Persuasion
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Persuasion is a form of influence. It is the process of guiding people toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic (though not only logical) means. It is a problem-solving strategy, and relies on "appeals" rather than force.
Dissuasion is the process of convincing someone not to believe or act on something.
Persuasion is often confused with manipulation, which is the act of guiding another towards something that is not in their best interest by subverting their thought processes. Persuasion is meant to benefit all parties in the end.
Aristotle says that "Rhetoric is the art of discovering, in a particular case, the available means of persuasion."
Contents |
[edit] Attitude change through persuasion.
Attitudes can be changed through persuasion. The celebrated work of Carl Hovland, at Yale University in the 1950s and 1960s, helped to advance knowledge of persuasion. In Hovland's view, we should understand attitude change as a response to communication. He and his colleagues did experimental research into the factors that can affect the persuasiveness of a message:
1. Target Characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the person who receives and processes a message. One such trait is intelligence - it seems that more intelligent people are less easily persuaded by one-sided messages. Another variable that has been studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes thought that those higher in self-esteem are less easily persuaded, there is some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of moderate self-esteem being more easily persuaded than both those of high and low self-esteem levels (Rhodes & Woods, 1992). The mind frame and mood of the target also plays a role in this process.
2. Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction or attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has been found to be a key variable here (Hovland & Weiss, 1951); if one reads a report about health and believes it came from a professional medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper. Some psychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect and Hovland and Weiss (1951) found the effect of telling people that a message came from a credible source disappeared after several weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether there is a sleeper effect is controversial. Received wisdom is that if people are informed of the source of a message before hearing it, there is less likelihood of a sleeper effect than if they are told a message and then told its source.
3. Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes.
4. Cognitive Routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the source. This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors or experts are used. In other cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.
[edit] Principles of persuasion
According to Robert Cialdini in his book on persuasion, he defined six "weapons of influence":
- Liking: people like those who like them or themselves
- Reciprocity: people repay in kind
- Social proof: people follow the lead of similar others
- Consistency: people align with their clear commitments
- Authority: people defer to experts
- Scarcity: people want more of what they can have less of
[edit] Methods of persuasion
By appeal to reason:
By appeal to emotion:
Aids to persuasion:
- Body language
- Communication skill
- Sales techniques
- Personality tests and conflict style inventory can help devise strategy based on an individual's preferred style of interaction.
Other techniques, which may or may not work:
Coercive techniques, some of which are highly controversial and/or not scientifically proven to be effective:
[edit] References
- Social psychologist Robert Cialdini has written several books exploring the techniques of non-coercive persuasion.
- See Elaboration Likelihood Model for a contemporary theory of persuasion.
[edit] References
- de:Überzeugung
- fr:Persuasion
| This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Persuasion. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
