Chapter 34 Exercises: Ethics of Persuasion — Consent, Manipulation, and Responsibility

Individual Exercises

Exercise 34.1 — Spectrum Mapping (†) Select five persuasive communications from five different domains (political advertising, public health messaging, commercial advertising, advocacy campaign, social media influencer content). For each, apply the four criteria from Section 34.2 (truthfulness, emotional proportionality, respect for rational agency, transparency of intent) and place each communication on the spectrum from rational argument to manipulation to coercive control. Write 100–150 words per example. Include one example that you find genuinely ambiguous to classify.

Exercise 34.2 — Consent Analysis Choose a digital advertising experience from your own recent media use — an advertisement you actually saw or received. Research, to the extent possible, what data about you was used to deliver it, whether you knowingly provided that data, and what the platform's stated consent mechanism was. Write a 400-word analysis: Did you consent in any meaningful sense? Did you have the cognitive capacity and information needed to give informed consent? How does this case complicate or support the consent framework from Section 34.3?

Exercise 34.3 — Three Frameworks Applied (†) Select a single persuasion practice from the following list: (a) opt-out organ donation defaults, (b) graphic anti-tobacco packaging, (c) micro-targeted political advertising based on inferred personality profiles, or (d) a social media platform's use of variable reward notification timing to increase app engagement. Apply all three philosophical frameworks from Section 34.4 — autonomy-based, welfare-based, and procedural. Does each framework reach the same verdict? If they diverge, what does that tell you about the practice? Write 500–600 words.

Exercise 34.4 — The Propagandist's Responsibility Select one of the following individuals and assess their individual moral responsibility for the propaganda they produced: - (a) A copywriter at a social media firm who wrote the advertising copy for a political campaign that, unknown to her at the time of writing, was using fabricated data about her client's opponent. - (b) A data scientist at a platform company who built the engagement optimization algorithm that, the company's own internal research showed, preferentially amplified emotionally inflaming content including disinformation. - (c) A local television journalist who broadcast, without independent verification, claims made at a government press conference that were later shown to be deliberate disinformation.

Write a 400-word moral assessment using the spectrum of individual responsibility from Section 34.9. At what level on the spectrum does your chosen individual fall? What factors determine that placement? What, if anything, could they have done differently?

Exercise 34.5 — Emotional Appeal Audit Select a public health communication from your country's government (COVID-19 vaccination messaging, anti-smoking campaigns, and road safety campaigns are useful sources). Identify every emotional appeal in the communication. For each, assess: (a) what emotion is invoked, (b) what real feature of the situation grounds it, (c) whether the intensity is proportionate to the accurately characterized evidence, and (d) whether it would survive scrutiny from a well-informed, reflective person. Write 300–400 words.

Exercise 34.6 — Nudge Design and Ethical Analysis Design a nudge intervention for one of the following contexts: (a) increasing handwashing compliance in a workplace, (b) reducing food waste in a university cafeteria, or (c) increasing voter registration rates among 18–25-year-olds. Your nudge should be specific and implementable. Then conduct a brief ethical analysis: which philosophical framework (autonomy-based, welfare-based, procedural) is most favorable to your nudge, and which is most critical? What accountability mechanism would you build in? Write 350–450 words total.

Exercise 34.7 — APA Code Application A licensed psychologist appears as an expert commentator in an online video produced by a political advocacy group. The video makes claims about the psychological effects of a proposed policy that go beyond what the published research supports. No financial relationship between the psychologist and the advocacy group is disclosed. Apply Section 5 of the APA Ethics Code (Section 34.12) to this scenario. Which provisions, if any, has the psychologist potentially violated? What would a professionally ethical version of this participation look like? Write 300 words.

Group Exercises

Exercise 34.8 — The Ethics Board In groups of four, each member takes one role: (a) the campaign designer defending their persuasion strategy, (b) a professional ethicist applying the autonomy-based framework, (c) a public health researcher applying the welfare-based framework, and (d) a communications lawyer applying the procedural framework. The campaign being evaluated: a public health inoculation campaign about vaccine disinformation that uses graphic imagery, personal testimony from a bereaved parent, and pre-exposure messaging delivered through targeted social media advertising. Each role-player prepares a 3-minute position statement; the group then debates whether the campaign is ethical.

Exercise 34.9 — IRB Review Simulation Your instructor will provide a one-page description of a proposed research study involving persuasion and social media. Your group will act as an IRB review panel. Assess the study on three dimensions: (1) adequacy of the informed consent procedure, (2) minimization of potential harm to participants, and (3) the integrity of the research design. Issue a written decision — approve, approve with modifications, or reject — with a one-paragraph justification for each dimension.

Exercise 34.10 — The Counter-Propaganda Debate Debate the proposition: "A counter-propaganda campaign that uses emotionally manipulative techniques to counter disinformation is ethically no different from the disinformation it is countering." One team argues Position A (no ethical difference); one team argues Position B (meaningful ethical difference). Both teams must engage with the strongest arguments of the other position, not merely state their own. Following the debate, each student writes a 200-word personal reflection: did the debate change their view? Why or why not?

Writing Prompts

Short Response (300–400 words): The chapter argues that the ethical line in counter-propaganda "is not between us and them, between good intentions and bad ones, between true causes and false ones." Explain this argument in your own words and assess whether you find it persuasive. What does it imply for how advocates, activists, and counter-disinformation professionals should design their campaigns?

Essay (700–900 words): The Facebook emotional contagion study revealed that a major platform had been continuously shaping users' emotional states through algorithmic feed curation as part of ordinary product operation — not just as a one-time experiment. Drawing on Section 34.7 and the frameworks from this chapter, argue for or against the following position: "Platform algorithm design should be subject to the same ethical standards as psychological research on human subjects." Address the practical objections to this position as well as the principled case for it.

Extended Essay (1,000–1,200 words): "The ethics of persuasion, properly understood, collapses into the ethics of truth-telling. If a communication is accurate, proportionate, transparent, and respectful of the audience's rational agency, it cannot be manipulation — regardless of what emotional or psychological techniques it employs. And if it is not all four of these things, it is manipulation — regardless of how noble the cause." Assess this claim. Identify what it gets right, what it gets wrong, and where the genuine difficulties in the ethics of persuasion remain after it has been applied.