Persuasion

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Persuasion

• Theoretical and practical concerns

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Persuasion

• Attempts to persuade you are everywhere all the
  time
• That is, wherever you go now, someone is trying
  to influence you
• The attempts dont stopthey go on day and night
• Advanced industrial countries rely heavily on
  persuasion for social influence
• Less emphasis on brute force
• Mass communication available
• Persuasion is more efficient and may be more
  effective

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Persuasion

• Persuasion is the use of communication to
  influence beliefs, attitudes and/or behavior
• If the persuasive communication is meant first
  and foremost to advance the interests of the
  speaker/author ahead of other considerations, it
  is propaganda
• The study of persuasion has been one of the main
  foci of media studies

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Applied research

• Most persuasion research is meant to test
  specific persuasive communications strategies or
  tactics rather than to build theory
• Advertising research
• Copytesting
• Campaigns studies
• Propaganda studies
• Educational/persuasive campaigns
• Public health interventions

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Theory development

• Theory may be developed and tested using
  scientific research methods
• Experimental studies, usually
• More often, the results of advertising,
  educational campaigns reviewed and theory is
  induced from real-world experience
• Advertising effectiveness monitoring

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Hovland and colleagues

• First recruited to study the effectiveness of the
  U.S. governments attempts to educate soldiers
  and boost morale during World War II
• The Why We Fight series
• Followed up the American Soldiers studies with a
  program of research on persuasion
• Yale School of persuasion research

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Hovland et al.

• Applied Lasswells paradigm for study
• Who?
• Says What?
• To Whom?
• In Which Channel?
• With what effect?

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Who?

• Hovland et al. looked at the effects of
  credibility of source on the effectiveness of
  attitude change messages.
• Controlled experimental designs
• Presented identical messages but varied the
  source of the message
• News stories and editorials supposedly written by
  sources of greater or lesser credibility, or from
  more or less credible news organizations

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Hovland et al.

• The researchers found that credibility of the
  source was an important determinant of the
  persuasiveness of the message
• However, the impact of message source seemed to
  decay over time
• Sleeper effect
• Credibility of the source was tied to a number of
  characteristics
• Expertise
• Trustworthiness
• Likeability

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Expertise

• Does the source appear to be knowledgeable on the
  topic?
• A source may be perceived to have expertise even
  if he doesnt
• Im not a doctor, but I play one on TV
• All sorts of actors dressed up as doctors in
  early commercials
• FCC restricted representations of sourcescannot
  be misleading or false

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Trustworthiness

• If the source seems honest and straightforward we
  are more likely to be convinced by what she says
• The audience has some reason to believe the
  source is honest
• Newspersons commitment to objectivity
• Walter Cronkite
• A history of openness and honesty
  (self-disclosure)
• Oprah

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Trustworthiness

• Another source of trustworthiness is situational.
  
• If the speaker or author is perceived to be
  arguing in favor of a position that is in her
  self-interest she will be less persuasive
• If you overhear someone talking you are more
  likely to be influenced than if they know you are
  listening
• An experiment with a supposedly overheard
  discussion led to greater attitude change

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• When the speaker argues against his own
  self-interest, he is more persuasive
• Joe The Shoulder Napolitano arguing for more
  stringent sentencing
• A group of wealthy people opposed to the repeal
  of the inheritance tax

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Charisma

• Personal charm or likeability
• Ronald Reagan
• Teflon president
• Celebrity endorsements
• Not really clear why some people are appealing
• Physical attractiveness
• Physically attractive people are liked, trusted

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Homophily

• If the speaker is a lot like the audience member,
  he is more likely to be persuasive
• Probably a combination of expertise (she
  understands me and my situation) likeability
  (people like those who share their view of the
  world) and trustworthiness (I can trust someone
  like me)
• In propaganda studies, this is called Just Plain
  Folks
• Candidates try to portray themselves as
  resembling the group they are targeting
• Eating ethnic foods
• Wearing work clothes

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Sources

• Heavy use of celebrities
• Positive affect prior to advertising, etc.
• Natural on-air presentation
• Physical attractiveness
• Association with certain image, roles

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Says what? (content)

• Structure of arguments
• One-sided v. two-sided
• Primacy v. recency
• Conclusive v. non-conclusive
• Rational v. emotional appeals
• Fear
• Humor
• Visual v. semantic appeals

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Fear appeals

• Fear appeals have been heavily studied
• Hovland et al. concluded that moderate fear was
  the most effective
• Too little fear does not motivate
• Too much fear causes target to avoid message or
  implications
• More recent findings have led to conclusion that
  high levels of fear work well if a sense of
  efficacy is generated and clear means of dealing
  with the fear provided

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Content

• Emotional content
• Pathos
• Humor
• Love
• Desire
• Jealousy
• Cultural symbolism
• Flags
• Weddings
• Cars

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Framing

• Loss v. gain
• Episode v general trend
• Examples v. statistics
• False comparisons

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To whom?

• Personality factors
• Self-esteem
• Curvilinear effect
• Education
• Two-sided messages are more effective with more
  formally educated while one-sided are more
  effective with less formally educated
• Rational appeals relatively more effective with
  more formally educated
• Interest
• Topical interest predicts topical knowledge and
  pre-existing attitudes (varies with demographics)

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• Gender
• Women are more persuadable
• May no longer be true
• Social norms/beliefs
• Active participation

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Audience

• Targeting
• Choice of media based on the ability to reach a
  target audience
• Target is usually low hanging fruit
• Fish where the fish are
• Fish when the fish are biting
• Messages written for particular audience rather
  than for everyone
• Tailored messages are now possibleevidence
  indicates they are more effective

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Audience

• Audience feedback is used to improve messages,
  further communicate with likely purchasers

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With what effect?

• Learning
• Most common/easiest change
• Attitude change
• Especially when existing attitudes are not
  strongly held
• Behavior intention
• Most predictive of actual behavior
• Behavior
• Changing behavior is very difficult because of
  the multiple influences that determine behavior
• Biological, psychological, situational, cultural
  influences

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With what effect?

• Sleeper effect
• Selectivity
• Interaction with education/demographics
• One-sided v. two-sided
• Boomerang effects

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Effect

• Varies across topics/products, audiences,
  campaigns
• Information
• Attitude change
• Positioning/branding

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What problems with the experimental method are
there?

• One-time exposure
• Compared with campaigns people experience on a
  regular basis
• Forced exposure
• Negates selectivity
• Demand characteristics of experimental method
• Especially when carried out with students
• Overuse of available samples
• Students may not be people

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What problems with the experimental method are
there?

• Lack of competing messages
• Usually choose topics the audience knows little
  about

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Campaigns

• Studies of the effectiveness of campaigns
• Advertising
• Political campaigns
• Propaganda campaigns
• Public health campaigns

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Campaigns analysis

• The massive use of advertising allows for the
  testing of real-world media persuasion across a
  wide range of topics
• Meta-analyses of marketing/advertising campaigns
• Meta-analyses of copy tests
• Reviews of public health campaigns
• Comparison of political or propaganda campaigns
  and public opinion

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General findings

• Memory for campaigns is low
• Recognition scores are better
• Attitude change is not often very great
• However, change does occur and can be significant
  under certain circumstances
• Topic is relatively unknown
• Media are consonant
• Topic is emotionally charged

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Meta-analysis

• Lodish et al. Advertising works A meta-analysis
  of 389 real world split cable T.V. advertising
  experiments
• TV advertising weight alone is not enough
• The status quo is not enough
• It is unlikely that there is a strong
  relationship between standard measures of TV
  commercial recall and persuasion for established
  brands and the sales impact of the copy

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• New brands or line extensions tend to be more
  responsive to alternative TV advertising plans
  than established products
• These data support the importance of introductory
  weight and prime time for new products
• Concentration of higher TV advertising weight is
  related to increases in brand sales

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Dual-processing theory

• Dual-processing theories argue that we process
  persuasive messages differently if we are
  motivated to attend to them and are capable of
  processing them than if we just monitor them at a
  very low level or are unable to process them
• Central v. peripheral processing

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Central processing

• If we are motivated and capable of processing we
  will carefully review the arguments made to see
  if they are convincing according to rational
  argument
• Appropriate evidence
• Strength of argument, logic

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Peripheral processing

• If we just give slight attention to a persuasive
  message, are not motivated enough to dedicate the
  effort to evaluate the logic and strength of
  argument, then we will tend to process according
  to peripheral cues
• Attractiveness of the source
• May be sexual
• Visual cues/attractiveness of the setting
• Music
• Emotion