Where Good Influence Lives

22 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt from Dr. Ed Tori’s video “Where Good Influence Lives,” the speaker delineates the ethical line separating legitimate influence from deception and manipulation. He emphasizes that professional and personal relationships are governed by a social contract that creates defined roles and expectations—such as physician‑patient or parent‑child. Violating this contract by pursuing personal gain (e.g., selling supplements for profit) or by crossing into overly intimate or coercive behavior constitutes manipulation. Good influence, according to Dr. Tori, is characterized by honest intent, service to the other party, and strict adherence to the social contract, avoiding deception and conflicts of interest.

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Once you cross over into deception, you're crossing over the line, uh, into manipulation. Another boundary that we shouldn't cross is that of the social contract. So if I'm a physician and I'm talking to a patient, we have a relationship that is patient and physician, right? That physician-patient relationship has edges. So I don't start trying to sell them some, you know, supplement that You know, I get money from, and they, they'll just have expensive urine because they pee out all the stuff. Like, no, that's violating the social contract. I'm there to heal them, to get— bring them to better health, not to sell my wares. A parent that's parenting a child, there's a social contract. If you go to see any kind of professional, there's a social contract. The moment they step out of the— step out of that, the moment they start to cross over into, say, more intimate domains or make advances, they They've really crossed over the boundary. So, so this is where influence lives— good influence— when you influence people well, with good intentions, no deception, and you're serving on the other end of it. So service, not violating the social contract, and not deceiving.