She uses tangerines.

What is manipulation?
Is it as simple as knowing "If I do X, they will respond with Y, and C will happen"? Or is it more a concious effort on the part of one person to get a second person (or even a group of people) to do what the first person wants in order to reach an end that the first person wants?
Is the title "manipulation" only applicable to situations where people would be negatively impacted by the outcome, and for that matter what degree of negativity can justify the term? Is "manipulation" a broader term, one that can be used when psychology majors interact with people? And if so, is it cancelled out if the other people know the person they're talking to has taken psychology and can thus accurately predict outcomes of their actions?

It's the questions like these that kept me away from people for years, and still trips me up when I let my mind wander.

Through unconciously performing social experiments on the people around me, and conciously observing interactions, I can pretty accurately predict my X + Y = C formulae.
"If I get his attention over the headset just to say hello and ask how he is (X) he will feel special because I care about him (Y) and this exchange will result in him feeling that our friendship has become closer than it was when today started (C)."
I'll be damned if he didn't walk up to me on the next break instead of the people he'd been talking to all night.

Some times I have to remind myself that I've taken a certain action, or said a certain sequence of words, because I wanted to and not because I knew it would get me a favorable outcome. Secretly, I revel in my social faux-pas because they tell me that I was simply being me instead of trying to get to someone.
Of course, this is not to say that I don't use my powers of XYC. Job interviews are fair game as long as I don't take it too far, and some times I do it to new people just to see if I've still got it. But I draw the line at people I care about, people I respect, and it's not hard at all to get into that group. I've had people say five words and win a piece of my heart.
Which is not to say that five words can earn someone my complete trust. Most people take years to get me to open up completely, but I think that's a subject for another day.

After so many of my interactions, though, I find myself asking "was that really me, or was that manipulation? And is my asking that, and hoping it was just me, enough to negate any manipulation that may have occured?"


Is manipulation a term to be applied to only malicious intent, or am I really the manipulative wench I try so hard not to be?