Summary for the subject Social Influene (RUG). It is a summary of all chapters of the book: Persuasion: Social Influence and Compliance Gaining 6th Edition by Robert H Gass and John S Seiter.
THE BAD SIDE
The study of persuasion receives a lot of negatvityy because some believe it is a feld of study concerning
manipulatony deceit or brainwashing. There is a sinister side to persuasiony with our biggest example Adolf
Hitler. Wey howevery do not think of persuasion as the ugly stepsister in the family of human communicaton.
Persuasiony is on occasiony used for unsavory ends. Soy we need to study it.
PERSUASION IS OUR FRIEND
Persuasion helps forge peace agreements between natons and it helps expose corrupton and open up closed
societes. Persuasion is the cornerstone of a number of positvey prosocial endeavors. Very litle of the good we
see in the world could be accomplished without persuasion.
PERVASIVENESS OF PERSUASION
With social media and tvy there are more ways to persuade than ever before. Gladwell came up with his law of
the fewy a small number of infuental people can generate a groundswell of support for an ideay brand or
phenomenon. If a message gains sufcient tractony it reaches a tpping point and becomes contagious.
Thereforey a number of things have to happen in viral persuasion:
Über influencers – the right kinds of people must be involved. Three kinds of people are essental:
o Mavens: possess specialized expertse. They are in the know (celebrity chefsy fashionistas).
They are the early adoptersy or what some call alpha consumersy the ones who hear about
ideas and try our gadgets frstt
o Connectors: they are carriers. They have large social networks. They spread the word.
o Salespeople: they receive the message from a connector and then talk it up within their own
circle of friends. “You must see this movie” is something they would say.
Orchestrating the Next Big Thing – Context is critcal. The idea must come along at the right place and
right tme. An idea also must possess stickinessy which means that it is inherently atractve. Scalability
is another requirement: It must be easy to ramp up producton of the ideay product or message to
meet demand. Finallyy effortless transfer is another ingredient. Ideas that are easy spread are easy to
disseminate.
A hit-or-miss strategy with far more misses than hits. Flash mobs came and fashed in the pan.
Sometimes Less is More – the nudge theory maintains that subtle changes in the way choices are
presented to people can infuencey or nudgey them to behave in certain ways.
NEW PERSUASION: DIGITAL AND ONLINE INFLUENCE
eWOM: is electronic word-of-mouth. It is like WOMy most efectvey when it is perceived as genuine
rather than manufactured and peer driven rather than commercially sponsored.
Sponsored Content includes promoted tweets and Instagram postsy which are essentally paid
advertsements. Native advertising involves ad posing as news stories. It functons as clickbaity luring in
readers with snappy headlines or provocatve photos. It is efectvey because many readers have
difcultes distnguishing such content from genuine material.
The web is an opinion-rich environment. Many companies specialize in opinion mining and sentiment
tracking by monitoring social media to gauge the public’s mood in nearly real tme.
, Gamification is used to stmulate consumer interest and involvement. It applies video-game methods
to other contexts to increase consumer engagements.
Crowdsourcing puts out an open call for anyone online to partcipate in completng a task or solving a
problem. A related strategyy crowdfundingy involves raising money through online donatons.
Persuasive technology focuses on devices aimed at changing users’ attudes or behaviors through
persuasion and social infuencey but not through coercion or decepton.
PERSUASION IN THE SCIENCES
Scientsts are persuadersy they ofen have to convince others for the superiority of their theories over rival
theories. Another not-so-obvious context for persuasion is the arts. Not all art is created for art’s sake.
WEIRD PERSUASION
In a police departmenty the police threatened that people who would be arrestedy would be arrested listening
to Nickelback music. Soy the people tried to get caught. The explanaton of this is related to embodied
cognitiony wherein physical behaviors ofen afect higher mental states.
FIVE BENEFITS OF STUDYING PERSUASION
1. The instrumental functon – you can become a more efectve persuader yourself. This is the
instrumental function of persuasiony because persuasion serves as an instrumenty or a means to an
end. Communication competence involves actng in ways that are perceived as efectve and
appropriate. A competent persuader needs to know how to analyze an audience in order to adapt the
message to the audience’s frame of reference. She or he needs to be able to identfy which strategies
are appropriate and which will enjoy the greatest likelihood of success.
2. The knowledge and awareness functon – learning about persuasion will enhance your knowledge
and awareness of a variety of persuasive processes. And knowledge is power.
3. The defensive functon – by studying how and why infuence atempts succeed or faily you can
become a more discerning consumer of persuasive messages. If you know how persuasion worksy you
are less likely to be taken in. People tend to underestimate the infuence of advertsing on themselves
and overestimate its efects on othersy a phenomenon known as the third-person effect.
4. The debunking functon – the study of human infuence can aid in dispelling various ‘common-sense’
assumptons and ‘homespun’ notons about persuasion. Traditonal wisdom isn’t always righty and it’s
worth knowing when it’s wrong.
5. Well-Being and Self-Worth – this is the beneft that the ability to persuade others improves one’s
subjectve sense of well-being. There is a sense of satsfacton that comes from persuading others.
TWO CRITICISMS OF PERSUASION
1. Does Learning About Persuasion Foster Manipulaton? The noton that it fosters a manipulatve
approach to communicaton.
2. The fndings are thought to be too inconsistent.
ETHICAL CONCERNS WITH PERSUASION
Ethical concerns are that it can be linked to commitng fraud in some cases.
CHAPTER 2: WHAT CONSTITUTES PERSUASION?
,PURE VERSUS BORDERLINE PERSUASION
Pure persuasion is persuasion by which we mean clear-cut cases of persuasiony on which all people
would agree. Everyone would agree that a presidental debate or a television commercial are
instances of persuasion. Such examples represent paradigm casesy because they are at the core of
what we think of when we envision persuasion at work.
Borderline cases of persuasion are instances that lie closer to the boundary or periphery of what we
normally think of as persuasion. Not everyone would agree that a derelict’s mere appearance
persuades passersby to keep their distancey for example. These clear cases are less clear-cut and more
“ify”.
The dividing line between pure and borderline persuasion is fuzzyy rather than distnct.
LIMITING CRITERIA FOR DEFINING PERSUASION
Five basic criteria can be gleaned from the various defnitons ofered in the literature:
1. Intentionality – persuasion does involve a deliberate atempt to infuence another person. Persuaders
must intend to change another individual’s attude or behavior and must be aware that they are
trying to accomplish this goal. As just one instancey parents quite commonly instll beliefsy impart
valuesy and model behavior for their childreny a phenomenon called social modelling. The socialization
process is because from the moment children are borny they are socialized into their respectve gender
rolesy cultural customsy religious practces and socioeconomic habits. A second way in which an intent
criterion is problematc is that people do not always know what specifc outcome they are seeking.
Face-to-face encounters are laden with spontaneity. Social infuence may arise in and through our
interacton with othersy rather than as a result of planning and forethought.
2. Effects – we take the positon that even if a person is communicatng badlyy he or she is stll
communicatng. We believe that a person can be engaged in persuasion even if it is inefectve
persuasion. An efects criterion emphasizes persuasion as a product. Such an orientaton bears litle
fdelity to current conceptualizatons of human communicaton as a process. A second weakness is the
same as that already associated with an intent criterion: an efects criterion embodies a linear view of
persuasion from source to receiver. In face-to-face encountersy there isn’t simply a source and a
receiver. Both partes may be simultaneously engaged in persuasion. They shapey adapty and adjust
their strategies in response to another. A third problem is that it is ofen difculty if not impossibley to
measure persuasive efects when we decide to rely on an efect’s criterion.
3. Free will and conscious awareness – Many authors make a distncton between persuasion and
coercion. It focuses on whether a person is aware that she or he is being persuaded and how much
freedom the person has to accept or reject the message. Persuasion is noncoercive. It is hard to decide
if those are distnct (persuasion and coercive) or close relatves.
4. Symbolic action – A number of authors maintain that persuasion begins and ends with symbolic
expressiony which includes language as well as other meaning-laden actsy such as civil disobedience
and protest marches. Authors who limit the scope of persuasion to symbolic acton fear that without
such a limitatony all human behavior could be construed as persuasion. It seems arbitrary to limit
persuasion to the words contained in an ad or commercialy without considering the role of the images
as well. We think that the whole ad or the whole commercial persuades. We also believe that some of
the most intriguing aspects of persuasion can be found in nonverbal behaviory which lies on the
periphery of symbolic acton. We believe that restrictng the study of persuasion exclusively to
symbolic expression leads to a fragmented understanding of the subject. Persuasion involves more
than language use or symbol usage. A whole host of factors are at work.
5. Interpersonal versus Intrapersonal – How many actors are required for persuasion to take place? A last
limitng criterion that deserves menton is whether persuasion can involve only one person or whether
, persuasion requires the partcipaton of two or more distnct persons. We are sympathetc to the “two
or more” perspectve but suggest thaty once againy the issue comes down to whether one wishes to
focus exclusively on pure cases of persuasion or borderline cases as well. When we think of pure casesy
we conjure up an image of one person persuading another. When we include borderline casesy we
imagine instances in which individuals sometmes try to convince themselves.
MODEL OF THE SCOPE OF PERSUASION
Figure 1: Model of Persuasion.
This is based on the fve criteria just discussedy it encompasses pure and borderline cases of persuasion. The
inner circle represents pure persuasion – that isy what we think of as the core of persuasion. The outer circle
represents borderline persuasion. The inner porton of each wedge represents the pure case for that criterion.
The outer porton represents the borderline case. There is a fuzzy diving liney because it exists between pure
and borderline persuasion.
THE CONTEXT FOR PERSUASION
A fnal feature that must be implemented to the model is the context for persuasion. The context in which
persuasion occurs – for exampley within a small groupy via mass mediay in an organizatonal setng and so forth
– is crucial because it is the context that determines the nature of the communicaton process. In a face-to-face
setngy for exampley infuence is a mutualy two-way process.
By contexty we don’t simply mean the number of communicators presenty although that is certainly one key
factor. Another contextual factor is the rato of verbal to nonverbal cues that are present. An additonal
contextual factor is the nature and type of media used in the persuasion process. Yet another contextual factor
involves the goals of the partcipants. A fnal contextual variable involves sociocultural factors that afect the
persuasive process. People from diferent cultures or subcultures may persuade and be persuaded in diferent
ways. Note that all of these contextual factors are operatng at once in a given persuasive situaton.
A WORKING DEFINITION OF PERSUASION
We arrive at our own defniton of persuasiony namely that persuasion involves one or more persons who are
engaged in the activity of creatingg reinforcingg modifyingg or extinguishing beliefsg attudesg intentionsg
motivations andoor behaviors within the constraints of a given communication context. Then we arrive at the
following model:
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