Plato Persuasion

•       : “a part of some business that isn’t admirable.”

•       Propaganda

•       Cleverly outmuscle our better critical instincts

Bettinghaus and Cody Persuasion

Positive tendency to shape consensus and agreement

•       “A conscious attempt by one individual or group to change the attitudes, beliefs, or the behavior of another individual or group of individuals through the transmission of messages.”

•       Cooperation in rhetoric – not victims of persuasion

•       Basics of Persuasion: O’Keefe

•       Successful attempt to influence

•       Presence of some criteria or goal

•       Existence of some intent to reach goal

•       Some measure of freedom on persuadee’s part

•       Achieved through communication

•       Change in mental state of persuadee

G.R. Miller Persuasion

Emotion vs. logic

•       Situations where behavior has been modified by symbolic transactions (message) that appeal to reason and emotions of the persons being persuaded.

Woodward and Denton definition persuasion

Woodward and Denton definition

•       The interactive process of preparing and presenting

•       Verbal or nonverbal messages

•       To autonomous and often receptive individuals

•       In order to alter or strengthen

•       Their attitudes and/or behaviors

•       New idea of creating, altering, or strengthening

•       Providing information without concern for how the other person responds or acts

Egocentric; act is all about us, not about others

How our ideas or actions affect someone else

•       Right to make choices is left to members

•       Permits discussion and criticism

•       Informed decisions flow from give-and-take

•       Debates foster constructive and peaceful change

Man is the measure of all things.

Implications for persuasion

•       There are no “natural” or fixed guidelines for conduct

•       Issues about preferences rather than truths

•       True and just things have a tendency to prevail in debate

Development of democracy in the U.S

•       Balance of people’s voice and leader’s reasoning

•       Government of representatives elected to act for the people

•       Safeguard against factions and swift changes in public opinion

Beliefs

Key definition: Informational statements that link specific attitudes to an object

Attitudes

•       evaluate – serve in passing judgment on person, place, event, object, or behavior

•       We often refer to positive and negative attitudes

•       based on beliefs and strength of belief

How to measure attitudes

•       Most often through surveys or self-reports

•       Can we measure or assess attitude from behavior or group membership? Is there danger in this?

Potency of attitudes 

Mary John Smith

•       Number of beliefs an individual has about an object, person, place, event, or behavior

•       Extent to which beliefs are organized and structured

•       Degree to which individuals judge their beliefs to be true

•       Intensity of person’s emotional evaluation of each belief

•       central, core ideals about how to conduct our lives

are more global and general than attitudes

•       We have many more attitudes

•       are hard to change, not usually targets of persuasion

•       Get people to vote, create a new law, decide on a court ruling, national or state referendum, single “investigation”

Characteristics of political persuasion

: Specific Objectives

Molded, crated, tested and rehearsed to target specific purpose

Characteristics of political persuasion

: Mediated

Good or bad that we learn about candidates through the media?

Characteristics of political persuasion

: Audience Centered

•       Might be better put as audience sensitive

•       Definition: Ongoing process influenced by interactions with family, friends, and coworkers, and from significant personal and societal events

•       Agents-Family, Schools, Social/peer networks, Media

•       Shea and Burton

•       Every campaign needs a good theme

•       Challengers have more latitude in theme selection

•       Broad and inclusive

•       “Vote yourself a farm” – Abraham Lincoln

•       “It’s morning in America” – Ronald Reagan

•       “Ready for change, ready to lead” – Hillary Clinton

•       “          Change we believe in” -  Barack Obama

•       Research first conducted on one’s own candidate

•       Potential problem areas and accomplishments

•       Research on opponent

•       Gathering elaborate voter information augmented by surveys linking traits to attitudes on political issues

•       Zip code based assumptions on income level

•       Car you drive

•       Where you vacation

Entertainment you prefer

•       (Faucheux)

•       Message sequence strategy

•       Timing and intensity strategy

•       Mobilization and persuasion strategy

•       Opportunity strategy

•       Reinforcement

•       Persuasion

•       Conversion

Gestalt values in design: Figure and ground

•       We perceive objects against the context of their surroundings

•       Ground should not dominate a figure, but can be used to suggest vulnerability

•       We group similar things in the same frame together

•       Use consistent fonts, rhetoric and syntax within the same message

•       We assume connections and relationships between the same things or people are in the same location

•       the layout of a message creates a line or natural curve

Leads the viewer to the main element of the message

•       We fill in what is left out but implied

What is to be filled in can be ambiguous

•       What images and color palettes will work best for your audience?

•       Darker hues for men – beer commercials

•       Lighter colors for women – Dove

•       Mexican-Americans – images of families around table

•       Mothers of young children – flowers, hearts, plants, soft, round, yellow, purple and pastels

•       For nondiscursive messages to standout, they must be simple

Direct, descriptive text and uncluttered visual support

•       thing or person that embodies or represents the much larger universe

•       Tom Hanks – everyman

•       Louis Armstrong – jazz musician

•       Mac vs. PC

•       Identify commonplaces for messages

•       Serves everyone as a touchstone, an instrument of recognition

•       General standards that people understand and acknowledge

•       Example – take responsibility

•       What are some other examples of commonplaces?

•       Sports teams

•       Cities

•       Countries

•       Schools

•       Audience-specific norms

Descriptive norms 

•       describe the prevalence or absence of a behavior within a group

•       Example: Number of drinks the average college student has on a weekend night

social sanctions that may result from behavior; or important others expect you to behave in this way

•       Being able to stand in the shoes of another individual

•       A college student at a party

•       A young woman who has lost her mother

•       Someone who has experienced cancer

•       We share similar characteristics or that person is like me in this way

•       Gender

•       Age

•       Religion

•       Dress

High credibility/high agreement

•       Strengthen audience’s attitudes

•       High credibility/low agreement

•       Audience’s assessment of credibility sufficient for motivation to listen

•       Low credibility/high agreement

•       Can serve to build credibility of speak with audience

•       Need to find common places or norms to use as initial stepping stones to building agreement or credibility

Credibility Aristotle and Ethos

•       Ethos defined as “right kind of character”

•       Components of good character:

•       Good sense (judgments are reasonable and justified)

•       Good moral character (values are reasonable and justified)

•       Goodwill (persuader seems to have honorable intentions toward the audience)

. Quality of source in the law – Ability and Probable Objectivity

Credibility

•       Ability – expertise, degree, training as well as eye-witness accounts

•       Objectivity – willing or reluctant sources

•       Willing sources tend to offer information from a particular vantage point; offering information framed in a particular way benefits them

•       Reluctant sources tend to appear more objective; offering information doesn’t seem to benefit them

Source credibility as believability

•       For many people, high credibility means trustworthiness

•       An assessment of motivation

•       Trustworthy means not abusing access or power over audience

•       Similarity may be more important than expertise

•       If an audience views source as very different, expertise may not matter

•       Sleeper effect – people tend to forget initial impressions of source, but retain general sense of point of view expressed

•       – people tend to forget initial impressions of source, but retain general sense of point of view expressed

•       Media have greatest effect on opinion leaders in community

•       Opinion leaders spread message, add to credibility of message because they are know to the community

•       Examples where you have been opinion leader, or when you have been influenced by opinion leader who was influenced by media?

•       How might the two-step flow work when considering:

•       Twitter

•       Advertising

•       – formal, dictionary descriptions of words

•       Universal and informative

•       Example: Chair

•       positive and negative overtones

•       Subject to interpretation

•       Persuasion

•       Shannon and Weaver (1949) discuss concept of noise and unintended effects of communication

•       MacLean (1957) recognized mass communication differs from interpersonal communication. Receiver feedback delayed or never received in mass communication settings

•       Intention may not always equal effects

•       We need to not only measure the outcomes we intend, but also unintended outcomes that may result from our efforts

Typology of effects

Obfuscation 

creation of confusion and misunderstanding

Typology of Effects

Dissonance

Someone experiencing dissonance (discomfort psychologically) might say “the health behavior recommended and the health behavior I currently engage in are at odds or incompatible, and I don’t know how to fix that.”

Typology of Effects

Boomerang Effect

•       reaction by an audience that is opposite to the intended response of the message designers

Typology of Effects

Desensitization

repeated exposure of a message may lead audience to see consequences portrayed as less severe or lead to emotional fatigue

Typology of Effects

Culpability

messages portray issues as individual-level problems, with individual-level solutions, rather than social or community problems with social or community solutions

Typology of Effects

Opportunity Cost

•       – choosing to spread information about one health issue and not another

•       * War on Drugs

Typology of Effects

Social Reproduction

•       distribution of effects may be unequal among different groups, reaching those who already performing behavior, reinforces rather than changes

Typology of Effects

Social Norming

•       health campaigns can define what is normal (can be positive or negative)

Typology of Effects

Enabling

•       health campaigns may legitimize industries or improve their profits (example: alcohol legitimized in designated driver campaigns)

Typology of Effects

System Activation

•       affecting behavior in one group, can affect behavior in another (can be a good unintended effect!)