as direct address, positive vocabulary, headlines, and catchy slogans to attract women. In addition, the vocabulary used in health magazines is ideologically contested. Such vocabulary carry certain ideology of what constitutes health such as having, for instance, less wrinkles or ‘free wrinkles’ eyes or lips that are ‘plumped’ or eye lashes that are double in length or thicker. Advertisements that appear in magazines show how one should look in order to be acceptable as part of this ideal woman. Consumers can be influenced directly towards the product. Intertextuality also occurs in advertising when advertisers use words from other discourses to attract readers such as words from science. Hence another way to attract customers is the use of technical words. Technical words in advertisements helps convince the reader that the product is of value. The technical vocabulary reflects expertise which is the source of power. Furthermore, the use of scientific information in the beauty product advertisements reflects authority. The scientific information or words can be a way to convey expertise, which in other words reflect power.

The problem with manipulation through through manipulation is not only in the Romanian language, but in other languages as well and other cultures. In other words, it is a… „global” problem. Handling it can have beneficial effects not only harmful ones: in negotiations, verbal therapy, marketing strategies, as between friends / lovers etc. However, as noted in another term preferred instead of handling: persuasion, influencing, negotiating, handling sometimes positive.

Handling the language of introducing and then to the strengthening of Powers. The excessive use of words, used metaphors without limits can lead to a way of expressing vague, imprecise, blurring denial referent to the function designation. It incurred thus an over codified language or a non-language.

Manipulation is a designed experience crafted to change behaviour — we all know what it feels like. We’re uncomfortable when we sense someone is trying to make us do something we wouldn’t do otherwise, like when at a car dealership or a timeshare presentation.

Yet, manipulation can’t be all bad. If it were, what explains the numerous multi-billion dollar industries that rely heavily on users wilfully submitting to manipulation? If manipulation is a designed experience crafted to change behaviour, then Weight Watchers, one of the most successful mass-manipulation products in history, fits the definition.

Much like in the consumer web industry, Weight Watchers customers’ decisions are programmed by the designer of the system. Yet few question the morality of Weight Watchers. But what’s the difference? Why is manipulating users through flashy advertising or addictive video games thought to be distasteful while a strict system of food rationing is considered laudable?

Unfortunately, our moral compass has not caught-up with what technology now makes possible. Ubiquitous access to the web, transferring greater amounts of personal data at faster speeds than ever before, has created a more addictive world. Addictiveness is accelerating and according to Paul Graham of Y Combinatory, we haven’t had time to develop societal “antibodies to addictive new things.” Graham puts responsibility on the user: “Unless we want to be canaries in the coal mine of each new addiction—the people whose sad example becomes a lesson to future generations—we’ll have to figure out for ourselves what to avoid and how.”

But what of the people who make these manipulative experiences? The corporations who unleash these addictive technologies are, after all, made up of human beings with a moral sense of right and wrong. We too have families and kids who are susceptible to addiction and manipulation. What shared responsibilities do we code slingers and behaviour designers have to our users, to future generations, and to ourselves?

When you create something that you will use and believe makes the user’s life better, you’re facilitating a healthful habit. It’s important to note that only you can decide if you would actually use the service and what “materially improving the life of the user” really means.

If you find yourself squirming as you ask yourself those questions or needing to create a preamble starting with, “If I were a…” STOP! You failed. You have to actually want to use the product and believe it materially benefits your life as well as the lives of your users. The one exception is if you would have been a user in your younger years. For example, in the case of an education company, you may not need to use the service right now, but are positive you would have used it in your not so distant past. Note however that the further you are from your former self, the lower your odds of success.

While I don’t know Mark Zuckerberg or the Twitter founders personally, I believe from their well-documented stories that they would see themselves as making products in this quadrant. There is also a long list of companies creating new products to improve lives by facilitating healthful habits. Whether getting users to exercise more, creating a habit, or improving back posture, these companies are run by authentic entrepreneurs who desperately want their products to exist, firstly to satisfy their own needs.

But what about when an addiction to a well-intended product becomes extreme, even harmful? For a product in this quadrant, I agree with Paul Graham in saying the responsibility falls to the user. In any normal distribution, a small percentage of people will be on the extremes. If the designers make a product that they would use themselves, and they believe it improves the lives of their users, they have fulfilled their moral obligation. To take liberties with Mahatma Gandhi, facilitators “build the change they want to see in the world.”

But heady altruistic ambitions can at times, get ahead of reality. Too often, designers of manipulative technology have a strong motivation to improve the lives of their users, but when pressed, they admit they would not actually use their own creations. Their holier-than-thou products often try to “gamify” some task no one actually wants to do by inserting hackneyed incentives like badges or points that don’t actually hold value for the user.

Fitness apps, charity websites, and products that claim to suddenly turn hard work into fun often fall in this quadrant. But possibly the most common example is in peddler advertising. Countless companies convince themselves they’re making ad campaigns users will love. They expect their videos to go viral and their branded apps to be used daily. Their reality distortion fields keep them from asking the critical question of, “Would I actually find this useful?” The answer to this uncomfortable question is nearly always “No,” so they bend their brain into the mind of a user they believe might find the ad valuable.

Materially improving users’ lives is a tall order. But attempting to create a persuasive technology which you don’t find valuable enough to use yourself is nearly impossible. There’s nothing immoral about peddling; it’s just the odds of success are depressingly low. You’ll lack the empathy and insights needed to create something users actually want. The peddler’s project tends to end up a time-wasting failure because fundamentally, no one finds it useful or fun. If it were, the peddler would be using it instead of hawking it.

In fact, sometimes makers just want to have fun. If a creator of a potentially addictive technology makes something that they would use but can’t in good conscience claim improve the lives of their users, they’re making entertainment.

Entertainment is art and is important for its own sake. Art provides joy, helps us see the world differently, and connects us with the human condition. These are all important and age old pursuits. Entertainment, however, has particular attributes which the entrepreneur, employee, and investor should be aware of when using the Manipulation Matrix.

Art is often fleeting; products that form addictions around entertainment tend to fade quickly from users’ lives. A hit song, repeated over and over again in the mind, becomes nostalgia after it is replaced by the next single. A blog article like this one is read, shared, and thought about for a few minutes until the next interesting piece of brain candy comes along.

Games such as Farmville and Angry Birds engross users for a while, but then are relegated to the gaming dustbin along other hyper-addictive has-beens like Pac Man and Tetris.

Entertainment is a hits-driven business because the brain adapts to stimulus. Art is about creating continuous novelty and building an enterprise on ephemeral desires is a constantly running treadmill. In this quadrant, the sustainable business isn’t the game, the song, or the book — it’s the distribution system for getting those goods to market while they’re still hot.

Creating a product that the designer does not believe improves the user’s life and which the maker would not use is exploitation. In the absence of these two criteria, presumably the only reason you’re hooking users is to make a buck. Certainly there is money to be made addicting users to behaviours that do little more than extract cash; and where there is cash, there will be someone willing to take it.

The question is: Is that someone you? Casinos and drug dealers offer users a good time, but when the addiction takes hold, the fun stops.

In a satirical take on Zynga’s Farmville franchise Ian Bogost created Cow Clicker, a Facebook app where users did nothing but incessantly click on virtual cows to hear a satisfying “moo.” Bogost intended to lampoon Farmville by blatantly implementing the same game mechanics and viral hacks he thought would be laughably obvious to users. But after the app’s usage exploded and some people became frighteningly obsessed with the game, Bogost shut it down, bringing on what he called, “The Cowpocalypse.”

Bogost was right in comparing addictive technology to the cigarette. Certainly, the incessant need for a smoke in what was once the majority of the adult population has been replaced by a nearly equal compulsion to constantly check our devices. But unlike the addiction to nicotine, new technologies offer an opportunity to dramatically improve the lives of users. It’s clear that like all technologies, recent advances in the habit-forming potential of web innovation have both positive and negative effects. But if the innovator has a clear conscience that the product materially improves people’s lives — first among them, the creator’s — then the only path is to push forward. Users bear ultimate responsibility for their actions and makers should not be blamed for the misuse or overuse of their products. However, as the march of technology makes the world a more addictive place, innovators need to consider their role. It will be years, perhaps generations, before society develops the antibodies to new addictions. In the meantime, users will have to judge the yet unknown consequences for themselves, while creators will have to live with the moral repercussions of how they spend their professional lives.

My hope is that Manipulation Matrix helps innovators consider the implications of the products they create. Perhaps after reading this, you’ll start a new business. Maybe you’ll join an existing company with a mission you believe in. Or, perhaps after reading this you’ll decide it’s time to quit your job, which you now come to realize no longer agrees with your moral compass.

Chapter II

“Positive” Manipulation in Health Magazines

Manipulation is anything done with intent by a person or society, whether business, religion, autonomous … in order to get something without giving anything in return or when they try to take advantage taking much from little, and all this by the omission of information or deception.

The truth is that the definition of manipulation is very ambiguous and almost everything in this life is manipulation. When one writes a letter for your product marketing can ignore things that people buy (manipulation) when your friends do not tell them that in the movie love scenes come to want to go see it, that's manipulation.

The truth is that it is extremely ambiguous and seen and has no negative connotation; handling is only negative when it is immorally engaging the feelings of the other person, such as religions do.

There are many types of manipulation, some positive, some negative and many other neutral; of course there is very dangerous and even legalized manipulation. Think that anything you say something is true 100% you are manipulating, if any person or entity prevents you from living your own life in any way and you restrain in something, you are manipulating the wrong way for you to be co-dependent that person or entity.

The manipulation that prohibits or prevents to be liberal and think for yourself is that you are co-dependent, i.e.: "I need that person or entity to be wrong and not know if I do things right."

This manipulation is considered a brainwashing advantage of when people are weak, they are poor, with difficulties and go on divine help when all I want is you out or, in the worst case, and they themselves are as manipulated and foolish as you.

For manipulations they are not all bad, there are some neutral and good, necessary for society to continue flowing, of course some psychopaths are baited with positive manipulations and work in unmask. Wasting time with nonsense when there are thousands of manipulated they can not live the life they want to live because they are manipulated.

The manipulation is anything that someone might do for a person or group of them think and act in a certain way. Who else who is less able to manipulate a child from friends, siblings and parents. We learn much faster than if we want something and ask but we do not give him there are other ways to change your mind on that person who has denied us. With parents mourn usually small, kicking or do what we know they are embarrassed or unnerving them and just taking them to say yes when they had previously said no.

Just as we do with our parents we do with our brothers unless you give me what you ask me what kid just did. With our friends, who threatened to withdraw our friendship if not give us what we want or who give you something to feel better and give us what we expect. From childhood we are able to manipulate from the experience and we learn that there are things you are not doing them well while others are more tolerable.

This is because there is a difference between handling is done with good ends and no. The manipulation can be positive, if the life of the manipulated person changes as a result, may be negative if the opposite happens or it can be neutral if no changes to the manipulated person although they exist for the manipulator. Depth knowledge of the handling will help in many cases; either to change his mind someone who will have problems as do or get someone you discover is manipulating you. Controlling something will give you the power to use and when they use it to meet others, to prevent, for example. If you want to know all about the manipulation I recommend our book How to manipulate anyone, with which you will become an expert and you use it at your leisure.

Manipulation involves applying different techniques for a person to change his mind or feel a new need did not have before. For example, when you manipulate marketers create needs in you before you had to introduce the benefits of a new product that did not know existed and greatly facilitate your life.

You manipulate religions expect your life to live with the rules they tell you in exchange for eternal life, to give happiness to your God or whatever, if you do not meet your standards you're afraid of not getting what you want eternal life, love of God or whatever. So, they fear manipulated.

Others do with information; they provide data that do not know you have to change your mind about something. It is trying to make journalists what they should do, as politicians manipulate us all hiding information and getting related to his theories journalists offer manipulated information, either because the feature in a way that is not or because they hide information.

No manipulation everywhere, the toughest of them is involved punishment as method is what is known as coercive manipulation. As with animals, many people are brainwashed or made them change their minds about something applying punishment. Sometimes punishments are used to stop you from doing something; you manipulate your partner when you leave two weeks without sex because you have come out with friend you do not trust.

Sometimes, instead of punishment awards are used, what is meant as positive reinforcement? It also works with animals who instead of beating them to learn to do something are rewarded when they get it. With people works the same, if someone does something that is what you want you reward him congratulating you, paying more, taking a special detail. Simply putting content and happy when you get what you want and you're making a positive reinforcement.

Usually something that also works with children, instead of getting angry with them when they do the wrong things they do well reinforced, with this gain in confidence and self esteem. If you want to help someone who has low self-esteem can prove manipulation of this type. Do it subtly, such as people with low self-esteem are often wary of those who think otherwise to them, although they benefit by being a positive thought, directly not believe them and think they do it to mock them. The best in these cases is to ask for advice on how to do something that they do well and drop occasionally comments on the adequacy comment has been determined or how you want to be like that person in particular aspect.

Manipulation always is positive or negative according to the intention of the person handling. Someone who wants to harm another person negatively manipulate. Although it does say that for their sake, someone he wants to live in fear that someone else makes a negative manipulation, though fear save that person died. Fear is negative and this kind of manipulation makes people feel bad.

Manipulation is another tool that can be used depending on each person, for some the car is just a means of transportation while for others it is a method of fun, some food is food while for others it is a vice or perdition. Everything can be good and bad at the same time depends on how you use it and the intentions you have. I recommend you learn all about handling to prevent when you pass and use it when needed.

The aim of Positive Manipulation Theory is to facilitate delivery and maintenance of a functional, productive employee equally beneficial for both, the organisation and the individual involved. It is to ensure ‘can do’ attitude in all situations, even when the task employee is assigned with is not perceived as a desirable one. Positive Manipulation is not about taking advantage of the organisation’s powers and it is not defined in a purpose of exploitation or mishandling of employees. It draws from several theories taking present time and current global economic situation in consideration.

Word manipulation has somewhat negative connotation. Typically, it is perceived as a word used for describing unethical conduct (Caroselli, 2000), even though its two definitions in the Merriam Webster dictionary carry positive meaning. A definition of relevance to Positive Manipulation Theory is “skilful handling or operation, artful management or control” (Merriam-Webster, 2011). Positive Manipulation Theory is about indirect inclusion of low level needs in organisation’s motivational efforts; particularly through presenting job loss as a potential consequence of insufficient performance. Targeting different level needs, Positive Manipulation is considered complementary to the existing motivational theories and is suggested to be used as another layer of motivational endeavours. It is considered to be particularly effective in a time of economic downturns when jobs are scarce. Positive Manipulation Theory defines manager as responsible for its practical application. Manager is considered as possessing a high level of emotional intelligence and able to efficiently communicate messages, either through official channels or by using unofficial networks as Grapevine2. Manager has to be perceived as strong, but ethical individual, capable of making difficult decisions, like terminating someone’s employment. Manager has to be able to recognize attitudes and their underlying needs and to offer avenues for satisfying those needs. Employees caring negative attitudes, especially of high valence, are to be reminded, directly or indirectly, about potential punishment reinforcement (termination of employment) at the first stage. If the behaviour persists, a procedure defined by organisation outlining appropriate punishment reinforcement is to take place. Positive Manipulation is constantly available motivation option. Manager is to make the employee aware of that and to use it when he/she considers it is required. This is particularly applicable to situations when the motivation targeting higher level needs is expected to be much less efficient or completely inefficient. The example would be an attempt to motivate well paid, poorly performing employee. Monetary based motivation would be 10% pay increase, while if Positive Manipulation used, employee would be kindly reminded that a loss of 100% of salary (termination of employment) can be a consequence of current inefficient performance. Positive manipulation approach is expected to be much more efficient, with both parties benefiting, organisation from increased productivity and employee from keeping the job despite of a period of poor performance.

Literature points out that individual needs and their underlying drives are considered to be a base for motivation. Needs are defined as deficiencies triggering drives as behaviours for maintaining inner stability (McShane & Travaglione, 2009).

Maslow’s needs hierarchy theory organises needs in five levels stating that individuals are motivated simultaneously by several needs, but the strongest source of motivation is lowest unsatisfied need at the time (McShane & Travaglione, 2009). Needs are organized in lower level needs (Physiological, Safety and Belongingness) and higher level needs (Esteem and Self Actualization). Some authors built their motivation theories on Maslow’s work (Schermerhorn, 2010), while some gave it historic value only (McShane & Travaglione, 2009). Positive Manipulation Theory benefits from lower level needs being strong motivators. It also predicts that individual whose satisfied lower needs are threatened will try to protect the status quo, ensuring these needs are unaffected. Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory addresses job satisfaction, outlining two main aspects, hygiene and motivational factors. This theory says that if certain factors are present, they can prevent dissatisfaction among employees. Examples are reasonable salary and benefits, or good and safe working environment. As motivators, Herzberg notes factors related to employee’s self esteem and self-actualization (Davies, 2007). According to Herzberg, although presence of motivators does not predict job satisfaction, it is unusual that highly satisfied employee will be present if those factors are not satisfied (Shriberg & Shriberg, 2009). Positive Manipulation Theory argues that some factors listed under hygiene factors (e.g. salary, job placement) are of better use as motivators if presented as that they could be lost. Reinforcement perspective on motivation does not directly take in consideration employees’ needs. It follows the relation between employee’s behaviours and its consequences and adjusts the behaviour in a purpose of achieving expected results. Behaviour is modified (repeated or inhibited) by the use of reinforcement – positive, negative, punishment or extinction (Daft, 2007). The type of reinforcement of particular interest for Positive Manipulation Theory is Continuous Reinforcement, which presents reinforcement over the course of time where every significant occurrence of positive or negative behaviour is reinforced by appropriate action. McGregor’s Theory X (TX) and Theory Y (TY) originate from 1960s and draw from the Maslow’s work. Both, TX and TY present beliefs managers hold about the motives of their employees (Shriberg & Shriberg, 2009). TX motives are said to be related to the basic needs, particularly money and security (physiological, safety), while TY motives are related to higher needs, like esteem and self actualization. McGregor argues that satisfied need is no longer a motivator and points that all basic needs are likely to be satisfied in modern societies; thus command and control type of management he considers ineffective as it can satisfy lower (satisfied) needs only. Positive Manipulation Theory argues that not all low level needs are satisfied within modern societies.

Motivational theories fail to take characteristics of political and economic environments and their constant change into consideration. They also fail to acknowledge huge cultural differences between the employees around the globe as well as in various countries. It is difficult to comprehend that the same theory would apply to people in different cultural, political and economic environments. Thus, one might perceive that motivational theories target specific population during specific economic situations only. As an example, Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory outlines individual’s self esteem and self-actualization as motivational factors. It is questionable whether manager can use this type of motivation on an employee who is in a mortgage crunch situation on a brink of a losing a house in an economic recession period when unemployment is high. One might relate ownership of the house to motivation, as it increases self-respect and improves self-confidence, thus is related to self-esteem (Branden, 2011), but the connection is vague. Positive Manipulation Theory considers that possibility of losing a house, an object fulfilling lower level needs like Physiological (shelter) and Security and Belongings (losing a house can destroy a family), is much more powerful as a handle for motivation. Positive Manipulation Theory says that this situation can be used for ensuring a good work performance (organisational benefit) and a job security (employee’s benefit). Practically, this would mean that an employee in this situation would be more motivated to produce good work results if perceive a job loss as a likely consequence of non-productivity then if motivated by being given options for fulfilling self-esteem and self-actualization needs. Considering the number of families under mortgages in western countries today and taking into equation current rough economic situation, fear of losing material factors fulfilling lower level needs should be considered as one of the significant motivation factors. Another problem managers are facing today is inability to keep motivation constant (Chakraborty, 2006). Gupta (2007) states that human needs are unlimited whereas the means for satisfying them are limited. This implies that continuous motivation based on satisfaction of human needs has its limits. This is particularly visible when financial motivators are used, as there are usually clear limits on funds available for motivating employees. Positive Manipulation solves this problem by raising awareness of potential punishment reinforcement, termination of employment, presented as a result of decreased performance. Potential punishment needs presenting as a result of a situation, not as a direct threat and communication channel used is best to be Grapevine. McGregor’s theories are based on assumption that basic needs are satisfied within the modern societies (Lauby, 2005). Positive Manipulation Theory challenges that on a base that the nature and the type of things fulfilling basic needs at present are more complex than in the time theory was made. It adds that more financial power is required for maintenance of already existing things fulfilling basic needs. As a result, a job loss, combined with the difficulties of finding a new one can jeopardise currently satisfied basic needs. Drawing from both, TX and TY and including job security as a powerful motivator, Positive Manipulation Theory views manager developing following believes:

Employee views work as a beneficial necessity.

Employee sees responsibilities at the workplace as the ultimate priorities.

Employee understands that organisational struggle is the result of inefficiency at the workplace.

Employee understands that the organisational struggle will very likely result in termination of employment of the inefficient employees.

Employee understands that potential punishment reinforcement is not a threat, but a measure established for the benefit of both, the organisation and the employee.

Employee understands that organisation offers all standard options for fulfilling employees upper level needs (Esteem and Self-Actualization), including participation in decision making, challenging tasks, job flexibility and autonomy.

The above points are not just beliefs managers should have about their employees, but the general guidelines for developing employees’ understanding of a work environment. Positive Manipulation Theory predicts that if above concepts are accepted by employees, high job performance follows.

2.1 On the Concept of Positive Manipulation

Manipulation is a term that is often uncomfortable or considered negative. If we talk about handling everyone understands that it is something that should not be done. Manipulation, seen from the negative point is when someone gets someone else to do or think what he wants by choice, whereas before I did not want to. That is, it is understood that a person is manipulated when just saying, doing, thinking something that is not wanted and not feel forced to.

Forcing is not manipulated. You can force someone to do something after having threatened. If you do this you will pass that. So you're forcing someone to do it. That person does it because he knows the negative consequences of not doing so, but it is not doing its own will but forced.

The handling is quite the opposite, to see someone to do something they do not even want. When you become convinced that doing so is the best thing that can happen and does so voluntarily, he has changed his mind, so you've manipulated. You can already see that in this way, we do not always change your mind someone about something we are causing injury or are manipulating him negatively. Manipulation has many paths, many ways to be carried out and depending on the purpose that we have, we will discuss handling positive or negative manipulation. This is something that can be learned. If they tell you how to handle and practice constantly and analytical, you can become a great manipulator. You depend you use good techniques with good purposes or negatively. We tell you all in our book: how to manipulate anyone.

Some vendors or commercial, are really persuasive. Some sellers act as the friend who first shows us what we might become and then tells us that if we do what he does not make it. Marketers looking to make you feel better, you think you have some unmet needs that your product will solve. They explain how wonderful your product is, how great you would for your life and make you realize that you do not have and you depend on it for your happiness.

Other vendors, depends on the product you sell, do just the opposite. If your product does not have all that will happen is bad. They are experts at making you feel afraid. You expose statistics, they explain the worst that can happen and then they tell you that if you buy your product or hire this is not going to happen.

Some vendors alarms have robberies at home, the policies of health you talk about illness, car insurance you speak accident … Everything for you to get the worst and not just buy their product but you buy all the extras available, if it were not for not hiring that was just what you get. It's like the lottery, do not buy anything, except that you buy in the group work, if they were not out to touch them and you stay as the only poor.

In this case we are using techniques of persuasion that could be called aggressive and counterproductive. When you make someone change of mindset making him feel bad, or fear, or pain or something you are not using a positive handling, but quite the opposite.

Positive manipulation is one in which we use words of encouragement, which help each person find the strength to decide freely and in which we support and believe in the personal growth of each. The difference between manipulates positively or negatively may be more methods results.

The purpose for which we manipulate. If manipulated to bring a benefit to our people and we are being selfish if we do to benefit the manipulated we are being generous. The first is negative manipulation, the second positive manipulation.

It depends on how you use the techniques that we teach. Handle is not complicated; you must learn to understand the emotions of others and a series of techniques that we tell in our book how to manipulate anyone.

Remember that we only teach you to manipulate positive. Apply the knowledge you have with good intention and to help is always positive. We encourage you to buy the book and try it. You'll tell you us.

2.2 Cases in Point

The Manipulation Argument (MA) is actually a template for a kind of argument, since any instance of it depends upon the particular case from which it builds. The argument form generates instances by imagining a case in which an agent is covertly manipulated in some manner (manner X) into satisfying all of the conditions sufficient for the Compatibility-friendly Agential Structure (CAS). CAS is meant by compatibility to exhaust the freedom relevant condition for moral responsibility. Once CAS is satisfied, the agent acts from this structure, allegedly satisfying all that compatibility would require for free will.

Working with one concrete example or another, the incompatibility proceeds to argue as follows:

1. If S is manipulated in manner X to A, then S does not A of her own free will and is therefore not morally responsible for A’ing.

2. An agent manipulated in manner X to A is no different in any relevant respect from any normally functioning agent determined to do A from CAS.

3. Therefore, if S is a normally functioning agent determined to A from CAS, she does not A of her own free will and therefore is not morally responsible for A’ing. If some instance of the argument is sound, then CAS is not sufficient to account for the freedom pertaining to moral responsibility. There is no one-size-fits-all compatibility reply to MA since which premise compatibility should reject depends upon the example(s) in question. If the incompatibility is not careful about the case, then the compatibility can reject premise 2. But if the incompatibility gets manner X to fit all that compatibility could want from CAS, then the compatibility must reject premise.

The terms hard-line and soft-line are loosely based upon Robert Kane’s distinction between hard and soft compatibles (1996, pp.67-8). According to Kane, hard compatibility take the ‘‘hard’’ path, arguing against intuition that (suitably) globally manipulated agents are free and responsible. Soft compatibility, by contrast, take the ‘‘soft’’ path by respecting the intuition that globally manipulated agents are not free and responsible, and instead seeking some relevant difference between these agents and those who are merely causally determined. When faced with carefully crafted instances of MA, much thoughtful compatibility have tended toward the soft-line reply, denying whenever possible that the incompatibility has truly captured CAS. In my estimation, this is the wrong compatibility tendency. It leaves open an easy incompatibility rebuttal via a slight revision to the example so that manner X gets right all that is required for CAS. For instance, many compatibility have developed historical constraints upon free will or moral responsibility, and they have argued that in various instances of MA, the agent manipulated in manner X is not free or responsible since the manipulation ‘‘cuts off’’ the agent’s having a proper history, one that is a freedom or responsibility-conferring history. Hence, they deny premise 2. But a crafty incompatibility can simply alter her manipulation case so that manner X includes satisfaction of the historical condition featured by the compatibility,

Given that it is a formal condition of compatibles that CAS could arise from a determined world, I can see no way to foreclose the metaphysical possibility that the causes figuring in the creation of a determined morally responsible agent could not be artificially fabricated. If so, a soft-line reply to a well-crafted version of MA can only temporarily forestall the inevitable. Let the compatibility adopt the soft-line by resisting case after case, showing how in each it falls short of CAS. The troubling point for the compatibility inclined to avoid the hard-line reply is that some credible manipulation case could be fashioned. My advice to the compatibility comes straight from the Godfather: Keep your friends close but your enemies closer. When the incompatibility makes a good run at an example but falls just shy of hitting CAS, rather than reply to that instance of MA by denying premise 2, the compatibility should help out her opponent, show what is wrong with the example, and then offer proper amendments to it. Denying premise 1, the compatibility should welcome the case as one in which the agent is free and responsible. Thus, she should not hide the similarities between the determined and the (properly) manipulated agent. Instead, she should highlight them, arguing that, when the agent is truly manipulated into getting everything that is required by CAS, the intuitive presumption that the agent is not free or morally responsible falters, and with it, the credibility of premise 1 (McKenna, 2004). I propose a four-step reply to any instance of MA. Step One: Reject all non-starters. Consider the example. See if it is in the running for CAS. If not, the jig is up. Reject premise 2 and be done. Step Two: Help make the manipulation cases better. If the example gets past step one, if it comes close to getting CAS right but falls shy, amend the example. Help out your ‘‘good friend’’ the incompatibility so that the example does get CAS right. This calls into relief that manipulation can be ‘‘just like’’ determinism. Step Three: Fix attention on salient agential and moral properties. Illustrate how the agent manipulated in manner X to satisfy CAS lives up to a rich sort of agency and genuinely satisfies certain moral properties (for example, does moral wrong) Step four: Make clear that ‘‘manipulation’’ is not all that uncommon. Lessen the intuitive uneasiness of the claim that an agent manipulated in manner X is free and responsible by calling attention to mundane causal factors that have a similar result, but are not thought to be freedom or responsibility undermining. Now to Pereboom’s argument and my hard-line reply.

2.3 Conclusions

As Harry Frankfurt remarked,

A manipulator may succeed, through his interventions, in providing a person not merely with particular feelings and thoughts but with a new character. That person is then morally responsible for the choices and the conduct to which having this character leads. We are inevitably fashioned and sustained, after all, by circumstances over which we have no control. The causes to which we are subject may also change us radically, without thereby bringing it about that we are not morally responsible agents. It is irrelevant whether those causes are operating by virtue of the natural forces that shape our environment or whether they operate through the deliberate manipulative designs of other human agents.

Positive Manipulation is to be used in combination with the existing motivation techniques. By including low level needs in motivation paradigm, it enables manager to effectively react on perceived attitudes and protect performance benefiting both, the organisation and the employee. Positive Manipulation does not allow unethical or illegal application and directs manager to stay within legal and organisational policy guidelines.

Chapter III

“Negative” Manipulation in Health Magazines

There are individuals who always try to keep watch over the other for power and domination. An act to be analyzed.

If you are observant, you will notice that there are some people who try by persuasion or pressure mechanisms make other people see things in the same vein in order to remove the reasoning or judgment of another, even to control their behaviour.

According to clinical psychologist Monica Llanos de Mora, there are many cases of manipulation that can be individual or collective, that may occur in several areas such as the relationship, ideological, political and religious groups, or family ties of friendship. Also in unions as pathological co-dependency (relative to addicts) and obsessive compulsive and psychotic individuals.

In our environment, explains, many handlers that are hidden or obvious. We can find in all contexts and groups of relationship in which we live. Usually adults and in the case of groups, have a leadership role or position or power.

"Manipulation weakens the will and the mindset of individuals. Its purpose is to finish manipulated initially taking decisions alone would not have done. Generally, it seeks to benefit someone, a group or a system. "

For clinical psychologist Rosita Sanchez Laserna, not all manipulation is malicious, but it is an attempt to get things done the way that the manipulator wants you to think or as him or her. Its purpose is to maintain control and power in the relationship.

The key, he says, has a dominant, possessive and controlling nature, does not take no for an answer and those who disagree with him is to be against. Even they cause fear if you are not satisfying desires. It is also quite pleasant socially; emotions are very intense states are reactive and tend to make you feel guilty about another problem or conflict of the relationship.

In turn, he said Llanos, has personality issues that may be of different nature and attitude somehow offset this imbalance.

Most acts well for having power and control over others, to feel important, and believe to be right and excel. But in many cases, it can be dangerous as it restricts the freedom of others to impose their own in favour of their interests.

However, he adds, the manipulated person has low level of educational preparation, emotional immaturity, feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem. It has also unresolved resentments, emotional conflicts little or no knowledge of the subject matter of manipulation and lack of development of critical thinking skills, so they are very likely to be handled.

The affected, says Sanchez, has a weak personality submissive, dependent, and is losing more and more self-esteem and decision-making power. It is as if she could not be herself, because it must at all times "be" what your partner wants or desires it. Their wants and needs are invalidated and not taken into account. Even he not perceives that he is being manipulated, because the handler uses intelligent enough and strong arguments, ranging from emotional blackmail to violence.

To Llanos, in most cases, people who are manipulated are not aware that they are, because the relationship with the manipulator becomes a co-dependent bond that fills his personal shortcomings, and that kind of feel important link and considered. Besides those close to the victims of manipulation are those who realize this and the degree of closeness are called to point out, intervene or recommend a way out.

It is important; it explains that the person is aware of his style of behaviour and relationships with others. Therefore, the first step is awareness that is a victim of manipulation and identifies the attitudes and behaviour patterns that lead to this type of situation.

However, in most cases the situation is not exceeded so easily, and often requires psychological therapy.

"In the case of ideological manipulation, people should be well informed of the issues in question; the positive and negative factors; application of critical analysis, which lead to attitudes or personal decisions and not imposed ".

3.1. What is negative manipulation?

When you use feelings of disappointment to manipulate someone into giving you your way, you program yourself to relate with your experience as a defeat. This costs you your freedom.

There is really nothing wrong with your situation. The present offers you every opportunity. But you bind yourself to disappointment when you express yourself as a victim of your circumstances.

You imagine your condition as a loss when you engage the sorrow of sacrifice and martyrdom. In the act of trying to convince another that he or she is taking unfair advantage of your kindness and generosity, you convince yourself right out of the total freedom offered to you in the now.

It is tempting to use pitiful feelings of disappointment and victimization to subtly coerce others into making more of a sacrifice for us. If we can make them feel guilty enough, they may just realize that they can take no pleasure in denying us of what we want, and that may cause them to surrender their free will for our happiness.

The price we pay for this may be too subtle for us to recognize, even though it takes such a heavy toll on the quality of our lives and relationships. Only by practicing the act of looking within to examine your thoughts and feelings do you gradually awaken to such subtle manipulation games that cost you your integrity, your self-respect, your happiness, your mutually supportive relationships.

You use negative emotion to manipulate others when you express disappointment, disapproval, dissatisfaction over the choices they make. You use your unhappiness as a weapon. The closer they are to you, the more disturbing your unhappiness feels to them. You know this unconsciously until you wake up to what you are up to within. You use the disturbing influence of your unhappiness to prod them into acting on your behalf.

Paying attention to your thoughts and feelings reveals that your feelings attune you to your perspectives. Thus, living in feelings of gratitude begins to reveal all that you have to feel grateful for. Practice feeling gratitude long enough and you see no reason not to feel grateful for everything.

When you express feelings of disappointment, those feelings attune you to a perspective that reveals only the costs, the losses that you must suffer. In every situation you have gains and losses. Disappointment tunes you into the losses and gratitude tunes you into the gains. Both perspectives are true, but you get to live in the truth you choose.

Negative feelings deprive you of inspiring, empowering points of view. You live in your view. You experience what you are aware of. Feelings of disappointment lead you into a sorry reality. The longer you live in disappointment, the stronger and deeper it grows. As that occurs, you experience more and more loss in your life.

Feelings are contagious. The stronger you’re feeling of disappointment the more it draws everyone around you into similarly negative feeling states. Individuals who want to feel happy, who want to experience success and abundance and freedom, will avoid you or leave you alone. Those who remain with you will increasingly resent you as they feel themselves being sucked into a reality, a life, a world that fails them.

Using feelings of disapproval and dissatisfaction to manipulate others works just like disappointment. In disapproval, all you can see and feel is wrong. In feelings of dissatisfaction all you can see and feel is displeasing. You cut yourself off from the infinite good ever-present in the now by dwelling on anxious feelings of dread as well, and using that to get your way.

When you feel disturbed in any way, let that feeling be. Don't hold onto it. Don't use it to get your way. It will naturally pass on its own into peace if you let it go. Do not resist it. And definitely do not identify it as the way you truly feel, as the only reasonable or right way to feel, or as a necessary way to feel.

Take deep, relaxing breaths. Gently ease yourself into peace, into truly peaceful acceptance of and trust in whatever is. Stop telling yourself what is wrong with what is happening and just open your mind and heart to experience the good available to your right now. The good begins with a feeling; it is your natural way of feeling when you do not impose unhappiness upon yourself.

That's right; you impose unhappiness upon yourself whenever you feel unhappy. You are naturally happy, loving, kind, trusting. You are naturally in a state of harmony. You don't have to make yourself feel in harmony. You just have to observe how you make yourself feel distressed. When you see how you do that, you can stop it. So the real key to inner freedom is the practice of directing your awareness within, to see how you treat yourself.

Growing self-awareness automatically leads you into healing feelings of peace. Your inner peace grows by small degrees the more you allow yourself to live in it. The more you choose it. In feelings peace, feelings of love, gratitude, faith, success and fulfilment grow, and these you attune you to realities that reinforce, nurture and expand these healthy and contented feeling states. You will soon see every reason to feel this good and no more reason to feel worse. You will discover more and more things going your way, more of what you want coming your way, including the support, assistance, understanding, sensitivity, care, and cooperation you used to futilely rely on negative manipulation tactics to bring you.

3.2. Text – level analysis

One of the paradoxes of modern linguistics is that its most distinguished practitioner, Noam Chomsky, although world-famous as a political activist and campaigner, professes no professional interest in language in use— neither in analysing the speeches, committee meetings, letters, memos and books which he claims are subverting the democratic process, nor in reflecting on his own highly effective rhetoric.

To understand and analyse manipulative discourse, it is crucial to first examine its social environment. We have already assumed that one of the characteristics of manipulation, for instance as distinct from persuasion, is that it involve power and domination. An analysis of this power dimension involves an account of the kind of control that some social actors or groups exercise over others (Clegg, 1975; Luke, 1989; Van Dijk, 1989: Wartenberg, 1990). We also have assumed that such control is first of all a control of the mind, that is, of the beliefs of recipients, and indirectly a control of the actions of recipients based on such manipulated beliefs. In order to be able to exercise such social control of others, however, social actors need to satisfy personal and social criteria that enable them to influence others in the first place. In this article, I limit my analysis to social criteria, and ignore the influence of psychological factors, such as character traits, intelligence, learning, etc. In other words, I am not interested here in what might be a ‘manipulating personality’, or in the specific personal way by which people manipulate others. Social conditions of manipulative control hence need to be formulated – at least at the macro level of analysis – in terms of group membership, institutional position, profession, material or symbolic resources and other factors that define the power of groups and their members. Thus, parents can manipulate their children because of their position of power and authority in the family, professors can manipulate their students because of their institutional position or profession and because of their knowledge, and the same is true for politicians manipulating voters, journalists manipulating the recipients of media text or religious leaders manipulating their followers. This does not mean that children cannot manipulate their parents, or students their teachers, but this is not because of their position of power, but as a form of opposition or dissent, or ad hoc, on the basis of personal characteristics. Thus, the kind of social manipulation we are studying here is defined in terms of social domination and its reproduction in everyday practices, including discourse. In this sense, we are more interested in manipulation between groups and their members than in the personal manipulation of individual social actors. A further analysis of domination, defined as power abuse, requires special access to, or control over, scarce social resources. One of these resources is preferential access to the mass media and public discourse, a resource shared by members of ‘symbolic’ elites, such as politicians, journalists, scholars, writers, teachers, and so on (Van Dijk, 1996). Obviously, in order to be able to manipulate many others through text and talk, one needs to have access to some form of public discourse, such as parliamentary debates, news, opinion articles, textbooks, scientific articles, novels, TV shows, advertising, the internet, and so on. And since such access and control in turn depend on, as well as constitute, the power of a group (institution, profession, etc.), public text is at the same time a means of the social reproduction of such power. For instance, politicians can also exercise their political power through public discourse, and through such public text they at the same time confirm and reproduce their political power. The same is true for journalists and professors, and their respective institutions – the media, the universities, etc.

We see that manipulation is one of the discursive social practices of dominant groups geared towards the reproduction of their power. Such dominant groups may do so in many (other) ways as well, e.g. through persuasion, providing information, education, instruction and other social practices that are aimed at influencing the knowledge, beliefs and (indirectly) the actions of the recipients. We have seen that some of these social practices may of course be quite legitimate, e.g. when journalists or teachers provide information for their audiences. This means that manipulation, also in accordance with what has been said before about its negative characteristics, is characterized as an illegitimate social practice because it violates general social rules or norms. We define as illegitimate all forms of interaction, communication or other social practices that are only in the interests of one party, and against the best interests of the recipients. We here touch upon the very social, legal and philosophical foundations of a just or democratic society, and of the ethical principles of discourse, interaction and communication (see, e.g., Habermas, 1984). A further discussion of these principles, and hence an explanation of why manipulation is illegitimate, is outside the scope of this article. We assumed that manipulation is illegitimate because it violates the human or social rights of those who are manipulated, but it is not easy to formulate the exact norms or values that are violated here. One might venture as a norm that recipients are always duly informed about the goals or intentions of the speaker. However, this would be much too strict a criterion because in many forms of communication and interaction such intentions and goals are not made explicit, but contextually attributed to speakers by recipients (or analysts) on the basis of general rules of text and interaction. Indeed, one might even postulate a social egoism principle, saying that (nearly) all forms of interaction or text tend to be in the best interests of the speakers. This means that the criteria of legitimacy must be formulated in other terms, as suggested, namely that manipulation is illegitimate because it violates the rights of recipients. This need not imply the norm that all forms of communication should be in the best interests of the recipients. Many types of communication or speech act are not, as is the case for accusations, requests, commands, and so on. A more pragmatic approach to such norms and principles are the conversational maxims formulated by Grice (1975), which require contributions to conversations to be truthful, relevant, relatively complete, and so on. In actual forms of talk and text, however, such maxims are often hard to apply: People lie, which may not always be the wrong thing to do; people tell only half of a story for all kinds of, sometimes legitimate, reasons and irrelevant talk is one of the most common forms of everyday interaction. In other words, manipulation is not (only) ‘wrong’ because it violates conversational maxims or other norms and rules of conversation, although this may be one dimension of manipulative talk and text. We therefore will accept without further analysis that manipulation is illegitimate in a democratic society, because it (re)produces, or may reproduce, inequality: it is in the best interests of powerful groups and speakers, and hurts the interests of less powerful groups and speakers. This means that the definition is not based on the intentions of the manipulators, nor on the more or less conscious awareness of manipulation by the recipients, but in terms of its societal consequences (sees also Etzioni-Halevy, 1989). For each communicative event, it then needs to be spelled out how such respective interests are managed by manipulative discourse. For instance, if the mass media provide incomplete or otherwise biased information about a specific politician during an election campaign so as to influence the votes of the readers, we would have a case of manipulation if we further assume that the readers have a right to be ‘duly’ informed about the candidates in an election. ‘Due’ information in this case may then further be specified as balanced, relatively complete, unbiased, relevant, and so on. This does not mean that a newspaper may not support or favour its own candidate, but it should do so with arguments, facts, etc., that is through adequate information and persuasion, and not through manipulation, for instance by omitting very important information, by lying or distorting the facts, and so on. All these normative principles, as they are also laid down in the professional codes of ethics of journalism, are part of the specific implementation of what counts as ‘legitimate’ forms of interaction and communication. Each of them, however, is quite vague, and in need of detailed further analysis. Again, as suggested earlier, the issues involved here belong to the ethics of discourse, and hence are part of the foundations of CDA. This informal analysis of the social properties of manipulation also shows that if manipulation is a form of domination or power abuse, it needs to be defined in terms of social groups, institutions or organizations, and not at the individual level of personal interaction. This means that it only makes sense to speak of manipulation, as defined, when speakers or writers are manipulating others in their role as a member of a dominant collective. In contemporary information societies, this is especially the case for the symbolic elites in politics, the media, education, scholarship, the bureaucracy, as well as in business enterprises, on the one hand, and their various kinds of ‘clients’ (voters, readers, students, customers, the general public, etc.) on the other. Thus, manipulation, socially speaking, is a discursive form of elite power reproduction that is against the best interests of dominated groups and (re)produces social inequality. Obviously, this formulation is in terms of traditional macro-level categories, such as the power of groups, organizations and institutions. Especially relevant for text analysis is of course also the more local, situated micro-level of social structure, that of interaction. Manipulation is also very fundamentally a form of social practice and interaction.

Manipulating people involves manipulating their minds, that is, people’s beliefs, such as the knowledge, opinions and ideologies which in turn control their actions. We have seen, however, that there are many forms of discourse-based mental influence, such as informing, teaching and persuasion, that also shape or change people’s knowledge and opinions. This means that manipulation needs to be distinguished from these other forms of mind management, as we have done earlier in social terms, that is, in terms of the context of discourse. In order to be able to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate mind control, we first need to be more explicit about how text can ‘affect’ the mind in the first place. Since the mind is extraordinarily complex, the way text may influence it inevitably involves intricate processes that can only be managed in real time by applying efficient strategies. For our purposes in this article, such an account will be simplified to a few basic principles and categories of cognitive analysis. There are a vast number of cognitive (laboratory) studies that show how understanding can be influenced by various contextual or textual ‘manipulations’, but it is beyond the scope of this article to review these (for general accounts of text processing, see Britton and Graesser, 1996; Kintsch, 1998; Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983: Van Oostendorp and Goldman, 1999).

First of all, text in general, and manipulative text in particular, involve processing information in short term memory (STM), basically resulting in ‘understanding’ (of words, clauses, sentences, utterances and non-verbal signals) for instance in terms of propositional ‘meanings’ or ‘actions’. Such processing is strategic in the sense of being online, goal-directed, and operating at various levels of text structure, and hypothetical: fast and efficient guesses and shortcuts are made instead of complete analyses. One form of manipulation consists of controlling some of this, partly automotive, strategy of text understanding. For instance, by printing part of the text in a salient position (e.g. on top), and in larger or bold fonts; these devices will attract more attention, and hence will be processed with extra time or memory resources, as is the case for headlines, titles or publicity slogans – thus contributing to more detailed processing and to better representation and recall. Headlines and titles also function as the conventional text category for the expression of semantic macrostructures, or topics, which organize local semantic structures; for this reason, such topics are better represented and recalled. Our point here is that specific features of text and talk – such as its visual representation – may specifically affect the management of strategic understanding in STM, so that readers pay more attention to some pieces of information than others. Of course, this occurs not only in manipulation, but also in legitimate forms of communication, such as news reports, textbooks and a host of other genres. This suggests that, cognitively speaking, manipulation is nothing special: it makes use of very general properties of text processing. So, as was the case for the social analysis of manipulation, we need further criteria that distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate influence on the processing of discourse. Manipulation in such a case may reside in the fact that by drawing attention to information A rather than B, the resulting understanding may be partial or biased, for instance when headlines emphasize irrelevant details, rather than expressing the most important topics of a text – thus impairing understanding of details through top-down influence of topics. The further social condition that should be added in this case, has we have done earlier, is that such partial or incomplete understanding is in the best interests of a powerful group or institution, and against the best interests of a dominated group. Obviously, this is not a cognitive or textual condition, but a normative social and contextual one: the rights of recipients to be adequately informed. Our cognitive analysis merely spells out how people are manipulated by controlling their minds, but cannot formulate why this is wrong.

Slower pronunciation, less complex syntax and the use of basic lexical items, a clear topic on a subject the recipients know well, among many other conditions, will generally tend to favour understanding. This also means that if speakers wish to hamper understanding, they will tend to do the opposite, that is, speak faster, less distinctly, with more complex sentences, with more abstruse words, a confused topic on a subject less familiar to the recipients – as may be the case, for instance, in legal or medical text that is not primarily geared towards better understanding by clients, and hence may assume manipulative forms when understanding is intentionally impaired. The ethical dimension also may involve the further (cognitive) criterion whether such control of comprehension is intentional or not – as is the case for the distinction between murder and manslaughter. This means that in the context models of the speakers or writers there is an explicit plan to impair or bias understanding.

3.3. General conclusions

Researchers have posited for decades that media, and magazines in particular, have a negative impact on women’s body satisfaction. However, that relationship is a complex one. Several theories, including socio-cultural and social comparison theories, have been used to better understand the relationship. Furthermore, with advances in technology, magazine images of women are now fictional portrayals rather than reflections of reality.

Perceived reality as it relates to magazine images is an area that has been relatively neglected by researchers, so the present study investigated the issue in an exploratory manner. To that end, a new scale was created to measure perceived reality of magazine images of women.

Researchers in the area of media and body satisfaction have primarily focused on why women become dissatisfied with their bodies because disordered eating, perhaps the most serious consequence of body dissatisfaction, is approximately three times more prevalent among women than men (National Institute of Mental Health, 2007). It is important to note however that weight is only one component of body satisfaction. Individuals can be satisfied or dissatisfied because of any number of facial or body features.

The relationship between media images and women’s body satisfaction has been assumed for many years. In fact, Wykes and Gunter (2005) suggest: Causal or probable relationships between media representations and body image have been regularly, theoretically posed since Orbach (1978), who briefly noted the tendency for the media to produce a picture of ideal femininity as “thin, free of unwanted hair, deodorised, perfumed, and clothed … They produce a picture that is far removed from the reality of everyday lives (1978: 20-21).” (pg. 2). Several theories have been used to better understand the relationship. Two often-cited theories are socio-cultural theory and social comparison theory. Socio-cultural theory suggests that mass media and other sources of socio-cultural pressure provide powerful diffusion and reinforcement of standards of beauty (Dittmar, 2005).

A model based on this theory suggests "that current societal standards for beauty inordinately stress the importance of thinness as well as difficult to achieve standards of beauty” (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999, p. 85). Exposure to mass media containing unrealistic standards of beauty does not always result in body dissatisfaction. It has been suggested that there are three parts to media influence as it relates to body image: media exposure, awareness of societal standards, and internalization of those standards (Cusumano & Thompson, 1997). The last part, internalization of societal standards, points to the idea that individual differences may play a part in whether or not media exposure results in decreased body satisfaction. In fact, certain individual differences have been found to make some people more susceptible to negative effects. Two examples are the aforementioned internalization factor and propensity to comparison. Several researchers have found that it is not exposure to standards of beauty but rather the internalization of those standards that results in body dissatisfaction (Dittmar, 2005). One such study dealing specifically with magazines was that of Cusumano and Thompson (1997). They created a scale to measure both awareness of the thin ideal and internalization of that ideal. Their study indicated that exposure to thin-ideal media alone was not an indicator of body dissatisfaction but that awareness and even more so internalization of that thin ideal were related to body dissatisfaction. Internalization of social standards is just one individual difference that may mediate the relationship between mass media exposure and body dissatisfaction. Another individual difference variable discussed in this line of research is the tendency toward social comparison. The social comparison variable is supported by social comparison theory.

The theory of social comparison was first proposed by Festinger.

In 1954, Festinger suggested that people establish their personal identities through comparing themselves to others. Social comparison theory asserts that when an individual compares in an “upward” direction, meaning to someone who is considered better, the comparison has a negative impact on self-satisfaction (Wykes & Gunter, 2005). Social comparison therefore could be one explanation for why media images have a negative impact on body satisfaction. As previously described, women portrayed in media tend to be thin and attractive. This could lead to upward comparisons. Compared to the “perfect” models portrayed in media images, the average woman may seem less attractive. Thus, individuals who are prone to social comparison may compare to media images in an upward direction which could lead to body dissatisfaction. As described, both socio-cultural and social comparison theories point to media’s influence on body satisfaction. Anecdotal evidence and research, mostly centred on television and magazines, have been used to further explain that relationship.

CONCLUSIONS

Health magazines have had, and still do, have a huge impact on women and their body issues resulting to extremes for their bodies.

Beauty and fashion magazines, with their images of glamorous models and celebrities, have been recognized as a factor affecting women’s body dissatisfaction. In 1984, Glamour Magazine conducted a survey about women and body satisfaction. In 2009, they reprised that survey with 16,000 participants. (Beyond the number of respondents, the rest of their methodology was unreported, and the survey was presumably unscientific.) The authors discussed why they undertook the survey, writing, “Talk of size acceptance and body love are everywhere. Women of all body types—from voluptuous Adele to pin-thin Keira Knightley—are rightly praised as gorgeous. We seem to have learned to see beauty in one another, but have women’s true feelings about their own bodies changed? Glamour decided to find out” (Dreisbach, 2009, p.2). Glamour’s primary finding was that over 40 percent of women are unhappy about their bodies, a number relatively unchanged from their 1984 survey. In their report, the Glamour authors made several recommendations for how to combat body dissatisfaction including working toward professional achievements, exercising, having sex, eating well, and giving and accepting compliments.

Glamour’s advice was based on responses to their survey, but one may wonder, as some of those who commented on the article did, if Glamour itself was not a contributor to women’s body dissatisfaction. The article discussing the body image survey on glamour.com was surrounded by ads and articles with some of these headlines, “Lose Up to 5 Pounds in 1 Week with Body by Glamour,” “Exactly What to Eat to Lose Weight,” “Diet Like a Diva,” and “OMG Alert: Spanx Launches Swimwear (AND it’s Cute!).” The images around the article included super-thin models in bathing suits, an ad with tennis players Serena and Venus Williams, and a mostly nude woman who is heavier than the average model but likely thinner than the average American woman.

One user who commented on the article used the words body-image hypocrisy to describe the juxtaposition of the content and ads on the Glamour website with the information on body satisfaction. This is just one anecdotal example of how magazines that say they are encouraging body love may also fuel body hate.

Academic research regarding the relationship between women’s magazine consumption and body image will be discussed in depth. As a preview, much of that research focuses on the issue of weight, and research findings indicate that the relationship is a complex one with many potential mediating factors. For example, magazine reading has a negative impact on some women’s body satisfaction.

While researchers have long examined the magazine-body satisfaction relationship in general, a technological development, namely Photoshop, has changed the nature of the images in magazines, and little research has addressed this. Photoshop is computer software that was first released in 1990 (West, 2010). Twenty years and twelve versions later, Photoshop allows photo editors to make numerous realistic alterations to any photo, and it is the industry standard for touching up images used in magazines. While researchers have barely touched the surface of the topic of digital alteration in magazines and what it means for women’s body satisfaction, photo-shopping has become an increasingly salient issue.

The word “photoshop” is no longer just a trade name or industry jargon. It appears in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a transitive verb defined as “to alter (as a digital image) with computer software” (Merriam-Webster, 1992). In reality, the word photoshop has come to mean much more. Photo-shopped images are commonplace on the internet and in print, and can be found throughout the pages of magazines worldwide.

The editor of Canada’s Flare magazine said, “Any fashion periodical that claims not to retouch photos is lying” (Harris, 2008, p.10). A premier photo manipulator recounted that in one issue of Vogue (US) alone he retouched 107 advertisements, 36 fashion photos, and the cover image (Long, 2008). Photoshopped images are found not just in fashion magazines either. For instance, in 2005, Newsweek put Martha Stewart’s head on a thinner woman’s body in their magazine (Harris, 2008). The frequency and importance of photo-shopping is further evidenced by the prevalence of the discussion of photoshopping online, in the news, and in editorials. Popular discussion of photoshopping is increasing.

In 2007, The New York Times ran an article regarding excessive photoshopping of celebrities. The article referenced retouched celebrity photos from the covers of Men’s Fitness, US Weekly, and In Touch (Newman, 2007). Exposing photoshopped images like this has become a pop culture staple.

The website jezebel.com features a “Photoshop of Horrors.” They highlight poor photoshop work and excessive alterations found in magazines, advertisements, and product packaging. Some of the “offenses” that they point out are body parts left in photos without attached bodies and numerous occurrences of unnatural waistlines, bust lines, and facial features. In some cases, the alteration is obvious at face value, in others a candid photo of the target celebrity is provided for comparison (jezebel.com, 2008). The website popeater.com by AOL Television also has several features regarding photoshopping. In one feature, “Picture Perfect,” they include the cover art of nine different magazines featuring celebrities such as Beyonce Knowles, Brooke Shields, Jennifer Lopez, and Kirsten Dunst. Some of the changes between the cover art and unretouched photos of the celebrities are smaller waistlines, larger breasts, fewer wrinkles, straightened teeth, and smoother skin (AOL Television, 2008). The commentary on both websites encourages magazine editors to stop photoshopping celebrities. Another example of the discussion of photoshopping and unrealistic images in popular culture is the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.

In 2004, Dove began their campaign with a series of ads featuring real women rather than models. They have committed not to significantly alter the images used in any of their ads in ways that promote an unrealistic or unattainable standard of beauty since then (Unilever, A word about our images, 2008). Dove has expanded the Campaign for Real Beauty to include further ads, a website, and materials for teaching girls about beauty and self esteem, and viral videos. One of the viral videos, called Evolution, specifically highlights the issue of photoshopping (Unilever, Evolution). In the video, a young woman is seated under professional lighting, her hair is styled and make-up applied, and photos are taken. Then her image is altered on a computer. Her lips are enlarged, neck elongated, hair perfected, eyebrows lifted, face thinned, and eyes made larger. The image then appears on an outdoor billboard. Afterwards, text appears on the screen that says, “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.” The video demonstrates how seamlessly and quickly alterations can be made to a photo and how different a final image can look from the person who was photographed.

There are multiple points of view in the discussion of digital alteration. Shari Graydon, a director at Ontario-based Media Action, is of the opinion that readers have the right to expect that images represent the truth. She suggests that readers should be able to trust the images in a publication as much as the text in that publication (Harris, 2008). She also suggests that companies who sell fashion and beauty products are not practicing truth in advertising if they photoshop images for their ads.

Critics of this line of thought suggest that if everyone knows that images are manipulated then unrealistic portrayals are a non-issue. They suggest that rational people can separate imagination from reality (Long, 2008). Another argument in favour of photoshopping is that advertisers and publishers would not be as commercially successful without it. A previous editor of Cosmo Girl has said, “We could change, but if we change then we won’t make as much money” (Heckscher, 2008). Researchers have begun to refute that argument with scientific evidence (Halliwell & Dittmar, 2004). Others have taken a middle of the road approach. Sally Brampton, the former editor of Elle said, “Retouching is neither good nor bad: it is clearly something we want and until we decide we don’t want it, it will remain that way” (Long, 2008, p. 14). As these opinions demonstrate, there are many sides to the debate about photoshopping. Despite the fact that there are mixed opinions regarding the use of digital alteration in media, the fact that digital manipulation is pervasive cannot be denied. Building on that premise, the present study explores digital alteration in greater depth by attempting to understand women’s perceptions of the reality of images that they see in media, particularly the images in beauty and fashion magazines.

The fact that magazine reading has a negative impact on some women’s body satisfaction has been well established by researchers. However, there has been very little research regarding the digital alteration of images or the perceived reality of media images as they relate to body satisfaction. Research has been conducted regarding perceived reality of media in general, but that research lacks a consistent conceptualization of perceived reality as a construct. To address this issue, Hall (2003) conducted a qualitative study focusing on the criteria media audiences use to judge realism in media.

Numerous researchers have investigated the effects of media consumption on women’s body satisfaction with a wide variety of findings. Drawing on that body of research, Groesz, Levine, and Murnen (2002) conducted a meta-analysis of experimental research on the relationship between media use and body satisfaction. They used 25 studies to calculate an overall effect size which was found to be “small but relatively consistent and significant” (Groesz, Levine, & Murnen, 2002, p. 11). Groesz and colleagues concluded that in experimental settings women who were exposed to media images of thin models were more dissatisfied with their bodies than those who were exposed to other types of media images (average to plus sized models or controls). A somewhat broader meta-analysis was conducted by Holstrom (2004). She also calculated the overall effect size of media on body image. Holstrom’s meta-analysis, which included 34 survey and experimental studies, indicated that the overall effect size of media use on body image was small.

Holstrom identified several potential reasons for the small effects size such as flaws in methodology and participant desensitization in the original studies. Others have postulated that small effect sizes are found because effects are not present among some subgroups of women (Dittmar, 2009). A later meta-analysis was conducted by Levine and Murnen (2009) that was more inclusive than their prior study with Groesz. This analysis included 77 correlation or experimental studies, and Levine and Murnen concluded that media have a small to moderate effect on body satisfaction.

More specific to the present study, research has been conducted related to sociocultural and social comparison theories and magazine use. Previous studies support both theories. Research was conducted by Cusumano and Thompson in 1997 regarding sociocultural theory, and they found that internalization of societal standards of appearance is related to body image disturbance, eating dysfunction, and self-esteem. Their primary finding was that magazines contributed to “societal standards of appearance” (Cusumano & Thompson, 1997, p. 701). This key study set the tone for further research regarding sociocultural theory.

Glauert and colleagues (Glauert, Rhodes, Byrne, Fink, & Grammer, 2009) investigated the idea of internalization of the thin ideal further. They found that the more women internalized the thin ideal the thinner the body they selected as their ideal. Also, while some women who were exposed to fat bodies then identified an ideal that was heavier, women who were high internalizes were less impacted by exposure to fat bodies.

The experiments in Glauert and colleagues’ study used computer-generated, nude, female bodies as exposure stimulus, not magazine images. However, these findings support the idea that women who internalize the thin ideal are more impacted by viewing thin images than women who do not internalize the ideal.

Stice and colleagues (Stice, Mazotti, Weibel, & Agras, 2000) took a more applied approach to their evaluation of sociocultural theory. Rather than simply measure the effect of internalization on body dissatisfaction, they set out to test the impact of internalization through a body image disturbance prevention program. Stice and colleagues had a group of undergraduate females with heightened body image concerns go through a group program wherein they learned to refute the thin ideal which was understood to be perpetuated by family, friends, and the media. Stice and colleagues concluded that internalization was related to body dissatisfaction in that when they were able to systematically reduce women’s internalization their body dissatisfaction was also reduced. Further supporting sociocultural theory, Dittmar, Halliwell, and Stirling (2009) found similar results, that women who internalize a socially-constructed thin ideal are probably more affected by media exposure than women who do not. On the social comparison front, Tiggemann and McGill (2004) set out to investigate the role of social comparison in women’s responses to magazine advertisements. They presented women with different types of images and different instructions, one of which encouraged comparison. Through regression analysis, Tiggemann and McGill found that the amount of social comparison women engaged in mediated the effects of image type on mood and body dissatisfaction. Bessenoff (2006) also found that social comparison mediated the relationship between magazine advertisements and body dissatisfaction. She found that women who already had higher body dissatisfaction were more likely to engage in social comparison from exposure to thin-ideal images and were also more likely to experience negative effects as a result of that social comparison. Likewise, Tiggemann, Polivy, and Hargreaves (2009) found that when women were instructed to engage in social comparison during magazine reading they were more likely to have body dissatisfaction than those who were given fantasy instructions. Similar findings include those of Krcmar, Giles, and Helme (2008). They found that exposure to fashion, celebrity, and fitness magazines had a negative effect on women’s body satisfaction and furthermore that comparison was the mechanism through which body satisfaction was lowered. More relevant to the present study is the work of another researcher, Bissell (2004). She studied whether or not women engaged in social comparison if they knew that the model presented was digitally manipulated. Bissell’s study will be described in detail in the next section.

Sociocultural and social comparison theories have been evaluated side by side as well. For example, Morrison, Kalin, and Morrison (2004) compared the impacts of exposure to magazines and television with idealistic images and frequency of self comparison to idealistic targets such as fashion models. Their primary finding was that sociocultural theory was minimally supported while social comparison theory was strongly supported.

Dittmar and Howard (2004) also compared the two theories but found different results. Their study found that “internalization is a more proximal and specific predictor of women's anxiety than more general social comparison” (p. 768). Clearly there is no consensus as to which theory provides better prediction of body satisfaction. While not tested directly, both sociocultural and social comparison theories were used as background for the present study. As described, there has been much research conducted on the subject of magazines and body satisfaction. In contrast, there has been little research conducted on digital alteration of magazine images.

Hall (2003) indicated that audiences use six elements to make judgments regarding media realism: plausibility, typicality, factuality, emotional involvement, narrative consistency, and perceptual persuasiveness. These were the elements used to create the perceived reality of magazine images of women scale. The validity and reliability analyses of the scale indicated that consumers used four of the six elements to make reality judgments regarding the magazine images. Plausibility, typicality, factuality, and emotional involvement were generally related to readers’ overall impressions of the realism of the magazine pages. The items making up those four elements were also those included in the version of the scale with the highest internal consistency. Furthermore, they were all represented in the confirmatory factor analyses with goodness of fit. Narrative consistency on the other hand was not related to perceived realism. In Hall’s research, narrative consistency was discussed less often by participants than the other items. It referred to how participants would suspend disbelief because the particular program or genre is internally consistent. Narrative consistency was represented in the perceived reality of magazine images of women scale through two measures, “The model in this magazine page looks like most women shown in media like TV, the internet, and advertisements,” and “The model here looks like most models in beauty and fashion magazines.”

The purpose of these statements was to gauge whether participants thought the images shown were consistent with other media portrayals. One explanation for why narrative consistency did not relate to perceived reality is that even though magazine images are consistent they do not have a narrative that explains unrealistic portrayals. In the descriptions of narrative consistency that the participants in Hall’s study gave, they described how consistent explanations can overcome unrealistic elements of a program. For example, in science fiction television the same fictional technological advances are described and shown from episode to episode. The story of why these technologies work is what makes them seem more real. While magazine images may depict a scene or story, generally that story would not explain why the model looks unusually thin and attractive. Perhaps the type of narrative in other types of programming is what makes consistency more relevant in those areas of research while it does not appear to play a large role in this research regarding magazines. Whether or not perceptual persuasiveness played a part in readers’ perceived reality of the magazine pages could not be determined from the analysis. The items related to perceptual persuasiveness of the magazine pages did not function within the scale as expected. One of the items, “The model shown in this magazine page is attractive,” factored with emotional involvement. As described previously, social comparison theory may provide one explanation for why this occurred. If participants engaged in comparison to the attractive models, they may have responded emotionally.

The other perceptual persuasiveness item, “This magazine page looks like it was created by a professional designer,” had a negative correlation with the general reality question. While Hall’s research indicated that the visual quality of an image may lead participants to view an image as more realistic, in the present study the more professional looking an ad was the less realistic it appeared. This difference may be attributed to the perception of the medium itself. Movies and television, which were the primary media discussed in Hall’s research, are presumably considered less professionally enhanced than magazines. When magazine readers recognized magazine images to be of professional quality they may have related that to digital manipulation which in turn resulted in them perceiving the images as less real.

Three factors of the perceived reality of magazines images of women scale were confirmed: real world, factuality, and emotional involvement. While Hall split perceived reality of media dimensions into six, in the present study at least two of the dimensions were found to be closely related. Plausibility and typicality had similar meaning within reality judgments based on the real world factor. Furthermore, the correlation of error terms in the confirmatory factor analysis may indicate that the dimensions were related or even that some of the dimensions measured a common underlying factor.

Sociocultural theory predicts that women become dissatisfied with their bodies in part because of exposure to and internalization of social standards of beauty communicated through media.

Previous researchers, such as Han (2003), have hypothesized, though not confirmed, that if women perceive magazine images as less than real, that the negative impact of magazine exposure on body satisfaction may be mitigated. Put differently, researchers have expected that as perception of reality scores go up, body dissatisfaction scores should go down. In the present study, the opposite was found. Furthermore, the basic argument of sociocultural theory related to the present study is that magazine exposure leads to body dissatisfaction. In this thesis, no relationship was found between magazine use and body satisfaction. In these ways, the results of the present study do not support sociocultural theory. On the other hand, while not tested directly, social comparison theory may have been supported in the present study. Social comparison theory predicts that women become dissatisfied with their bodies through upward comparisons to media images.

Previous research by Bissell (2004) indicated that women were less likely to want to look like the images in magazines, to make a comparison, if they knew the photos were digitally altered. In the present study, the participants were aware, if not very aware, of digital alteration, a finding that will be discussed in depth in the next section. This awareness of digital alteration may have meant that women in the study do not make comparisons to magazine images which could explain why only inconsistent and weak relationships were found between perceived reality of magazine images and body satisfaction. Awareness of digital alteration may have been a mediating factor as Bissell’s research suggested. Although it should be noted that social comparison theory was used as background for the present study, and the theory was not tested directly in this thesis.

The present study indicates that further research regarding perceived reality of magazine images should include more specific variables regarding social comparison.

As previously stated, on the whole, participants in the present study were aware, if not very aware, of digital alteration. In retrospect, an artificially high result may have occurred because of the placement of the digital alteration questions.

Magazine image examples paired with scale items regarding their factuality were presented before the digital alteration questions, so evaluating the images may have increased awareness. However, another explanation for this result is that digital alteration has become so ubiquitous that most women are aware of it. Either explanation fits the result that there was very little variance in the participants’ responses. While acknowledging that issue, the relationship between awareness of digital alteration and perceived reality of magazine images of women was investigated. Very little previous research on digital alteration was found, so this line of inquiry in the present study was entirely exploratory.

The relationships between awareness of digital alteration and two measures of perceived reality were evaluated. Based on these two lines of analysis, the primary finding was that participants who were more aware of digital alteration perceived the magazine images of women to be less real. This finding is significant because it points to the strength of factuality as a factor in magazine users’ reality judgments. Through this analysis and the elucidation of Hall’s perceived reality elements, helping to understand what factors women use to judge the reality of magazine images is one of the main contributions this thesis has made to an infrequently researched area.

Future research could use different images to investigate re-test reliability. Those images could also include models of diverse ethnicities which were not included in the present study. Also related to the magazine pages in the survey, they may have had a priming effect regarding awareness of digital alteration. Future research could change the placement of the digital alteration questions within the survey to investigate whether that has an impact. The scale could also be improved by testing different items for perceptual persuasiveness because those created did not function as expected. As acknowledged in the literature review, body dissatisfaction is a complicated issue.

In this study just one component of the relationship between media and body dissatisfaction was examined, perceived reality of magazines images of women. It would be useful for future researchers to incorporate this variable into a model for magazines and body dissatisfaction and also to include magazine use, internalization, tendency toward social comparison, knowledge of digital alteration, and other variables. While it was outside the scope of this thesis, the factors of the perceived reality of magazine images of women scale confirmed in this study could also be used individually to examine those relationships further in future research. While no relationship was found between perceived reality of magazine of women and body satisfaction, this thesis points to ways in which sociocultural theory was not supported while social comparison theory may be supported. Further research regarding these theories is warranted.

The present study also demonstrated how awareness of digital alteration, which is an underdeveloped research area, is related to perceived reality of magazine images of women.

Finally, this thesis established the validity and reliability of the perceived reality of magazine images of women scale and language manipulation in health magazines regarding health.

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