Persuasive Comm Exam One

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On the one side: The philosophers Socrates and Plato.

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- You kind of have to know what you’re talking about. Start to mentor Aristotle and his theory of rhetoric. If you can give a good speech, that’s all that matters.
- Know what you are talking about and engage your audience.

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On the other side: The sophists Gorgias and Polus.

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- Just talk, it doesn’t really matter how you do it.
- At issue: Doesn’t “persuasion” generally do great damage by making the inferior argument appear better and by allowing the guilty to go free?

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What are independent and dependent variables?

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independent variables are manipulated in an experiment. dependent variables are influenced when independent variables are manipulated.

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But is persuasion inherently bad? Aristotle’s defense:

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- Persuasion deals in matters of judgment, rather than matters of certainty
- There are at least two sides to most stories, and persuaders help us evaluate each side
- Persuasion provides perspective. It helps us, as decision makers, to assess and evaluate the alternative courses of action before us.
- While some may abuse its powers, such abuse is not inevitable

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Why study persuasion?

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1. Practice: It is a crucial component of personal and career success.
2. Analysis: We need to know how to evaluate the persuasive messages that bombard us daily.
3. Understanding: We are benefited by seeing how discourse functions to shape our world and our lives. Helps us realize what Is happening in the world

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Method of studying persuasion: rhetorical criticism

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- Seeks to make sense of an act or event, either as an object of interest in its own right, or because it helps illuminate a larger question. Planning a speech – does it get the job done?
- Rooted in the humanities; tends to regard persuasion as a highly individualized art.

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Method of studying persuasion: social-scientific approach

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- More popular and widely used by politicians
- Seeks to subject theories and hypotheses to rigorous empirical tests, relying on research experiments conducted under carefully controlled conditions.
- Rooted in behaviorism, tends to treat human judgments and actions as predictable. What kind of impact is this happening on other people?

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A definition of persuasion (three main aspects):

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- How humans are communicating: product ads, legal briefs, window displays, courtship
- Attempting to influence others: sermons, peaceful protests, excuses, editorials, etc.
- Seek modification of judgments and actions: petitions, PR campaigns, war propaganda, flattery

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Propaganda differs from persuasion in that it is :

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- Systematic, sustained, organized, and one-sided.
- Originally seen as a vehicle for carrying the truth to the masses.
- Often today seen as persuasion’s evil twin. Yet: Few among us would object to the use of a one-sided effort of mass persuasion in support of world peace!

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Ethical perspective on persuasion: Utilitarianism, Universalism, Dialog Ethics, Situationalism

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Utilitarianism
1. Assumes what is best is that which will provide the most good for the greatest number of people.
2. Example: A white lie may do little harm and much good, and would be acceptable.

Universalism:
1. Assumes some practices are intrinsically virtuous and others are objectionable, no matter the situation. There is an absolute RIGHT and WRONG.
2. Example: A white lie is unethical. Lying is wrong because truth telling is a necessary condition of our having any meaningful verbal interaction at all.

Dialog Ethics
1. Treats the other person as a “thou”, a person, rather than as an “it”, an object to manipulate.
2. Example: A white lie is wrong. It does not honor the full humanity of the other, but instead manipulates the situation and subjects the other to fabrication and misrepresentation.

Situationalism
1. Regards questions of ethics as role- or situation-specific.
2. Example: A white lie might be appropriate at times but unethical at others. It might be acceptable in some relations

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Definition of Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values

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- Beliefs are what we each consider to be true or probable.
- Values are our ideals; they determine what we see as right or wrong; they contain our judgments about the worth of things.
- Attitudes are our general evaluations, favorable or unfavorable.

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Psychological expectancy-value theories and two-systems theories

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- expectancy-value theories: suggest that our choices are primarily based on rationality.
- Two-systems theories: suggest that both rationality and emotion are factors in how we respond to persuasive messages.

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Persuasion takes place by degrees

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1. Response shaping: persuading people toward new beliefs, new attitudes, or new values.
2. Response reinforcing: persuading people to strengthen their current convictions, making them resistant to change.
3. Response changing: persuading people to make a complete shift of positions; conversion.

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BVA Theory: Beliefs and Values as Building Blocks of Attitudes

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1. Beliefs (B) include judgments that a given object possesses certain attributes.
2. Values (V) include judgments of the worth of these perceived attributes
3. Attitudes (A) combine our relevant beliefs (B) about an object with our value judgments (V) about the attributes that we associate with the object.
4. The stronger our beliefs about positively valued attributes, the more favorable should be our attitude toward that object.
5. The stronger our beliefs about negatively valued attributes, the less favorable our attitudes.

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The Role of Subjective Norms: Theory of Reasoned Action

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- The best predictor of behavior is intentions, which are a joint product of attitudes toward behaviors and subjective norms.
- When attitudes toward a contemplated behavior are put together with subjective norms, the combination indicates more accurately how a person will act in a given situation.

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Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM): Route 1: Central processing

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- People who process information centrally ask themselves probing questions, generate additional arguments, and possibly seek new information.
- Those who become persuaded after mental labor of this sort tend to be resistant to counter-arguments and to remain persuaded months afterward.

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Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM): Route 2: Peripheral processing

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- Peripheral processing involves cognitive shorthands, sometimes called heuristics.
- Relatively mindless: the lure of a free gift, the appeal of a celebrity figure, or the number, rather than quality, of reasons presented.
- Tends to be short-lived.

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Nudge Theory

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- Stimuli in our environments can exert seemingly non-conscious influences.
- Even when we attempt to calculate our self-interest, we often wind up basing our choices on biases (anchoring biases, status quo biases, optimism biases, and other rules of thumb) that can get us and those around us into trouble.

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Define anchoring, status quo, optimism, and representativeness biases

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• anchoring biases: rely too heavily on one trait or piece of information when making decisions
• status quo biases: college students tend to sit in the same seats all through a semester, even without a seating chart
- optimism: students overestimate the grades they'll receive, professors overestimate their students evals
- representativeness: rules of thumb on which we form and act upon our stereotypes (geeks can't play football)

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Persuasion as a learning process

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- Involves three parts: (1) acquiring new information, (2) getting incentives to act, and (3) making favorable associations.
- Involves information processing and takes place in stages: (1) from conception of the message to reception; (2) from reception to acceptance or yielding; and (3) from yielding to overt action. These stages are like a chain, and the chain is no stronger than its weakest link.

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What is operant and classical conditioning?

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- operant: successively shaping appropriate customer responses by use of positive reinforcements
- classical: a previously neutral stimulus was paired with a stimulus known to evoke favorable/unfavorable reactions. Then the original stimulus was removed. Hungry dogs in lab learned to salivate at the sound of a bell previously linked with food.

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what is vicarious modeling?

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- Dramatizing potential rewards and punishments

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Explain persuasion as psychological unbalancing and rebalancing: Imbalances create motivation for attitude change.

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- If we can create in you a feeling of conflict, you will likely work to reduce it or eliminate it.
- And then, if we can suggest something that will supposedly resolve the imbalance, you’ll be disposed to listen and consider it.
- You’ll be inclined to buy our product or adopt our plan because you’ll want to do what it takes to get things back to a more even state.
- How are psychological balance theories important to the study of persuasion?

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restricted view and globalized view of persuasion

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- restricted view: focused exclusively on paradigm cases
- globalized view: there is no escape from rhetoric

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The Globalized Rhetoric Hypothesis

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- Proposes a rhetorical presence or dimension in all that humans say and do.
- Argues that there are many gray areas where persuasion is present, but it is subtle or veiled.
- Suggests that distinctions between “persuasion” and “non-persuasion” are overblown.

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Persuasion in relation to dominant cultural ideologies

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- Dominant cultural ideologies (DCIs) are the systems of beliefs and values that go unquestioned in a society.
- DCIs are shaped through the multiple messages that bombard us daily and their cumulative effects.

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Persuasion versus Non-Persuasion—God Terms and Devil Terms

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- In any culture, certain symbols function as god words or devil words—symbols of approval or derision, of group identification or dis-identification.
- This is apparent in such god words as “freedom,” “democracy,” and “capitalism,” and such devil words as “slavery,” “totalitarianism,” and “anarchism.”
- Distinctions between terms tend to become rigid, and there is no middle ground: A nation is either “democratic” or “dictatorial.”
- When a society strongly identifies with its god words and strongly “dis-identifies” with its devil words, its values become highly resistant to change because they are no longer even regarded as values. They become as real and as solid as the ground beneath our feet.

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Globalized View of Persuasion: Five Key Communication Principles, MLDDF

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1. Communication is multi-motivated: It may operate on multiple levels and may serve multiple functions. Sportscaster sharing the hometown scores
2. Communication is multi-layered: “The message” includes not just what is said verbally, but also the source, medium, context, receiver. article on ESP accepted in science journal as “real”(ethos, pathos, logos here)
3. Communication is multi-dimensional: What is said can come in a variety of forms. “True art” above persuasion? Guernica; Springsteen Born in the USA.
4. Communication is multi-directional: Messages may have unintended effects on unintended audiences, not least of all on the message senders themselves. Through communication, we also persuade ourselves.
5. Communication is multi-faceted: Every utterance about substantive matters (about content), is also an interpersonal encounter that invariably projects an image of the communicator. “Two eggs over light” + “please” + tone of voice of “please”=“I’m not the type to order

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Impression management as persuasion

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- we are quietly seeking to shape thinking, both our own and that of others.

Front 30

Deception about Persuasive Intent: “I’m not being persuasive here…”

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- Persuaders often go to great lengths to persuade us that they are not persuaders. For example: News headline: “Andrew Winters Not Connected to Bank Embezzlement.” News headline: “Is Karen Downing Associated with a Fraudulent Charity?”
- Outcome: both headlines resulted in negative perceptions of the candidates.

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Deception about Persuasive Intent: Expression Games

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- A persuader seeks to sell a particular message via, in part, non-verbal control, while the persuadee seeks to decipher the levels of messages that are being shared and arrive at a fair judgment about the situation at hand. Were Hillary Clinton’s tears “real” when she cried on the night before the 2008 New Hampshire Primary?

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Persuasion in the Guise of Objectivity

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- This is yet another category where persuasion exists, but it is veiled: Accounting statements and cost-benefit analyses, news reports, scientific articles, history textbooks, and reported discoveries of social problems, fall into this gray area.

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DELETE

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DELETE

Front 34

Persuasion in the Guise of Objectivity: News Reporting. Three issues:

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1. Priming: influences our judgments on where to focus our attention.
2. Agenda setting: tells us what is important versus unimportant.
3. Framing: focuses our attention on certain events and then presents them in a way that gives them meaning.

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Persuasion in the Guise of Objectivity: Scientific Writing. Objectivity comes into question because:

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1. Corporations often sponsorship the research.
2. Researchers must frame findings so that they will be accepted.
3. Issues of prestige influence acceptance and publication of research.
4. Statistics can be presented to best advantage.

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Persuasion in the Guise of Objectivity: Naming Social Problems. Three schools of thought:

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1. Mundane realists: the problems have always existed, but now have names.
2. Strict constructionists: what we consider to be problems or non-problems all depends on the language we selec4t to “create” the worlds we inhabit.
3. Contextual constructionists: social problems are neither entirely discovered nor entirely fabricated.

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How Multiple Messages Shape Ideologies: The Disney Channel

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- We see perfectly manicured homes filled with attractive families who resolve issues by the end of the program.
- Children are perfectly dressed in the latest teen fashions. They are creative, clean, and respectful, and value education, sports, and the arts.
- Parents are wise, attractive, and involved, and finances are never an issue.
- Watching Disney’s programming, children are persuaded to embrace Disney’s capitalistic, democratic, consumeristic ideology and imitate it.

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Persuasion and Ideology: “McWorld”

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- “McWorld” is Benjamin Barber’s name for ideological globalization and the Americanization of the world’s cultures.
- An ideology of consumerism, with its attendant cry of “gimme, gimme, gimme.”
- A devaluation of class-consciousness; there are no workers in McWorld, only consumers.
- McWorld promotes values of secularism, passivity, vicariousness, and an accelerated pace of life.
- It celebrates youth, disdains authority, flirts with violence, and makes a sport of sex.
- McWorld’s persuasive force shapes us all. It affects what we buy, how we work, how we live, and even what we think we need.

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What is Coactive Persuasion?

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- An umbrella term for the ways that persuaders work to move toward persuadees psychologically so that they will be moved, in turn, to accept the persuaders’ position or proposal for action.

Front 40

Coactive persuasion ( 6 points)

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1. Is receiver oriented, taking place largely, although not entirely, on the message recipient’s terms.
2. Is situation sensitive, recognizing that receivers (e.g., audiences, persuadees) respond differently to persuasive messages in different situations.
3. Combines images of similarity between persuader and persuadee while promoting images of the persuader’s unique expertise and trustworthiness.
4. Addresses controversial matters by appeals to premises the audience can accept.
5. Moves audiences from premises to desired actions or conclusions by both appearing reasonable and providing psychological support.
6. Makes full use of the resources of human communication.

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Comparison between Topic-oriented and Receiver-Oriented approaches
The topic-oriented approach

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- Assumes that all receivers are alike.
- Decides for receivers what they need, want, know, value, etc.
- Selects specific persuasive goals for any one occasion on the basis of the persuader’s own timetable.
- Communicates at receivers by means of a “canned” presentation.
- Promotes solutions on the basis of their supposed intrinsic merits.

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Comparison between Topic-oriented and Receiver-Oriented approaches. The receiver-oriented approach

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- Assumes that all receivers are unique, or, at the least, that some differences make a difference.
- Learns from receivers what they need, want, know, value, etc.
- Selects specific persuasive goals for any occasion on the basis of the receivers’ readiness to be persuaded.
- Communicates with receivers by adapting the message on the basis of a mutual interchange.
- Promotes solutions on the basis of their capacity to resolve or reduce the receivers’ special problems.

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Three approaches to persuasion in controversial or conflict situations:

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1. Objectivist: Hard fact and cold logic are, and ought to be, the sole arbiters of disputes.
2. Privatist: All persuasion is immoral manipulation; we should merely assert our feelings on the matter at hand.
3. Coactivist: Persuaders use acceptable premises to reason with audiences, not to win an argument, but to win a belief.

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What is a premise?

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- A hook on which to hang an argument. Depending on the context of the discussion, it may be a definition, a value assumption, or a general observation.
- The coactive persuader operates on the principle that once we get people to agree with a premise, we have them halfway to agreeing with the conclusion as well.

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Building on Acceptable Premises

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- In building from acceptable premises, persuaders start from premises that they themselves accept, and make a point of emphasizing those points of agreement that they share with their audience.

- Such common-ground appeals make the persuader appear more trustworthy and more attractive, and create identification with the audience.

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Two approaches to building on premises

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- “Yes-Yes” approach: The persuader identifies a number of acceptable principles or criteria by which the case will later be supported.
- “Yes-But” approach: The persuader notes the arguments of the message recipient with which they can agree, and then (having shown how fair-minded they are) offers a series of “buts” that constitute the heart of their case.

Front 47

To appear reasonable and providing psychological support, coactive persuaders should:

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1. Attempt to link their position or proposal with beliefs and values already held by the audience.
2. When urging action on a proposal, convince their audience not just that the proposal is a good one, but also that it has the support of people the audience most admires.
3. Simplify the message for those who would otherwise have difficulty understanding it.
4. Reinforce desired responses to questions while withholding reinforcements for undesired responses.
5. Dress and act in such a way that audiences will form favorable inferences about their competence, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. Likewise, they should polish their ideas into language that audiences will find attractive.
6. Encourage opponents to have empathy; encourage supporters to take action.

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Coactive persuaders use communication resources:

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- Remembering that a message includes not just what is said but how it is said, both verbally and non-verbally.
- Considering the implications of the grammar provided by each medium.
- Engaging the resources of ambiguity.

Front 49

What is a peritrope?

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a table-turning technique
- house of reps called colleagues ostriches, but representative Frank said they are marvelous creatures

Front 50

What is compliance gaining?

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- Those used to effect changes in overt behavior, not just in beliefs, values, or attitudes.
- Tactic 1: social appropriateness
- Tactic 2: efficiency
- When seeking to gain compliance, a pleasant request will generally work better than a nasty order; a direct message will work better than hinting or beating around the bush.

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What are the key components of intensifying?

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- Alliteration: “M & M’s melt in your mouth, not in your hand.”
- Glittering generalities: “faith, freedom, family” (association)
- Name calling: to get the receiver to reject the person or idea on the basis of the negative symbol, rather than by examining the evidence.

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What are the key components of downplaying?

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- Cardstacking: whereby only information that supports the persuader’s point of view is provided; used to deliberately hide or conceal information. (omission)
- Ad hominem: whereby the person, rather than the idea, is attacked.
- Doublespeak: whereby language is intentionally used to mislead.

Front 53

Intensifying: Explain repetition, association, composition, omission, diversion, and confusion

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- repetition: repeating message again and again (slogans and jingles)
- association: linking a person or idea to something already loved/desired or by hated/feared
- composition: arrangement of words in a print ad and the organization of ideas in a speech
- omission: leaving out information about the bad points about a product or idea
diversion: downplaying by shifting attention away from another's good points or one's own bad points
- confusion: make thing so chaotic and complex that people give up trying to understand

Front 54

What is the euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook, inflated language?

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- Euphemism is a device used to make an unpleasant reality more acceptable.
- Jargon is the specialized language of a trade or profession.
- Gobbledygook or bureaucratese is overloading the audience with long, complex sentences that sound impressive but actually don’t make any sense.
- Inflated language is designed to make the ordinary and mundane seem important or things that are simple seem quite complicated.

Front 55

What are vocalics? kinesics? proxemics? haptics? chromenics?

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- Vocalics (also paralanguage or paralinguistics): how vocal cues project images of self.
- Kinesics: includes posture, gestures, fidgeting, and other body movements, as well as eye behavior and facial expressions.
- Proxemics: how space and spatial relationships communicate.
- Haptics: the tactile channel of communication, the arena of touch.
- Chronemics: how time communicates.