Social sciences

1. Effective persuasion

2.  Communication intended to influence or
induce a belief or an action

3. Communicator
Audience Persuasion Message
Channel

4. • Expert
• Trustworthy
Credibility • Confident
• Straightforward
• Physical appeal
• Similarity (Opposites generally do not
attract)
Attractiveness • Objective reality – dissimilar person
preferred
• Subjective preference – similar is preferred

5. Reason Vs. • Highly involved audience listens to reason
• Less involved audience listens to the communicator they like
Emotion • Association of good feelings
• Evoking negative associations/ fear
• Disagreement prompts change in opinions but might backfire as
Discrepancy well
• Discrepancy and credibility interact: Low credibility means high
discomfort
One sided Vs. • Acknowledging opposite arguments might cause confusion or it
Two sided might make the message seem fair.
Primacy Vs. • Primacy effect: Initial bits of information are more effective
• Recency effect: Later bits of information are more effective if
Recency • Sufficient time separates two messages
• Audience is not convinced by the first message.

6. Personal • Direct communication with people
versus is more effective
• Media is more effective in terms
Media of mass issues.
Influence
Passive • On radical and important issues,
active persuasion doesn’t work
Vs Active • On more personal issue specially
those which can project a positive
Msg. image, active persuasion helps

7. What the • The message is not as crucial as the
audience response it evokes in a recipient’s mind
• Announcing the persuasive intent reduces
is the persuasion factor
• Persuasion can be increased by distracting
thinking? the audience from counter arguing.
• Life cycle explanation – People become
more conservative with growing age.
• Generational explanation – Attitude
Age developed in young age, remain largely
unchanged and are different from what
upcoming generations adopt, hence the
generation gap.