Personally, I prefer to describe "thinking about manipulating people's emotions" as _empathy_, but that's just me.
Empathy is the core skill, yes, but there's a sort of... I almost want to say an instinctual disgust? that people also have to overcome, when they want to turn empathy around to use it to change someone else's mind, rather than just using it to predict someone else's mind. You have to become at least a little bit of a sociopath, is maybe the problem.
See, other people have different foundational beliefs—different axioms they're working from. To use "empathy aikido" on them—to come up with arguments that will convince them of something, not slowly and laboriously from logical first principles, but by building up quickly from what they already assume to be true—you have to be willing to make arguments that are true under their axioms, but not under yours. That is, you have to be willing to use arguments that you think are false, just because the person you're trying to convince will believe them.
It feels weirdly like lying; like you're a politician swaying the populace with empty rhetoric. But you're not saying things that nobody would believe (if given long enough to think about them); you're instead just getting into the head of—empathizing with—the person who holds those axioms, and then saying things that you—as that person—really do believe.
This is why, I think, there's a big divide between people who like or hate the idea of "salesmanship": some people fundamentally see it as lying, while other people fundamentally see it as empathizing.
Personally, I think it can end up either way—some people "sell" an idea while holding back a bunch of facts that, under their axioms, are total deal-breakers. Others, though, "build a bridge" between their interlocutor's world-model and their own, using their arguments to help the other person build a world-model enough like their own that they can then present the facts that they believe to the listener, and the listener can understand them through the "consensus schema†" they built.
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)
People who are said to have "reality distortion fields", I'm guessing, are just good at making those kind of points that build a consensus schema, that they can then state plain "facts" against which will seem—within the consensus schema—to be obvious, rather than having to convince you of each fact through argument. Despite the gnawing feeling that accepting that consensus schema into your brain is sort of an indoctrination into a cult, it's really the less ethically questionable of the two options, in my mind: the speaker doesn't have to say anything they don't actually believe (other than the arguments required to build the consensus schema.)
It feels weirdly like lying; like you're a politician swaying the populace with empty rhetoric. But you're not saying things that nobody would believe (if given long enough to think about them); you're instead just getting into the head of—empathizing with—the person who holds those axioms, and then saying things that you—as that person—really do believe." -derefr
Response to derefr: If you are willing to use an argument that you think is false then, by definition, you are lying [even in situations where the lie can be mistaken for truth by others].
and
> "E.g., 'putting your best foot forward' for a job interview or first date can feel like a kind of dishonesty, although it's expected in those cases. I wonder how you could start drawing a definitive line between "good" empathic manipulation and "bad" sociopathic manipulation, when even just smiling at someone can be manipulation of a sort?" -zazen
Response to zazen: If it feels like dishonesty then it most definitely is. Consider cases where the interviewee simply lacks confidence but puts on a facade to appear otherwise. As for drawing a line between "good" and "bad" manipulation, reference derefr's note:
> "To use "empathy aikido" on them—to come up with arguments that will convince them of something, not slowly and laboriously from logical first principles, but by building up quickly from what they already assume to be true—you have to be willing to make arguments that are true under their axioms, but not under yours. That is, you have to be willing to use arguments that you think are false, just because the person you're trying to convince will believe them." - derefr
The addition of "but not under yours" constitutes manipulation on grounds which are aside from truth.
It takes a different thought process to convince someone that e.g. climate change is happening, if they're a Young Earth Creationist, than it does if they're a paleontologist. It takes different arguments to convince someone to donate money to charity if they're a deontologist than if they're a consequentialist. None of these axiomatic positions affect what (empirically discoverable) facts are true, per se; they just affect what facts are relevant to changing one's mind about what one should do—that is, these axioms influence how the "is" statements† a person hears will affect their confidence in various "ought" statements.
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem
So, this kind of "empathy aikido" is less about modelling a person who believes different facts are true, as it is about modelling a person who cares about the truth-value of different facts than you do. It's not that you might have to believe [X thing you believe is true] to be false; it's that you will have to pretend that [X thing you believe being true] is not a compelling argument, and might be so unimportant that you've never even thought about it and never will. Whereas the truth-value of [Y thing you don't care about] might be, to the person you're talking to, the most important thing in the world; the "trick" is figuring this out and then using a (true) argument about Y to convince them, despite thinking personally that only X, and not Y, holds any real sway over the truth-value of your conclusion C.
It can still feel bad, but I hope you can see how that intuition is less grounded here in any real injustice you're doing. Telling a virtue-ethicist that it is "noble" to e.g. donate to the Against Malaria Foundation, when you think that "nobility" is complete poppycock and the only thing that matters is that those donations mean people won't die, isn't an example of a lie. It is a manipulation, but not an illegitimate one—because, from the other person's perspective, it's just the honest truth.
I think genuinely arguing over whether something is true or false, is rarer than it seems. More often, I think we find ourselves arguing over which things are important, or how we should feel about something. In which case, I think you can put yourself in someone else's shoes and still be perfectly sincere.
Nothing to do with changing them.
If the other did not feel that deep understanding, empathy did not take place.
Source: I teach empathy with a worldview rooted in nonviolent communication. This is the definition I use; it is not universal.