So for the same set of actions, it's fine if you're unaware of the underlying mechanisms, and manipulation if you are aware?
If you dig through the weeds of it you can argue just about everything we do socially is manipulation. We are social because we're social animals and will die without help from other humans (well, particularly thousands of years ago). At the end of the day, we are nice to people to get things from them that we need - food, shelter, knowledge, strength. It's always been like that. But because it makes us feel fuzzy and good, apparently that's not manipulation, that's being nice.
You can absolutely be charming towards people and play the "game" of social interaction while being quite aware that this is what you're doing. The point is that this need not involve outright lying or BS at all and that the latter is what such terms as "manipulation" actually imply in a very practical sense; not that it somehow counts against you if you're aware of what's happening at a pure level of social interaction. (In fact, the opposite is generally the case; active social awareness and mindfulness is a big part of what people variously call "EQ", "empathy", "cross-cultural competence", etc.)
Looking at the definition of manipulation, it occurs to me that manipulation must be a win-lose situation. Otherwise it is persuasion. You could use the same technique, but if it is win win for both it is persuasion, but if you are gaining from their expense it is manipulation. At least according to Wikipedia.
There are also white lies. Are you manipulating children if you are claiming santa exists? Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.
That seems a little bit of an odd interpretation to me.
Persuasion is honest. "Hey, I think you should do this thing because of reasons a, b, and c, there are some downsides like y and z. It may mean something to me peronally, so I may also to appeal to you to do it for me as a favour. I may even play up how important I think it is."
Manipulation is dishonest. "Hey, I'm going to use an underhanded technique to make you feel like you're missing out on something, or are inadequate, to get you to do this thing. Maybe I'll go overboard on flattery and inflate your ego to achieve my end. I also might lie or omit some of the downsides to give a distorted view of the risks"
Even if it's a win-win situation, it's still manipulation if you're seeking to bypass someone's agency.
> Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.
Yes, certainly, and that's why people often get upset about "little white lies" too. Maybe you are doing a good thing, maybe you're not, but removing agency from someone by keeping the truth from them is always manipulative.
The wiser question may be "is manipulation always wrong?"
And I'd argue that if it gets your kids to calm down and go to bed on Christmas Eve, maybe not ...
If I get sad or angry when a friend tells me a story, this feeling is a expression of my inner state, not a strategic choice I make to get to a certain place. And this inner state usually translates into how people act later. So if I am enraged how my friend was treated I may be inclined to take steps that help them get even, for example.
Manipulation, however, is when I (feeling nothing), pretend to feel a thing with the goal of getting a certain response.
The border between the two is of course not totally clear-cut and people can manipulate themselves into truly feeling things without following through with any actions etc. So a complex topic, but the reason why the manipulation works in the first place is because the feelings people express towards us are more often than not an expression of how they will act towards us as well. If a guy on the street screams at you, your #1 interpretation won't be that he does it to manipulate you, but that that person is experiencing an actual feeling that may convert to physical action pretty soon.
"we are nice to people to get what we want" is flat out not true. We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level. On a micro level this kind of attitude sometimes/often prevails, we call the people who act like this "jerks", and the people who try to justify it with these kinds of rationale "sociopaths", because to the group as a whole its so incredibly damaging, and to the individuals on the other side of it, insufferable.
> We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level
I.e. biology gets what it wants... We want to survive, mother nature wants us to survive, society wants to survive.
I am absolutely not suggesting that outright jerkish behaviour is acceptable (although to suggest jerks have no social success is probably untrue; plenty of people who are attracted to jerks). I am arguing that if there was no personal advantage whatsoever to being social and nice to people, we wouldn't do it. We'd be lone animals, spread out across the land rather than concentrated in towns and cities. There's a spectrum of selfish behaviour, right? We are somewhere in the middle because it's advantageous to be.
Both are true. We want to survive and being nice to others increases our likelihood of survival. Wanting to survive is also selected by evolution and wanting to be nice in order to survive in a group setting that increases survival odds too.
If you dig through the weeds of it you can argue just about everything we do socially is manipulation. We are social because we're social animals and will die without help from other humans (well, particularly thousands of years ago). At the end of the day, we are nice to people to get things from them that we need - food, shelter, knowledge, strength. It's always been like that. But because it makes us feel fuzzy and good, apparently that's not manipulation, that's being nice.