PERSUASION

Efforts to change others attitudes through the use of various kinds of message.

Approaches to persuasion:
1. Earlier approach
2. Cognitive approach
EARLIER APPROACH:-
Earlier research efforts aimed at understanding persuasion involved the study
of the following events.
Communicator, message and audience: Some source directs some type of message to
some person or group of people.

Hovland, Janis Kelly (1953) focused and did the research on elements asking who
says what to whom and with what effect?
Findings of this research were:
1. Communicators who are credible:
A person who seems to know what they are talking about, who are expert with
respect to the topics or issues they are presenting are more persuasive than
those who are seen as lacking expertise.
Disadvantages of the persuader:
1. When he has a personal stake ( Financial expectations)
2. When they are arguing against a self interest
2.Communicators who are attractive in some way:
The people who are more physically attractive are more persuasive than
communicators who are not attractive.
3. Message that do not appear to be designed to change our attitudes:
These are often more successful than those that seem to be designed to
achieve this goal

4. Fear appeal: Attempting to change peoples behavior by use of a message
that induce fear

COGNITIVE APPROACH:
Cognitive approach mainly focused on how do we process the information
contained in such message.

How do we absorb, interpret and evaluate..?

1. The systematic process
2. The heuristic process

1. Systematic processing: Processing of information in a persuasive
message that involves careful consideration of message and central
ideas

(a) Central route to persuasion: attitude change resulting from
systematic processing of information presented in persuasive
message.

2. The heuristic process: Processing of information in a persuasive
message that involves the use of simple rules of thumb or mental
shortcuts
(a) Peripheral route to persuasion: Attitude change that occurs in response to
peripheral persuasion cues which is often based on information on concerning
the expertise or status of would be persuaders
When do we make use of this process?
It can be explained through a theory which is called as ELABORATIVE
LIKELIHOOD MODEL:
A Theory suggesting that persuasion can occur in either of two distinct ways, differing
in the amount of cognitive effort or elaborative is required.
When do we involve in systematic process..?
1. We engage in most effortful and systematic processing when our motivation
and capacity to process information relating the persuasive message is high.
2. When we have a lot of knowledge about the topic
3. When we have lots of time to engage in a careful thought
4. If the issue is sufficiently imported to use
When do we engage in heuristic processing:
1. When motivation level is low
2. When the issue is not important to us
3. Attractive model and advertisements
The discovery of these tow contacting models of processing provides an important key
to understand the process of persuasion




RESISTANCE TO PERSUASION:
There are many ways to persuade the individuals. It might be done by either
through systematic process or using the heuristics. Some times its a tough cell to
change the attitude or behavior of a person.
1. Reactance: Protecting our personal freedom
Few of us like being told to what to do because we are not able to take decision
so we depend on others. In both the cases we are in a receiving end of threats to
our freedom to decide our self.
Sometimes not only do we resist this persuasion attempts but we may also
actually lean our backward to adopt views appropriate to those the would be
persuader wants you to adopt. This is called reactance.

Reactance : Negative reactance to threats to ones freedom, reactance often increased
resistance to persuasion and can even produce negative attitude change of appropriate
to what was intended.
2. Forewarning: Prior knowledge of persuasive intent.

Advantages:
1. It provides us with more opportunity to formulate counterarguments
2. It gives us the real factual information
Forewarning: Advance knowledge that one is about to become the target of an attempt
at persuasion. Forewarning often increases resistance to the persuasion that fallows.
3. Selective avoidance of the persuasion attempts:
A tendency to direct attention away from information that challenges existing attitudes
such avoidance increases resistance to persuasion.
4. actively defending our attitude: Counter arguing against the competition
5. Individual differences in resistance to persuasion: Every individual differs
in their vulnerability to persuasion.
Some people are motivated to engage in counter arguing, some people are
not motivated and not sure about their view are more prone to vulnerability.
6. Ego depletion can resist the persuasion: When our capacities to self regulate
has been reduced because of prior expenditure of limited resources.
7. Ego depletion can make weak ideas persuasive: When we are ego depleted
we can differentiate between weak and strong arguments and can only be
persuaded by strong arguments. In contrast when we are suffering from ego
deception, we fail to differentiate between strong and weak arguments and
can therefore be persuaded by both.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: An internal state that results when individuals notice in
consistency among two or more attitudes or behavior their attitudes and their
behavior.
Ex: Imagine the following situation: You've always placed a high value on financial
security, but you start dating someone who is very financially unstable. In order to
reduce the tension caused by the conflicting beliefs and behavior, you have two
options. You can end the relationship and seek out a partner who is more financially
secure, or you can de-emphasize the importance of fiscal stability. In order to
minimize the dissonance between your conflicting attitude and behavior, you either
have to change the attitude or change your actions.
DISSONANCE theory: It begins with a very reasonable idea: People find
inconsistency between their own actions and attitudes uncomfortable. In other words,
when we notice that our attitudes when we notice that our attitudes and our behavior
dont match, we are motivated to do something to reduce the dissonance.
Methods of reducing the dissonance:
1. We can change either our attitudes or our behavior so that these are more
consisting with each other.
2. We can reduce cognitive dissonance by acquiring new information that
supports our attitudes or our behavior
3. We can decide that the inconsistency actually doesnt matter, in other words we
can engage in TRIVILIZATION

TRIVILIZATION: a technique for reducing dissonance in which the importance of
attitudes or behavior that are inconsistent with each other is cognitively reduced.
All of these strategies can be viewed as methods of reducing the dissonance.