Designing persuasive texts
CHAPTER 1: CONVINCING DOCUMENTS
Writers attempt to Instruct (instructive documents), Inform (informative documents) or
persuade/convince (persuasive documents). Understanding, appreciation and persuasiveness are
the product of both document and reader properties.
Functions of documents
- Characteristics of the document
- Characteristics of the reader
Document is a tailored costume (preferences, needs, values). It’s about choices related to the
content, structure and style. These elements affect how the reader processes it, and whether it is
meant to be instructive, informative or persuasive. So it influences the effectiveness of a document.
The authors intention determines the nature of the text. Sometimes it can be the case that readers
draw conclusions that were never intended by the author. Research shows that the fact that a text is
written to influence the reader makes people aware than an attempt is made to change their
attitudes, which will encourage them to defend their present position.
Classical rhetorical theory
Inventio: collecting/selecting the right info for target
Dispositio: structuring the selected information
Elocutio: putting the information into words. Style, how elegant and language use
In the end, a persuasive text will change your behaviour (this is the end goal, you first want
to change someone’s attitude, which will in turn change behaviour). We want to intentionally
influence people’s behaviour by purposefully and meaningfully applying theory on persuasive
communication in an evidence-based way.
Persuasion: a successful intentional effort at influencing another’s mental state through
communication in a circumstance in which the persuade has some measure of freedom.
Persuasive document: are designed with the aim of influencing readers’ attitudes through the
transfer of information, with the readers having a certain degree of freedom.
Attitude: a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some
degree of favour or disfavour. The attitude (evaluative judgment) is stored in memory along with any
other information about the entity. But the link between attitude and information is not very strong.
Speeding or using your mobile while driving your car. It is bad, but a lot of people do it. People think
it is not that bad when they speed a bit, or use their phone. That needs to be changed. First their
attitude, then behaviour.
SO attitude changes precedes behavioural changes.
Communication Attitude Behaviour
There is a difference between commercial organizations (using ads) and governmental agencies in
how to change behaviour. The difference is that governmental agencies can force the people to do
something, they can use other means for behavioural change. This is:
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, - Legislation: government tries to regulate behaviour directly. For instance by financial
instruments, or by the law. They can make certain behaviours mandatory, and others
prohibited. Like speed limits and paying income tax.
So they have another behaviour changing tool besides Communication: trying to persuade the public
to do or don’t do something. This is social regulation (like being de BOB). Communication vessels:
When you use direct regulation (legislation), you need enforcement burden, when for
instance the government decided to adopt laws or regulations.
When using social regulation (public information), you need personal responsibility so when
the government launches a campaign to encourage people to stop smoking.
The more the instrument appeals to citizens’ personal responsibility, the lighter the
governments enforcement burden. If the instrument allows less personal responsibility, the
enforcement burden increases.
The choice of direct or social regulation depend on the situation. Direct regulation is for very urgent
situations. If it is a less urgent situation, we need to look at:
- Measurability of the behaviour: can you monitor whether people abide by the rules. (can you
actually measure for instance how many alcohol is consumed). The easier it is, the lower the
enforcement burden.
- The structure of the target group : about the size and homogeneity of the group. If the group
is small and easy to identify the enforcement burden will be light.
- The costs for the target group: does the change of behaviour lead to higher costs for the
target group, or less comfort or mental problems? (whether or not a behavioural change will
be easy to implement, like when the government wants us to eat more fruit, an apple
shouldn’t be 100 euros)
These dimensions need to be taken into account when choosing between direct and social
regulation.
Direct regulation comes with a burden of enforcement which increases as it becomes more
difficult to ascertain whether people abide by the rules (dimension 1) and more people need
to be monitored (dimension 2). It also violates freedom of the citizens. We choose social
regulation when the target groups’ costs are low (dimension 3).
However, it’s not legislation vs communication: persuasion is used to diminish resistance and
increase acceptance.
Communication can only be regarded as persuasive if the target group has some freedom of action.
CHAPTER 2: DETERMINANTS OF BEHAVIOUR
Communication cannot influence behaviour directly, it triggers its underlying determinants.
Behaviour
- Reasoned behaviour (5%):behaviour that people do think about.
- Automatic behaviour (95%): your instinct, performed without thought. Like online behaviour
(scrolling), learning a new language (because first you really have to think about the next
word, and then eventually it gets kind of automatic), our reaction to different skin colours.
It is harder to influence automatic behaviour with communication, than reasoned behaviour. Only if
people’s circumstances change people will re-examine their habitual behaviour.
2.1 Automatic behaviour and its determinants
Automatism: originate from external stimuli and events that control our internal psychological
processes without us being aware of this control.
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, Cognitive energy level is important; when you have to think about everything all the time, it takes a
lot of effort. So we put a lot of effort in turning behaviour automatic so we have more room for other
cognitive challenges. Driving a car is automatism, so we can further focus on road signs and traffic.
Which situational characteristics can activate automatic behaviour?
- The behaviour of others
Principle of ideomotor action: simply thinking about a certain action already increases the
likelihood that this action will be performed. So the action of seeing someone do something
makes you do something as well.
Perception is also mostly automatic. We perceive others’ behaviour automatically, it’s hard
to ignore. This observation leads to the activation of thoughts relevant to that behaviour.
These thoughts increase the likelihood that we will also manifest the behaviour.
- Automatic activation of goals
Subconscious or conscious goal activation leads to certain behaviours without people being
aware of this activation. When people were primed with words associated to performance
(success, perseverance) these subjects preserved longer at a task. So priming them with
words caused them to perform better.
Experiments by Bargh and colleagues
1. Groups were confronted with people engaged in a lively conversation.
- Group 1: negative words such as rude, crude and impolite
- Group 2: words like respect, understanding, polite
- Group 3: words that don’t have anything to do with politeness
Group 1 interrupted the conversation (67%), group 2 only 16% and group 3 38%.
2. People were confronted with words related to old age (sentimental, wrinkles, grey), people
then walked slower to the elevator.
3. Showing people pictures of young Afro Americans shown very quickly (subliminal, you don’t
really notice it: below the threshold of conscious perception) during a game with another
person.
Reactions were more hostile when they were mildly provoked than subjects who had not
been primed with these images (controlled for racist attitudes). This is part of the ‘young
black male’ stereotype.
Conclusions:
These studies provide strong evidence for the idea that activation of stereotypes or
stereotypical behaviour can automatically lead to that behaviour.
This is called priming: activating concepts or stereotypes by confronting people with words.
However, there was a replication crisis in psychology. There were concerns about the credibility of
findings in social psychological science. Researchers do not obtain results comparable to the original,
peer-reviewed study when repeating that study using similar procedures. So the findings in
behavioural science often cannot be replicated.
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2.2 Reasoned behaviour and its determinants
Integrative model of behavioural prediction
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