part of speech

part of speech

The Power of Persuasion in Communication

1. Understanding the Art of Persuasion

If we are to analyze the communication of the rational “message sender” to the “target audience” further in this article, we can use the example from health professionals trying to educate the public about the dangers of smoking. This form of education about the dangers of smoking would seek to increase the public’s knowledge of the adverse effects of smoking. The health professionals would try to use various facts and statistics about the health impacts of smoking, present them in a clear and intelligible format, to induce a change in the audience’s beliefs about smoking. This change in beliefs concerning the harm of smoking is what defines an “attitude.” The health professionals hope to change the public’s attitude toward smoking so that it reflects their beliefs about its health impacts. This is still “rational persuasion.”

Most importantly, rational persuasion has a direct and proven link to effective and attitudinal behavior change. Numerous studies have shown that this type of persuasion is very effective, and when attitude change occurs in this fashion, the likelihood of it enduring over time is very strong. This greatly increases the chance of successful, consolidated change from the audience.

Rational persuasion is one of the most effective and potent methods of attempting to change someone’s cognition and behavior. It is a conscious and direct effort to change an attitude through the transmission of a message.

One of the core areas of knowledge in the communication field is centered around how to persuade the audience and convince them to take a certain action. It has always been said that knowledge is power, and the power of knowledge is the ultimate persuasive tool. When using knowledge as your persuasive tool, you are using the technique of “rational persuasion.”

The persuasive communication model is a powerful and influential model used when trying to convince someone to take part or accept change. It has five key stages which involve understanding the central issue, understanding the target audience, attitude change, the decision of change, and finally, consolidation from the audience.

2. Building Credibility and Trust

Trust is a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another. Trust must be distinguished from cooperation in that it is an act that is typically unilateral and occurs over an extended period of time. Trust is relative and transitory. An individual must monitor the one who is trusted for any given behavior and decide whether it is continuing to be supportive of his interests. The implications of a trustful relationship and a credible source are similar in that both lead to lower elaboration likelihood in persuasion and higher message acceptance. Trusting an individual or an organization presupposes an absence of vigilance. It is this lack of vigilance that reduces the need to process message content. Both credibility and trust reduce potentially critical cognitive processing of message content. This is usually thought of as a good thing, but not always. Consumer responses to commercial advertising that lacks the necessary support of information and logic may be detrimental to the individual or society, and there are certainly some well-intentioned but ill-informed credible sources. However, in general, trust in credible sources leads to the adoption of recommended policies, an improved allocation of resources, and better articulation of preferences. All this results in less persuasion knowledge and change in attitude and/or behavior.

Credibility, the audience’s perception of the speaker’s competence, trustworthiness, dynamism, character, and sociability, is central to this dimension. The audience’s perception of the speaker’s intention to tell the truth is crucial. Credibility, as Aristotle wrote, consists of three primary dimensions: ethos. Put simply, these are: “You should listen to me because I know what I’m talking about. You should trust me because I’m not going to steer you wrong. You should like me because we share similar values.” Ethos is not a quality that the speaker can just declare that he or she possesses, and it is not something the audience can merely assume to be present. The methods by which a person can argue another into deeming him an honest man, according to British essayist Richard Whately in his classic book on persuasion and argument, are two, and both depend on a vicious were making him feel that he is so or assuming it, both of them of effective methods. Credibility is most frequently a peripheral cue processed heuristically, and consumers’ reactions to the source are often based on attributes other than credibility, and by no means do individuals agree on what constitutes an attractive, charismatic speaker. Nonetheless, most agree on who is believable and trustworthy.

3. Crafting Compelling Arguments

Crafting a compelling argument is an art form. We don’t have time to cover all the nuances involved, but it’s worth mentioning a few key concepts. First, it’s important to know your audience. Tailoring your argument to what you perceive as their beliefs and values, or their understanding of the issue can make your argument much more powerful. A well-crafted argument can actually influence the audience to believe that the view you are opposing is the stronger position when it is not. By showing the weaknesses and fallacies of the opposition’s argument, you can make your position look even stronger. This does run the risk in hostile arguments of backfiring and putting the audience on the defensive, so attempt this with caution. Another technique in leading the audience to your desired conclusion is the use of persuasive definitions. Define the topic to your advantage and the audience will perceive that the conclusion you reached was the only one possible and the occurrence was a mere formality. Predicting counter arguments and addressing them can also be an effective strategy in preventing the audience from altering their views. By disproving the opposition’s counterarguments, the audience will perceive them as having very little ground and thus conclude that our argument is the stronger one. Because your primary goal is to influence your audience, techniques of attitude building can be quite effective. Providing only material that supports your conclusion can give the implication that no other answer was possible. Building an argument this way has been criticized as manipulative and deceitful. While it is true that an argument that implies no other conclusion was possible does have a high persuasive effect, it can also be viewed as a fallacy of restricting the options. The audience could feel that they were forced into the conclusion and form a resentment to this and your position. The best results likely come from arguments made with the honest intention that your position is the right one coupled with the belief that view is held because it is what is truly best for whatever issue is at hand. Any alteration of attitude is just a fortunate side effect.

4. Utilizing Emotional Appeals

One method of establishing pathos at the beginning of an essay is to depict the emotions of a certain situation. In order to do this, a writer can employ vivid word choice in order to more effectively convey the finer details to the reader. An essay describing a personal experience or the telling of a story is always going to be an emotional essay, since the writer is the personification of the event. Using words that were said with a certain intonation, describing facial expressions, or the use of onomatopoeia are all methods used in incorporating pathos through vivid language. By creating a mood with the setting and tone of the essay, a writer can effectively convey an emotion without outright stating it, leaving the reader to infer it themselves.

Vivid language

Pathos – In order to connect with the reader, a writer might utilize emotions to evoke pity, anger, happiness, and many other feelings. Using factual evidence and explaining logical conclusions, the writer convinces the reader through an intellectual cause and effect. The writer can also use more implicit methods to certify a connection with the reader. Description of emotional experiences, using connotative language, and juxtaposition of contrasting emotions are different ways to invoke emotional responses. Essentially, the writer must consider the connotation of their words and make an effort to “get a read on their audience”.

Creating emotional appeals within a persuasive essay

5. Overcoming Resistance and Closing the Deal

We are examining the power of persuasion. But, if your interlocutor has so far resisted you, then persuasion is moot? Not necessarily. It is a common error to assume that because someone is resistant, persuasion has failed. Indeed, anytime you try to win someone over to your way of thinking you will likely face resistance and hostility. Do not take this as a sign to abandon persuasion, but rather as a problem to solve as you attempt to close the deal. Drawing from the work of social psychologists and communication scholars, we now explore resistance in an attempt to understand when and why it occurs, and how it can be dissuaded. Communicators have various strategies for directly persuading a target to adopt a new idea or attitude. Social judgment theory assumes that people have latitudes of acceptance and rejection with a latitude of non-commitment in between. Unknown or a non-issue would fall into the latitudes of rejection because it lays outside the range of what the person deems acceptable. If the communicator can make the issue more relevant, they can create change within the latitudes of non-commitment and hopefully move the idea into rejection or acceptance. This approach can be problematic if a resistant target has a strong anchor to their current stance. Because perception of an idea is relative to current latitudes, a target with a strong position will perceive a persuasive message as being too discrepant, thus falling within their latitudes of rejection and instigating cognitive response aimed at the communicator’s argument and the decision to solidify the current stance. The more discrepant the message, the more cognitive resistance will occur and while attitude change may occur with a strong and well-refuted argument, it may also result in the creation of counterarguments and source derogation by the target. This can lead to short and long-term reactance whereby the target actively tries to re-establish initial attitudes and latitudes by shunning the communicator and seeking out information that can bolster their current stance. Despite its failure, the direct approach can still accomplish some degree of change, and it may be possible to more successfully employ it with a target who only has a mild disposition to the issue at hand.