Table of Contents
Week 1: Intro to Persuasive Communication, McGuire Matrix......................................................2
Week 2: Attitudes, Behavior and Persuasion through Argumentation (TPB; ELM; IFEC)..............10
Week 3: Cognitive Heuristics & Social Heuristics.........................................................................30
Week 4: Emotions and Influence, Punishment and Reward.........................................................41
Week 5: Automatic Responses, Social Norms and Social Comparison.........................................52
Week 6: Modifications of complex behavior...............................................................................62
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,Week 1: Intro to Persuasive Communication, McGuire Matrix
Assumptions of persuasive communication:
1. need to adopt a perspective from the receiver
2. we need a message in order to persuade
Advertise: call attention to, notify or warn people of something, often by means of an
announcement in a public medium
- advertising agents deploy information to influence people’s thought and behavior
- information can be either verbal or non-verbal communication, images or sounds or a
combination of forms of communication
- TV broadcasting is still the most important advertising medium worldwide
- mainly for automotive products, media/publishing, healthcare, entertainment,
cosmetics/toiletries and food
Multidisciplinary approach to advertising – WARC
World Advertising Research Centre: an independent organization that works with
universities, trade associations, advertising agencies and market research firms
- database for hundreds of case studies, articles and advertising expenditure data
- often do not even realize to how many ads we’re exposed daily
Gibson (2005) shows that we see 130 ads in 45 minutes and sometimes, we cannot even recall
1 and only recognize half
- between 3000 to 5000 ads a day (depends on location)
Even if the information is not always successfully processed, we often recognize the ads, so it
is processed more subtly
History of influence research
- Comes from the Greeks (Plato and the sophists) to argument and persuade people
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,- Aristotle claim is that the power to persuade is determined by the characteristics of the
source (persuader) of info, the recipient and the content
- important to consider the public you are addressing
Attitudes
- starting from the industrial revolution, more products became available so companies started
getting more interested in persuasive communication
- at first, the emphasis was on the linguistic aspects of a message, such as form or meaning of
a text (ex: when a message influences attitudes and behavior)
- then, shift towards an analysis of the process involved in persuasion (ex: how a message
influences attitudes and behavior)
Lasswell’s Model of Communication
The effectiveness of information is defined by:
Who says what in which channel to whom with what effect?
- important to consider the characteristics of the source, the content, the medium, the audience
and the effect caused this
Attitudes: an evaluative response, positive or negative, to a person, a situation, a product, an
idea or an organization
Hovland and Janis (1959): The Yale model of persuasion
- the direct impact of a message often differs from its indirect or delayed effects
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,Four-step process model of persuasion
1. People must pay attention to the information contained in a message (cannot be
persuaded if the info is not processed)
2. The message must be presented in a way that it is understood
3. The recipient can then accept it (and modify their attitude accordingly)
4. For that to change permanently, the recipient must also retain the new attitude
- which can then lead to behavior
each step influences the probability of eventual attitude change
The likelihood that the entire process will be completed depends on:
- recipient willingness to actually pay attention
- whether the content of the message related to the recipient (relatable/relevant info is better)
- nature of the source (ex: more skeptical about info from an untrustworthy source)
- BUT, people tend to forget the source and just retain the info
- existing attitude of recipient (matching information is more likely to be persuasive)
Critique of Yale model:
- model only states that motivated people will process the info, it does not state how exactly
the process work or if it actually affects eventual outcomes
Inoculation theory (McGuire, 1964)
- theory on how people can arm themselves against info intended to influence and change
their opinion
- similar to Yale model but 6 steps instead of 4
1. presentation
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, 2. attention
3. comprehension
4. yielding (accepting the arguments presented)
5. retention
6. behavior
- steps can influence each other
Cognitive response theory:
- how information is processed and how it affects attitudes
The information is couples and compared with existing attitudes and preferences, and possibly
even integrated into them
- this process determines whether a person’s attitude and behavior will be modified
Advertising and Influence
AIDA model:
AIDA = Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
AIDAS = add Satisfaction, necessary addition to assure customer loyalty which generates
repeated purchases
The steps run in parallel and one or more of them can be skipped
- the model assumes that people devote a certain amount of time and attention to the
information presented to them
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