 Persuasion

o Central route to persuasion: Focus on argument

 Think critically about the message, highly rational. Influenced by strength
and quality of arguments.
 Ads include stuff about products.
o Peripheral route to persuasion – Focuses on emotions or other cues besides argument.
 No info about products, just emotion.
 Requires less effort & less attention
 Uses rule of thumb (speaker seems honest, looks nice)
 As with celebrity, sex appeals, emotions
 What determines which route we use?
 Depends on whether target has ability & motivation to use central
route.
 Influenced by source, message and audience.
1. Source of Persuasion:
 Credibility: positive correlation with persuasion, competence and
trustworthiness
 Celebrity endorsements: self-interest may reduce credibility (neg
corr)
 Likeability: 2 components (BOTH positive correlations)
 Similarity (to you) & physical attractiveness
 Our personal involvement on issue:
 Focuses more on source (not message) if we’re not as involved.
2. Message:
 Primacy vs. recency effect – first of last information more important?
 Depends on timing of decisions
 Hear information from both sides & immediately decide is the
recency effect
 Fear-based messages –Scare tactics and graphic ads (Crystal meth)
 Early research (70’s, 80’s) showed no effect on persuasion
 NOW, it says that the evidence works under certain conditions:
o Strong argument (threat)
o Provide info on how to cope with the threat.
 Subliminal messages – words/pictures aren’t consciously perceived but
may influence attitudes.
 Distinguish between subliminal perception & persuasion
 Greenwald experiment: subjects listened to either subliminal
memory or self-esteem messages.
 Groups either told of actual message or told the opposite
o Neither message had effect on actual memory or self-
esteem.
 Murphy experiment – with Chinese characters – what were the
results? Participants enjoyed symbols they have seen subliminally
before.
3. Audience:
 Are there strong individual differences in persuadability? No.
  Most people are not consistently easy/hard to persuade.
 It is more context than personality.
 Forewarning & resistance:
 We’re more likely to resist persuasion if forewarned.
 Think of counterarguments
 Lifecycle and generational explaination for attitude change.
o more support for generational effect (political views)
o attitudes of older people are generally more stable
 near very end of lives, susceptible to attitude change.
o Decline in cognitive processing and resistance.
 Changeable in teens/early adulthood.
o Context is influential.
o Imprinting effect of major events during this time.

 Extreme Persuasion: CULTS.

 Jim Jones’ People’s Temple and Jonestown Massacre
 1978 mass suicide & Jones’ influence
 people’s temple with Jim Jones as leader moved from SF to S.
American Jungle
 Many explainations focus on Jones charisma
 But situational explainations too:
o Used foot-in-the-door phenomeon
 Required to give 10% income, then 25%, & then all
o Removed them from all social support (friends, family)
 Remote location, foreign country
 Set up ingroup/outgroup distinctions (people who tried to help
them)
 No one joins a “cult”, you join a religious organization with people
you really like.
 Using persuasion components to recruit:
o Source: new members often recruit by someone by they
know (& trust)
o Message: give consistent message of inclusion/support
o Audience: often young, attitudes no stabilized yet or other
vulnerable situations.