This document discusses theories and concepts related to persuasion and attitude change in public relations. It examines the work of theorists like Bernays, Maloney, and French and Raven who studied how social power and influence can be used to change attitudes, opinions, behaviors, and beliefs. The document explores the difference between ethical persuasion and propaganda, and discusses where persuasion fits in models of communication like the two-way symmetrical model. It also defines key concepts like attitudes, social influence, the five bases of social power, and levels of interest and power for different audience segments.

1. Attitudes and Persuasion David Phillips

12. Changed opinion For example, a change in someone’s opinion may be the affect of someone else persuading that person to accept the opinion of him or herself. This can have affects in groups, because the members driving their opinions onto the others, makes for discussion, which helps the group, come up with great ideas.

13. Social influence and power is limited to influence on the person, P, produced by a social agent, O, where O can be either another person, a role, a norm, a group or a part of a group. “ We do not consider social influence exerted on a group.” (French and Raven 151) This means that all groups are interdependent, which means the group depends on its members in order to function. This means that a change in one may produce a change in others. This theory focuses on the primary changes in a group, which are produced directly with social influence, not on other changes, which are not secondary changes.

14. Social Power Social Power is the amount of powers that O is capable of because of some more or less enduring relation to P. This defines the range of power as the set of all systems within which a person has power of strength greater than zero. The example that French and Raven gave us was: “A girlfriend may have a broad range of power over her boyfriend but a narrow range of power over her employer.

16. What levels of persuasion and influence for different audiences Level of Interest Power A Minimal effort B Keep informed C Keep satisfied D Key players LOW LOW HIGH HIGH