The term Dark Arts refers to rhetorical techniques crafted to exploit human cognitive biases in order to persuade, deceive, or otherwise manipulate a person into irrationally accepting beliefs perpetuated by the practitioner of the Arts. Use of the dark arts is especially common in sales and similar situations (known as hard sell in the sales business) and promotion of political and religious views.
Sometimes these arts are further augmented by the use of persuasion technology, such as broadcast advertising or PowerPoint slides. Persuasion technology may prevent the person who is being targeted from carefully deliberating on the intended message, or thinking up an effective response to it in real time.
Such effects can be caused by something as benign as the use of a specialist vocabulary which the target is unfamiliar with, or an institutional vocabulary with high-status connotations: this is one reason why many specialist professions employ ethical codes to regulate their unbalanced power relationship with customers....