When Persuasion Becomes Manipulation: The Ethical Line
The same techniques that build a vaccination drive can build a propaganda campaign. What separates them is not the tool but the respect it shows for the person being persuaded.
Category: Ch 8 · Social Influence & Persuasion
Social influence and persuasion: conformity, compliance, obedience, group dynamics, the elements of persuasion, and their ethical use in governance.
Where Persuasion Does the Work of Government
Public health, tax compliance, road safety, conservation: the areas where an Indian administration achieves more by changing what people want than by changing what the law permits.
Swachh Bharat: A Case Study in Social Influence
A sanitation programme that worked mainly as a persuasion campaign — social proof, authority, emotional appeal and community pressure, applied at national scale.
The Elements of Persuasion: Credibility, Emotion, Logic and Social Proof
Persuasion is not rhetoric. It is a small set of levers that reliably move belief — and an officer who cannot name them cannot use them or resist them.
How People Are Influenced: Conformity, Compliance and Obedience
Most of what a citizen does in response to the state is not compelled and not freely chosen either. It sits in the wide space between, and this part maps it.