The very idea that you can view "they can be persuaded" as anything less than behavior manipulation is interesting. If you're trying to impact behavior at a subconscious level, you're bypassing a person's conscious security controls and accessing their legacy brain API. An API that -- long ago -- saved the brain owner's life but today keeps modern humans trying to stock up on high calorie food because "winter is coming." Or as Clay Johnson put it, "brains want what WAS good for us, not what IS good for us." Your algorithms are counting on this and exploiting it. I know exactly how easy it is to feel OK about doing this given just how much manipulation design I used to develop, advocate, even teach. I'm now horrified I ever did it, and even more horrified that I cognitive dissonanced my way into thinking it was not just OK but perhaps even noble -- after all, those kids games I made for the [ginormous candy company] were educational. I suggest you read "Addiction by Design", about precisely what happens when personally-tailored adaptive algorithms are combined with behavior science. If reading Kahneman doesn't give you a reason to rethink this, Addiction by Design might.

> I'm now horrified I ever did it, and even more horrified that I cognitive dissonanced my way into thinking it was not just OK but perhaps even noble

Your whole comment is great, but this line especially stuck out to me. It's amazing how much effort people people in this line of marketing are spending trying to read (and then manipulate) other people's minds, without taking a moment to examine what's going on inside their own.

Based on the tone of bartkappenburg's comments though, I'd be afraid that the reading material you've suggested might come off as how-to guides!