Social Psychology Chapter 7: Persuasion

Persuasion

The process of creating, reinforcing, or changing people's beliefs or actions.

Central Route

A route to persuasion that occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts. Explicit and reflective. A more durable method of persuasion and more likely to influence behavior.

Peripheral Route

A route to persuasion that occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness. Implicit and automatic. Often most effective in persuasion. Emotion triumphs reason.

Elements of Persuasion

-Communicator

-Message Content

-Method of Communication

-Audience

Communicator

An element of persuasion. It's not just the content of a message, it's the presumed source.

Credibility

Believability. A communicator accomplishing this is perceived as both expert and trustworthy.

Sleeper Effect

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

Perceived Expertise

A way for a speaker to appear credible. It helps to say things the audience agrees with and to be seen as knowledgeable.

Speaking Style

A way for a speaker to appear credible. Speak confidently and fluently. Stumbling speakers are seen as less credible. It's also not good to speak too much and not listen.

Perceived Trustworthiness

A way for a speaker to appear credible. We are more willing to listen to a communicator we trust. This also applies to evaluating products. We see negative reviews as more honest. Humor can distract from trust, and maintaining eye contact with the speaker does not improve persuasion.

Attractiveness

A way for a speaker to appear credible. It's having qualities that appeal to an audience. An appealing communicator (often someone similar to the audience) is most persuasive on matters of subjective preference. Girl Scout cookies wouldn't sell as well if they used unattractive middle-aged men instead of adorable little girls.

6 Persuasion Principles

A series of core concepts of persuasion by Robert Cialdini that underlie human relationships and human influence.

-Authority

-Linking

-Social Proof

-Reciprocity

-Consistency

-Scarcity

Authority

A principle of persuasion. People defer to credible experts. Establish your expertise; identify problems you have solved and people you have served.

Liking

A principle of persuasion. People respond more affirmatively to those they like. Win friends and influence people. Create bonds based on similar interest, praise freely.

Social Proof

A principle of persuasion. People allow the example of others to validate how they think, feel, and act. Use "peer power"; have respected others lead the way.

Reciprocity

A principle of persuasion. People feel obliged to repay in kind what they've received. Be generous with your time and resources. What goes around, comes around.

Consistency

A principle of persuasion. People tend to honor their public commitments. Instead of telling restaurant reservation callers "Please call if you change your plans," ask, "Will you call if you change your plans?" and no-shows will drop.

Scarcity

A principle of persuasion. People prize what's scarce. Highlight genuinely exclusive information or opportunities.

Physical Attractiveness

A form of attractiveness. Arguments, especially emotional ones, are often more influential when they come from people we consider beautiful.

Similarity

A form of attractiveness. We tend to like people who are like us. Mimicry fosters liking, by suggesting empathy and rapport.

Message Content

An element of persuasion. It matters not only who says something but also what that person says.

Reason vs. Emotion

A factor of message content that sways persuasion. It depends on the audience. Well-educated people are responsive to rational appeals (central route). Uninterested audiences are more responsive to their liking of the creator (peripheral). How people's attitudes were formed also matters.

The Effect of Good Feelings

A way for messages to become more persuasive through association with good feelings. They enhance positive thinking and partly by linking good feelings with the message. Humor is a common tactic to foster liking. People who are in a good mood view the world through rose-colored glasses. But they also make faster, more impulsive decisions; they rely more on peripheral cues.

The Effect of Arousing Fear

A way for messages to become more persuasive by evoking negative emotions. The more frightened and vulnerable people feel, the more they respond. Graphic images can persuade people not to do something. This principle works best if people can perceive a solution and feel capable of implementing it (increases efficacy).

Message Context

A method of persuasion lying in a message's content. The circumstances of your message-especially what immediately precedes it-can make a big difference in how persuasive it is.

Fear-then-Relief

An approach to using message context in persuasion. Invoking people's fear and then reassuring them with another claim fosters their persuasion. A confederate approached a passerby at a Polish train station and said, "Excuse me... Haven't you lost your wallet?" Everyone checked their pockets and was relieved to find their wallet. The confederate then explained she was selling Christmas cards for a charity. People who thought they lost their wallets bought more cards than did the people who did not feel the relief.

Door-in-the-Face

strategy for gaining a concession. After someone first turns down a large request, the same requester counteroffers with a more reasonable request.

Two-Sided Appeal

An appeal that presents two alternative points of view, and then presents arguments to counter the opposing view and support the speaker's view. If your audience will be exposed to opposing views, offer this. It can make the communicator seem more honest.

Primacy Effect

Other things being equal, information presented first usually has the most influence. First impressions are important.

Recency Effect

Information presented last sometimes has the most influence. Recency effects are less common than primacy effects. Happens when:

1. enough time separates the two messages.

2. when the audience commits itself soon after the second message.

Channel of Communication

The way the message is delivered. Whether face-to-face, in writing, on film, or in some other way. Psychology most emphasizes the importance of written words.

Repetition

A method in making things believable by stressing parts of a message. This also increases the fluency of the message.

Active Experience

A way to increase people's persuasion. An engaging experience strengthens attitudes. Interactive advertisement increases perceived credibility. Repetition is a form of this.

Passive Reception

A way to increase people's persuasion. Although mostly ineffective, written and visual appeals still carry a noticeable impact.

Personal Influence

The idea that contact with people is more effective in persuasion. Modern selling strategies seek to harness the power of word-of-mouth personal influence through "viral marketing," "creating a buzz," and "seeding" sales.

Two-Step Flow of Communication

The process by which media influence often occurs through opinion leaders, who in turn influence others. "Sell them and you will sell me." Explains how media influences penetrate the culture in subtle ways.

Comparing Media

The idea where the more lifelike the medium, the more persuasive its message.

Order of Persuasiveness

Live (face-to-face), videotaped, audiotaped, and written.

Influence of Adults on Children

The way communication flows from adults to children, but getting them to listen is not always easy. When you're trying to get children to eat healthy food, just give it to them, and forget about saying anything else. If you have to say something, say it's yummy, not healthy.

Audience

An element of persuasion. Persuasion varies with who says what by what medium to whom. Two characteristics are age and thoughtfulness.

Age

A characteristic of the how the audience's attitudes change depending on how old they are.

Life Cycle Explanation

An explanation for age differences in an audience. Attitudes change as people grow older.

Generational Explanation

An explanation for age differences in an audience. Attitudes do not change; older people largely hold onto the attitudes they adopted when they were young. Because these attitudes are different from those being adopted by young people today, a generation gap develops. The more likely of the two explanations, as the teens and early twenties are the best formative years for attitudes that solidify through adulthood.

Forewarned is Forearmed

The idea that knowing someone is going to try to persuade you can breed counterargument. Can be deteriorated by distraction from the speaker.

Need for Cognition

The motivation to think and analyze. Assessed by agreement with items such as "The notion of thinking abstractly is appealing to me" and disagreement with items such as "I only think as hard as I have to." These people prefer the central route.

Ways to Stimulate Thinking

-By using rhetorical questions.

-By presenting multiple speakers (each one offering a different argument).

-By making people feel responsible for evaluating or passing along the message.

-By repeating the message.

-By getting people's undistracted attention.

Employing these makes strong messages more persuasive and weak messages less persuasive.

Attitude Inoculation

A way to resist persuasion. Exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that when stronger attacks come, they will have refutations available.

Counterarguments

A way to resist persuasion. Reasons why a persuasive message might be wrong.

Poison Parasite

A type of defense in counterarguments that combines a poison (strong counterarguments) with a parasite (similarities to an opponent's ads). Effectively used by antismoking ads.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

A model of persuasion maintaining that there are two different routes to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route.