Persuasion attempts are common in modern societies that rely on persuasion over force. Persuasion aims to influence beliefs, attitudes, and behavior through communication. The study of persuasion examines who delivers the message, the content of the message, the audience, and the effects. Early research by Hovland and colleagues tested how source credibility, message structure, and audience characteristics impact persuasion. Their experiments showed credibility, expertise, trustworthiness and likability increase persuasiveness. Later research analyzed real-world campaigns to understand persuasion across diverse topics and audiences.

1. Persuasion
Theoretical and practical concerns

2. Persuasion
• Attempts to persuade you are everywhere all the
time
– That is, wherever you go now, someone is trying to
influence you
– The attempts don’t stop—they 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. Hovland and colleagues
• First recruited to study the effectiveness of
the U.S. government’s 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

7. Hovland et al.
• Applied Lasswell’s paradigm for study:
– Who?
– Says What?
– To Whom?
– In Which Channel?
– With what effect?

8. 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

9. 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

10. Expertise
• Does the source appear to be knowledgeable
on the topic?
– A source may be perceived to have expertise even
if he doesn’t
• “I‘m not a doctor, but I play one on TV”
• All sorts of actors dressed up as doctors in early
commercials
– FCC restricted representations of sources—cannot be
misleading or false

11. 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
• Newsperson’s commitment to objectivity
– Walter Cronkite
• A history of openness and honesty (self-disclosure)
– Oprah

12. 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

13. –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

14. 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

15. 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

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

17. 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

18. 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

19. Content
• Emotional content
– Pathos
– Humor
– Love
– Desire
– Jealousy
• Cultural symbolism
– Flags
– Weddings
– Cars

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

21. 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)

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

23. 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 possible—evidence
indicates they are more effective

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

25. 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

26. With what effect?
• Sleeper effect
• Selectivity
• Interaction with education/demographics
– One-sided v. two-sided
• ‘Boomerang effects’

27. Effect
• Varies across topics/products, audiences,
campaigns
– Information
– Attitude change
– Positioning/branding

28. 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”

29. What problems with the experimental
method are there?
• Lack of competing messages
• Usually choose topics the audience knows
little about

30. Campaigns
• Studies of the effectiveness of campaigns
– Advertising
– Political campaigns
– Propaganda campaigns
– Public health campaigns

31. 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

32. 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

33. 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

34. – 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

38. 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

39. 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

40. 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