Coercive persuasion as psychological violence: narrative review, typology of contexts, and proposed operational definition

Psychological violence is a broad concept with a controversial definition; in Spain, it does not constitute a separate criminal offence, but is incorporated into various criminal offences and legal frameworks. This paper proposes coercive persuasion as a specific form of psychological violence, characterised by covert manipulation and control aimed at dominating the recipient and undermining their autonomy, with little or no awareness of the process on the part of the affected person. An interdisciplinary narrative review (psychology and law) was conducted, incorporating international evidence, including the abuse of weakness (abus de faiblesse) regulated in France by the About-Picard Law, which penalises the exploitation of states of vulnerability to induce harmful acts. The search was conducted in Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus and PsycINFO (with no time restriction), and was supplemented by a documentary analysis of public sources (RedUNE, APETP, OPPISS and FECRIS). The findings were organised into a typology of social influence contexts defined by two dimensions: institutional legitimacy and legal permissiveness. In the documentary analysis, the cases focused on contexts that were not legitimised but were permitted, particularly pseudo-therapies/health, spirituality/New Age, closed communities, courses and online environments, coaching/productivity and multi-level marketing. The accounts described recurring patterns of recruitment and escalation, behavioural, emotional and informational/social control, isolation, economic exploitation and after-effects following departure. The discussion formulates an operational definition of coercive persuasion and proposes four analytical typologies: reckless group, reckless abuse, coercive group and abuse of weakness. Taken together, these modalities may maintain an appearance of choice, but de facto restrict the range of alternatives through exploitation or deception, with a sustained impact on autonomy, the perception of choice and emotional well-being.