Roughly, that we often respond to others' ability to cause us harm (whether by modifying our behavior or our bank accounts or our internal organs or whatever other mechanism) as a threat, independent of their likelihood of causing us harm.

This seems very implausible to me. I often encounter people with the ability to do me great harm (a police officer with a gun, say), and this rarely if ever causes me to be angry, or feel as if my dignity has been infringed upon, or anything like that. Yet these are the reactions typically associated with finding out you've been intentionally manipulated. Do you have some independent reason to believe this is true?