The message for today is an explanation of a very interesting phenomeno in social psychology, Cognitive Dissonance. By understanding how it works, you can largely immunize your mental processes against this sort of manipulation. Cognition is the process of conscious perception.
Dissonance is conflict.
Cognitive dissonance is a state of one's perceptions being put into a state of conflict, which must be resolved to regain feelings of calm and harmony. If a person is overtly forced to perform some action, he may be distressed, but he will not be put into a state of cognitive dissonance, because the coercion involved is clearly apparent to him. If this same individual is, however, subtly coerced into performing some action contrary to his inclinations, the source of the coercion, in fact the coercion itself, is not apparent to him. This mental conflict must somehow be resolved for the subject to alleviate this conflict. The solution to this dilemma is, very reliably for a naiive subject, to alter his attitudes so that they no longer conflict with his actions.