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Summary Persuasive Texts: Research and Design
Summary of all key questions for the Persuasive Communication exam with extra information about all important things in the reader
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KEY QUESTIONS SUMMARYChapter 1. Convincing documents
● What is persuasion?
“Persuasion is a successful intentional effort at influencing another’s mental state through
communication in a circumstance in which the persuade has some measure of freedom.”
(O’Keefe)
Important about this definition:
1. The word intentional: it is not persuasion when you changed someone’s opinion
unintentionally
2. Keefe talks about mental state instead of behaviour. This is because persuasion goes via
communication: the transfer of information. First information transfer, then attitude, then
maybe new behaviour. Communication does not have a direct effect on behaviour.
3. Persuasion only took place if the persuade had an alternative (to not persuade).
“Persuasive documents are designed with the aim of influencing readers’ attitudes through
the transfer of information, with the readers having a certain degree of freedom.”
The difference between persuasion and persuasive documents: here the word ‘successful’ is
missing. Not all persuasive documents are successful (advertisements are not always read).
But they are still persuasive documents since the intention was to influence the reader.
● What is the difference between persuasive and informative documents?
The writer’s intention is important. If a writer wants to inform people he writes an
informative document, if the writer wants to persuade you he writes an persuasive
document. When people know that the text they read was written to influence them, they
are aware that an attempt is being made to change their attitudes, which will encourage
them to defend their present position.
Informative documents seem to be more read from the communication principle. This
principle states that four criteria must be met:
1. Clarity
2. Honesty
3. Efficiency
4. Relevance
Readers of informative documents expect the writer to present all information including
those four criteria. Readers of persuasive documents don’t expect this in the text since they
,thing the writer suppresses (onderdrukt) the negative arguments and embellishes
(beautifies, verfraait) the positive arguments.
Directive vs. non-directive communication:
In this context, the distinction between directive and non-directive communication is
important. Whereas directive communication is intended to make the target group draw a
certain conclusion, non-directive communication does not have this intention to steer a
group of people towards a conclusion. Therefore, non-directive communication is
informative and directive communication is persuasive. BUT... sometimes it is doubtful if
non-directive communication is indeed non-directive (think about information about
smoking: although a text does not literally states it is bad, the writer does want this to get
across).
● What four instruments are available to a government when they want to influence
behavior?
There’s an important difference between the government and commercial organizations: the
changing tool in addition to communication the government has is legislation.
The four instruments available to a government when they want to influence behavior:
1. Financial instruments (tax benefits when buying a hybrid car);
2. Private (privaat) law instruments (allowing the trade in manure permits:
mest vergunning)
3. Direct regulation (via legislation)
4. Social regulation (via public information)
→ What is the role of ‘enforcement burden’ and ‘personal responsibility’ in the choice between
these measures?
The WWR (Dutch scientific council for government policy) distinguishes two dimensions:
- “Enforcement burden”
- “Personal responsibility”
If the government decides to adopt laws or regulations, the government must be prepared to
enforce them (when smoking was prohibited in Dutch bars, the government had to employ
inspectors at great cost to monitor the observance of the ban) = enforcement burden. This comes
with direct regulation. The social regulation came when the government launched a campaign to
encourage people to stop smoking in the house. This instrument has no enforcement burden but
appeals to citizin’s personal responsibility. Thus: If the instrument allows less personal responsibility,
the enforcement burden increases and vice versa.
,→ How does urgency of the situation influence the choice between these measures?
Two situations: very urgent and less urgent
“Very urgent situations”
The choice for either direct or social regulation depends on the nature of the situation. The
WRR distinguishes “very urgent situations” from “less urgent situations”. In “very urgent
situations” the risk is so high that the government uses direct regulation because this is in
principle more effective to enforce desired behavior than social regulation. The severity
(ernst) of the risk would justify the high enforcement burden.
→ What dimensions play a role in not so urgent situations?
“Less urgent situations”
In less urgent situations the government can choose between several instruments, with the
following three dimensions playing a role:
1. Measurability of the behavior. How easy, or difficult, can a government measure if
people abide by the rules? The easier to ascertain (vaststellen) that people do so, the
lower the enforcement burden and vice versa.
2. Structure of the target group. Is the group small and easy to identify (e.g. light
enforcement burden) or large and heterogeneous (high enforcement burden)?
3. Costs for the target group. The higher the people in the target group perceive the
costs to be, the less they will be inclined to adopt the desired behavior (‘costs’ can be
money, comfort, physical or mental problems, etc.).
These three dimensions must be taken into account when choosing between direct or social
regulation.
→ When should communication be considered as a way to influence behaviour?
In the area of health education, communication succeeds actually best in influencing behavior. Noar
(2006) concludes that campaigns can influence people’s knowledge, attitudes and even behavior.
However, the behavioral effects are very small. Noar is nevertheless optimistic about the feasibility
(haalbaarheid) of communication campaigns. This is based on two factors:
● The scope of the campaigns: the campaigns in the analyses used mass media, which means
their messages were perceived by many people;
● Differences in quality of the campaigns: campaigns that were carefully pretested, developed
on the basis of theoretical considerations and put together with much thought showed much
greater effects on knowledge than campaigns that were put together without much thought.
, ● What is meant by ‘effect size’?
A significant difference does not mean that the one version is convincing and the other is not. A
significant difference means that one version evokes a slightly more positive attitude than the other.
Here, the concept of ‘effect-size’ is relevant because significant effects can be small, modest or large.
The greater the effect, the greater the practical relevance. This is because greater significant
differences lead to a large difference in persuasiveness. Small significant effects lead to very modest
differences.
→ What is the take home message of the authors about the effect-size of communication
research?
The limited influence of message properties. You have to look at how big the effect size is to know
how great the practical relevance is.
Chapter 2. Determinants of behavior
Automatic behavior: Examples of automatisms: choosing what we drink during breakfast,
fastening your seatbelt, driving a specific route to your destination, etc. The external stimuli
control our internal psychological processes without us being aware of this control.
● What is priming?
= Activating concepts or stereotypes by confronting people with words (think about the
experiments from page 21: Bargh (1996) showed test subjects the faces of young
afro-americans on a computer screen for such aa short time that the subject could not
consciously perceive them: they did not know what they saw. Nevertheless, they acted more
hostile that subjects who had not been primed.)
Besides the behavior of others, there is a second trigger of automatic behavior: automatic
activation of goals.
●
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