Chapter 1 - Introduction to Persuasion
More subtle and devious persuasive communication
● The category of promotional content that bears stylistic similarities to the news or mimics
legitimate news articles, but is intended to promote a commercial product or service.
● The term “native” reinforces the deception because it suggests the content belongs naturally
in a news space when it is deceptively designed to mimic news.
● Also political movements (for example a movement ‘against’ climate change) have made
Americans more cynical about persuasion because of communications promoted as truth
but actually misleading.
Persuasion has become entwined with online and social media technologies
● Contemporary social media persuasive message effects are unique in that they:
a) Can involve simple catchphrases
b) Diffuse more quickly and widely than previous technologies
c) Enable others to participate in meaning conferral
d) Are capable of mobilizing individuals across national boundaries
● Noteworthy aspects of today’s dark online deceptions:
○ A lot of fake news → there are now well-developed networks of Americans targeting
other Americans with purposefully designed manipulations. Old-style deceptive,
propagandistic persuasion never had this reach and speed of influence (especially
with political elections).
○ Mechanisms by which these messages can attract an audience using digital
techniques unavailable in previous eras → communications can be so cleverly
constructed that it can be impossible to differentiate fake from real posts.
○ The capacity of malicious software to influence human minds → social bots to fool
people.
Conclusions
● There are important aspects of contemporary persuasion that are unique to this era, such as
the volume, speed, subtlety, complexity, digitization, and remixing of modern messages.
● Deceptions have taken on darker hues in recent years, with the capacity of digitized
falsehoods to permeate more broadly and deeply, in some cases aided by automated social
bots.
Chapter 2 - Foundations of Persuasion
Persuasion = a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change
their own attitudes or behaviors regarding an issue through the transmission of a message in an
atmosphere of choice.
,Do animals persuade?
● Persuasion involves the persuader’s awareness that he or she is trying to influence someone
else. It also requires that the “persuadee” makes a conscious or unconscious decision to
change his mind about something.
● For example chimpanzees’ behavior is better described as social influence or coercion than
persuasion.
● The main point here is that persuasion represents a conscious attempt to influence the other
party, along with an accompanying awareness that the persuadee has a mental state that is
susceptible to change. It is a type of social influence → the broad process in which the
behavior of one person alters the thoughts or actions of another.
Persuasion requires free choice
● The concept of freedom that underlies persuasion is a relative, not an absolute, concept.
● Culture and social environmental constraints can limit the freedom to choose, constraining
individuals’ experience of how much choice they have.
● One might argue that, for persuasion to occur, the individual must be faced with choices
that do not thwart his or her physical or psychological well-being in substantive ways.
● In persuasion, the choices can be tough and painful, but the power of the communicator
cannot unduly restrict the individual or involve choices that cause physical or significant
psychological harm.
Persuasion versus coercion
● Coercion occurs when the influence agent:
a) Delivers a believable threat of significant physical or emotional harm to those who
refuse the directive
b) Deprives the individual of some measure of freedom or autonomy
c) Attempts to induce the individual to act contrary to her preferences
Propaganda
● Characteristics of propaganda:
1. Refers to instances in which a group has near or total control over the transmission
of information and dissent is prohibited or forcibly discouraged (for example: Hitler’s
Germany, North Korea).
2. Propaganda is always deceptive, presenting only one sliver of the facts: the one
propagandists want people to hear.
3. Propaganda necessarily involves the media, both the mass and social media.
4. The source of a message designed to appeal to masses of individuals is frequently
obscured, deliberately hidden, of unknown provenance.
5. Propaganda has come to acquire a negative connotation: it is associated with our
enemies.
Manipulation
● A persuasion technique that occurs when a communicator hides his or her true persuasive
goals, hoping to mislead the recipient by delivering an overt message that disguises its true
intent.
, ● All persuasion is not manipulative: a persuader whose motives are honest and transparent is
not employing manipulation.
Three different persuasive effects:
1. Shaping → attitudes and behavior shaped by manipulative ads.
2. Reinforcing → many persuasive communicators are not designed to convert people, but
rather to reinforce a position they already hold.
3. Changing responses → exerting psychological effects: changing attitudes and behavior.
Conclusions
● Persuasion is one of the forces that make us human, with its emphasis on language,
cognizance of others’ attitudes, and psychological shaping of messages to fit the target’s
attributes, for good but also malevolent ends.
● One of the vexing aspects of the definition of persuasion is the emphasis on the intentional
component of persuasion, as opposed to other forms of social influence, where intent is less
significant.
● A key aspect of persuasion is self-persuasion: communicators do not change people’s minds;
people decide to alter their own attitudes or to resist persuasion.
● Social influence can be viewed as a continuum, with coercion lying on one end and
persuasion at the other.
● Persuasion helps form, reinforce, and change attitudes.
Chapter 3 - Historical, Scientific, and Ethical Foundations
The first persuasion theorist
● Aristotle proceeded to argue that persuasion had three main ingredients:
○ Ethos (= the nature of the communicator)
○ Pathos (= the emotional state of the audience)
○ Logos (= message arguments)
● He also recognized that speakers had to adapt to their audiences by considering in their
speeches those factors that were most persuasive to an audience member.
Origins of the social scientific approach
● For the first time, something mental and amorphous, like an attitude, could be measured
with the new techniques of social science.
● From a historical perspective, the distinctive element of the persuasion approach that began
in the mid-twentieth century and continues today is its empirical foundation. Researchers
devise scientific theories, tease out hypothese, and dream up ways of testing them in real-
world settings.
The contemporary study of persuasion
● Researchers study persuasion in two ways:
1) They conduct experiments, or controlled studies that take place in artificial settings.
, 2) They conduct surveys: questionnaire studies that examine the relationship between
one factor and another.
Persuasion and ethics
● Is the need to influence incompatible with the ethical treatment of human beings?
● Plato: regarded truth as “the only reality in life” and was offended by persuasive
communication.
● Immanuel Kant: would view persuasion as immoral for a different reason: in his view, it uses
people, treating them as means to the persuader’s end, not as valued ends in themselves.
● Persuasion can be used for a host of good or bad purposes, with ethical and unethical
intentions.
Normative theories of ethics
● Normative theories prescribe, suggesting what people ought to do, in light of moral
philosophy and a vision of the good life. 2 classical normative perspectives with important
implications for persuasion are:
1) Utilitarianism → offers a series of common-sense solutions to moral dilemmas:
emphasizes utility or consequences.
a) Contains an elaborate set of postulates that can help people decide whether
particular actions are morally justified.
b) The moral act is the one that promotes the greatest good for the greatest
number of people.
c) Critique: it places consequences ahead of other considerations, such as
fairness and truth. There are instances in which something can be wrong,
even though it leads to positive consequences.
2) Kant’s deontological theory → emphasizes moral duties, universal obligations, and
according respect to individuals as ends in and of themselves.
a) The moral value of an act derives not from the consequences it produces,
but in the intention from which the act is performed.
b) Critique: it’s rigidity. It does not allow for exceptions that ought to be made
in particular situations.
Conclusions
● Aristotle, the first scholar of persuasion, argued that persuasion has virtues. He coupled his
persuasion theorizing with a healthy respect for ethics.
● The social science approach focuses on the development of theories, specific hypotheses,
and research methods to test hypotheses in social settings. At heart are questions about the
whys and wherefores.
● At the heart of persuasion are ethical dilemmas, there is ethical and unethical persuasion.
Different normative or prescriptive theories have been developed.
Chapter 4 - Attitudes
The concept of attitude
