Ch. 7 - Persuasion

persuasion

the process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors

• Ex: spread of false beliefs, attitudes around equality, climate change skepticism, promoting healthier living

Central route to persuasion

Occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts

Peripheral route to persuasion

occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker’s attractiveness

• Focuses on cues that trigger automatic acceptance without much thinking

Central vs peripheral route

Central route processing can lead to more enduring change than the peripheral route

• When people think carefully, they rely not just on persuasive appeals but on their own thoughts in response

Often we take the peripheral route because it’s quicker

• Simple rule-of-thumb heuristics are often used, such as “trust the experts” or “long messages are credible”

• When a speaker is articulate and appealing, has apparently good motives, and has several arguments, we usually take the easy peripheral route

4 Elements of Persuasion

1. Communicator

2. Message

3. How the message is communicated

4. Audience

Important characteristics of the communicator

• Credibility/believability

• Sleeper effect

• Attractiveness

Credibility

• Credible communicator is perceived as both expert and trustworthy

• Effects of source credibility diminish over time

• Credibility is affected by perceived expertise, speaking style, and perceived trustworthiness

Sleeper effect

a delayed impact of a message that occurs when an initially discounted message becomes effective, such as we remember the message but forget the reason for discounting it

Attractiveness

having qualities that appeal to an audience

• forms of attractiveness: 1) physical, 2) similarity

Message (content)

Choice of reason or emotion in persuasion depends on the audience

• Education and motivation, disinterest, attitude formation

Good feelings often enhance persuasion

Messages can also be made effective by evoking negative emotions such as fear

Context makes a big difference (foot in the door, lowball, door in the face)

If your audience will be exposed to opposing views, offer a two-sided appeal

• Acknowledge opposing arguments

Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request

Lowball technique

people who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups the ante. People who receive only the costly request are less likely to comply

Door-in-the-face technique

after someone first turns down a large request (the door-in-the-face), the same requester counteroffers with a more reasonable request

Evoking positive emotion

• Good feelings often enhance persuasion

• (positive) emotions are contagious

  • Targets may associate the (positive) emotions they are experiencing with the object of the persuasive attempt

• Positive emotions are distracting

  • positive emotions may influence the perception of the source, making critical scrutiny less likely or masking some other feature (such as unattractiveness)

Evoking negative emotion

• Messages can also be made persuasive by evoking negative emotions such as fear

• Potent emotion, high motivational value

  • Survival related adaption

• Risks associations with source/product

  • Less commonly used in advertising

  • Very common in political and prosocial persuasion (health appeals etc.)

How can persuasion be resisted?

With logic, info, motivation

• Rethink habitual responses (ex: being persuaded by experts or attractive people)

• Question what we don’t understand

• Seek more info

• attitude inoculation

• counterarguments

Primacy effect

other things being equal, info presented first usually has the most influence

• more commonly effective than recency

Recency effect

When two messages are separated in time and the audience responds soon after the second message, the second message has the advantage

Channel

the way the message is delivered (ex: face-to-face, in writing, on film, or in some other way)

Communication

• Active experience strengthens attitudes

• Written and visual appeals are both passive, and many are relatively ineffective 

  • Repetition and rhyming of a statement increases its fluency and believability

• Contact has greater influence than the media

  • Modern selling often strives to use more word-of-mouth

  • Two-step flow of communication

  • With media, the more persuasive are the more lifelike

    • order of persuasiveness is live (face-to-face), videotaped, audiotaped, and written

  • Messages are best comprehended and recalled, however, when written

  • Communication flows from adults to children; but often the less is said the better

Two-step flow of communication

media influence often occurs through opinion leaders, who in turn influence others

The audience

two audience characteristics: age and thoughtfulness

two explanations for the effects of age:

• life cycle explanation

• generational explanation

degree of thoughtfulness is important

• crucial aspect isn’t the message but the response it evokes

What is the audience thinking?

• Forewarned is forearmed—if you care enough to counterargue

• Distraction disarms counterarguing

• Uninvolved audiences use peripheral cues

• Need for cognition: the motivation to think and analyze

• Stimulating thinking makes strong messages more persuasive and weak messages less positive 

Attitude inoculation

exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that when stronger attacks come, they’ll have refutations available

• Ex: inoculating children against peer pressure to smoke

• Ex: inoculating children against the influence of advertising

Counterarguments

Reasons why a persuasive message might be wrong

Implications of attitude inoculation

• Best way to build resistance is likely not just stronger indoctrination

  • ex: better to teach children how to counter persuasive appeals

• Educators should be wary of creating a “germ-free ideological environment”

  • People who live amid diverse views become more discerning and more likely to modify their views only in response to credible arguments