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Learning Objectives
- Define and explain persuasion.
- Explain the three theories of persuasion discussed in the text: social judgment theory, cognitive dissonance theory, and the elaboration likelihood model.
People are bombarded by persuasive messages in today’s world, so thinking about how to create persuasive messages effectively is very important for modern public speakers. A century (or even half a century) ago, public speakers had to contend only with the words printed on paper for attracting and holding an audience’s attention. Today, public speakers must contend with laptops, netbooks, iPads, smartphones, billboards, television sets, and many other tools that can send a range of persuasive messages immediately to a target audience.
What Is Persuasion?
We made it to the part in the class that most students are excited about. The persuasive speech! There are similarities and important differences between the informative and persuasive speaking styles. This reading will highlight our purpose of persuasive speaking.
To begin though, we need to define persuasion. You are used to experiencing persuasion in many forms, and may have an easy time identifying examples of persuasion, but can you explain how persuasion works? Osborn and Osborn define persuasion this way: “the art of convincing others to give favorable attention to our point of view.”[1] There are two components that make this definition a useful one. First, it acknowledges the artfulness, or skill, required to persuade others. Persuasion does not normally just happen. Rather it is planned and executed in a thoughtful manner. Second, this definition delineates the end goal of persuasion—to convince others to think favorably of our point of view. Persuasion “encompasses a wide range of communication activities, including advertising, marketing, sales, political campaigns, and interpersonal relations.”[2] Because of its widespread utility, persuasion is a pervasive part of our everyday lives.
Persuasive versus Informative Speaking
Informative (or informational) and persuasive speaking are related, but distinct, types of speeches. The difference between the two lies in the speaker’s end goal and what the speaker wants the audience to leave with.
Informative speeches are probably the most prevalent variety of speech. The goal is always to supply information and facts to the audience. This information can come in the form of statistics, facts, or other forms of evidence. Informational speeches do not tell people what to do with the information; their goal is for the audience to have and understand the information. Academic lectures are often informational speeches because the professor is attempting to present facts so the students can understand them.
Like informational speeches, persuasive speeches use information. However, persuasive speeches are designed for the audience to not only hear and understand the information but to use it to be convinced of a viewpoint. The end goal of a persuasive speech is not for the audience to have information, but rather for them to have a certain view or do something specific with the information provided. Persuasive speeches may use some of the same techniques as informational speeches but also will use persuasive strategies to convince and motivate the audience. A sales pitch is one example of a persuasive speech.
Goals of Persuasive Speaking
We typically use persuasive speaking to change or reinforce someone’s attitudes, values, beliefs, and/or behaviors.
Attitude: What do you like or dislike? Attitudes encompass our thoughts and emotions. For instance, if I think running is fun and I feel good when I do it, I am more likely to do it. Attitudes will uncover an individual’s general predisposition toward something as being good or bad, right or wrong, or negative or positive.
Beliefs: What convictions (or assumptions) do you hold? Beliefs are ideas we hold to be true. They may be positions that an individual holds as true or false without positive knowledge or proof. Beliefs can be spiritual, moral, political, or social, just to name a few. You may believe that lying is bad and therefore you refrain from it or feel bad when you do it. While beliefs may not be based on “proof,” they are typically deeply held and influence our attitudes and behaviors in powerful ways.
Value: What drives you? Values are an individual’s judgment of what is important in life. This may include the usefulness or with of something. You may value courage or respect or kindness. We can value a college education or technology or freedom. Values, as a general concept, are fairly ambiguous and tend to be very lofty ideas.
Behaviors: Behaviors, the ways in which someone acts, come in a wide range of forms. Speeches encouraging audiences to vote for a candidate, sign a petition opposing a tuition increase, or adopt a puppy are behavior-oriented persuasive speeches.
Ultimately, our attitudes, beliefs, and values motivate us to engage in a range of behaviors. For example, if you value technology, you are more likely to seek out new technology or software on your own. On the contrary, if you do not value technology, you are less likely to seek out new technology or software unless someone, or some circumstance, requires you to.
Why Persuasion Matters
When you study and understand persuasion, you will be more successful at persuading others. Do you want to persuade your boss you deserve a raise? Do you want to convince your client to purchase a service? Do you want to change the social landscape of a community? If you want to be a persuasive public speaker, then you need to have a working understanding of how persuasion functions.
When people understand persuasion, they will be better consumers of information. We live in a society where numerous message sources are constantly fighting for our attention and many of those messages are purposeful false. Unfortunately, most people just let messages wash over them like a wave, making little effort to understand or analyze them. As a result, they are more likely to fall for half-truths, illogical arguments, and lies. When you start to understand persuasion, you will have the skill set to actually pick apart the messages being sent to you and see why some of them are good and others are simply not.
Psychology of Persuasion
Understanding how people are persuaded is very important to the discussion of public speaking. Thankfully, a number of researchers have created theories that help explain why people are persuaded. While there are numerous theories that help to explain persuasion, we are only going to examine three here: social judgment theory, cognitive dissonance theory, and the elaboration likelihood model.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Cognitive dissonance is an aversive motivational state that occurs when an individual entertains two or more contradictory attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors simultaneously. For example, maybe you know you should be working on your speech, but you really want to go to a movie with a friend. In this case, practicing your speech and going to the movie are two cognitions that are inconsistent with one another. These cognitions may cause anxiety or discomfort. The goal of persuasion is to induce enough dissonance in listeners that they will want to change their attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors.
Anxiety or discomfort caused by dissonance is typically resolved in one of three ways:
Change: The listener can change beliefs or behaviors to align with one another. The smoker may quit smoking or they may decide that smoking is not harmful and continue to smoke. Either way, they have relieves the anxiety of contradictory beliefs and behaviors.
Acquiring new information: If the listener acquires new information that confirms or contradicts a belief, the anxiety may be reduced. For instance, if the smoker reads a study that indicates that smoking is not harmful, they can continue to smoke and not feel disturbed by it.
Perception shift: Typically anxiety can be reduced by rationalizing our decisions. If the smoker decides that living in the moment and experiencing the pleasure of smoking is worth a potential far-off event, they may continue to smoke rationalizing that life is short and they should enjoy it.
When considering cognitive dissonance as a speaker, you must first create dissonance in your listeners. You want to make them uncomfortable with their beliefs or behaviors. Beware of making them too uncomfortable though. Listeners will tune you out if you make them too anxious. Once you have created dissonance, you can then offer new information to change perceptions and encourage behaviors changes in the direction you are seeking.
Elaboration Likelihood Model
When I was in graduate school, my computer got attacked with the Michelangelo virus. In short, when I turned on my computer on Michelangelo’s birthday, it wiped out everything on my computer. At least that’s what they told me at the computer repair store. I had spent a month of my life researching and writing my persuasion paper and it was gone in an instant. In a moment of what can best be described as a graduate school freak out, I went to the store to buy a new computer. I looked at the salesperson and said, “Quick, show me which computer to buy.” He pointed at one, I bought it, and went home and started writing.
Was I persuaded to buy a computer by the salesperson? I bought one so clearly, I was persuaded, right? Which persuasion technique did he use? Could this even count as an act of persuasion? Sometimes, we just want to decide without putting too much thought into it. You could argue that I didn’t put any thought into it. I didn’t have time to research; I didn’t have the mental capacity to think about which computer was best for me. I trusted the decision to the person in the computer store–he was the one in the red shirt after all. He worked there so he must know about computers.
The next time I bought a computer, I wasn’t in such a stressful situation. I took my time and shopped around. I talked to multiple salespeople, and I read reviews. I even made a spreadsheet of the features and the prices. I put a lot of thought into picking the right computer. Was I any more or less persuaded to buy? After all, in both cases, I bought a computer.
Petty and Cacioppo developed the Elaboration Likelihood Model as a way to explain how persuasion works in different scenarios–particularly, how sometimes we think a lot about our decisions and how sometimes we look for other ways to be persuaded. They said we go on different persuasion routes. When we are thinking (cognitive elaboration) about our decision, they would say, we are taking the central route. We take this thinking route when there is personal involvement and personal relevance. When we are not thinking–because of the situation, our mood, our inability to understand, or the fact that it is not a big decision for us– they would say we are taking the peripheral route. The peripheral route can be thought of as deciding based on anything other than deep thought. In my case, my decision was made based on the authority of the person.
Which of the computers do you think I would likely suggest to a friend–the one bought fast because it was recommended or the one bought after much research? Which computer did I think was the best computer? If you guessed the one that I shopped around for, you would be right. That is the computer I would most likely believe was the best one and that is the one I would most likely recommend to a friend. It makes sense. When we think about our decisions, persuasion is more long-lasting, we are more committed to the decision, and we are more likely to tell others.
What does any of this have to do with you writing a persuasion speech? Knowing that people are persuaded differently can help you design your persuasive arguments. Deciding whether you are going for thoughtful or peripheral persuasion is key.
I used to work for a non-profit and did a lot of fundraising speeches. If I wanted people to be persuaded to give money and have a long-term emotional and financial commitment to the organization, it made sense to persuade them via the central (thinking) route. That meant, I had to tell them what we did and give them facts and details about our organization. I had to build trust and I had to help them believe in the cause.
By contrast, my son was in marching band so there was always a fundraiser where we sold overpriced candy to our friends to support his upcoming trip. The persuasion I used was usually some version of, “My son is selling candy bars for his upcoming band trip, would you help support him.” There was not a lot of thinking when people were buying these candy bars. They were buying because they liked my son, they knew me, or because I bought cookies from their daughter for her fundraiser. This was peripheral persuasion one candy bar at a time.
Elaboration Likelihood Model–What’s the Big Idea?
- If you want your persuasion to be long-lasting, persuade them via the central route. Offer facts, data, and solid information
- If you want a quick persuasion where they don’t put much thought into it or if your audience is not very knowledgeable, tired, or unmotivated, persuade them by the peripheral route.
Social Judgment Theory
I have a colleague that travels around the country speaking on college campuses and at farmer’s markets telling people why they should not eat meat. He finds the eating of meat completely unethical.
I’ve noticed that when it comes to meat-eating, people have strong opinions on either side. Think about it, would you eat a horse? dog? goat? rabbit? Some of you have grown up eating meat all your lives and consider it a tasty and healthy way to eat. For others of you, the very thought of eating any animal product seems cruel. Most reading this will fall somewhere in between. Look at the chart below and decide, which of the category best describes you.
| Eats all meat—horse, goat, dog, lamb, beef, pork, chicken, rabbit, fish | Carnivore Technically Omnivore unless you only eat meat. |
| Eats many types of meat–goat, lamb, beef, pork, chicken, rabbit, fish | |
| Eats many types of meat–deer, beef, pork, chicken, fish | |
| Eats domestic meat— beef, pork, chicken, fish | |
| Eats some meat–chicken, fish | Flexitarian |
| Eats fish, eggs, and dairy | Pescatarian |
| Eats eggs | Ovo-vegetarians |
| Eats no meat or eggs but consume dairy | Lacto-vegetarian |
| Eats no meat or eggs but consume honey | Beegan |
| Eats no animal products at all | Vegan |
As you looked at the list there were some categories you found acceptable, and some you did not. In all honesty, most of you did not think that I was going to suggest eating dogs and horses. When you saw that on the list, most of you didn’t think of those as tasty options. Social Judgement Theory proposed by Sherif, Sherif, and Nebergall suggests that on any topic from diet to abortion and gun control to movie choices, we have an idea of what we like and are willing to accept and what is out of the question. The researchers studied human judgment to understand when persuasive messages are likely to succeed, and it comes down to how we fit into the ranges and how closely that message is to what we already believe. Each of us has a favorite position on any given topic, they call that the anchor position. As you looked on the chart and picked the category that best describes you, you found your anchor position. On the list, you likely found several categories that you would be willing to accept and maybe several categories you reject entirely.
Let’s go back to a colleague of mine, remember, the one who speaks on campuses about veganism. When he looks at this chart, the only position he is willing to accept is to eat no animal products at all. The researchers would say that he is ego-involved because he has a large group of ideas he rejects. How hard would it be to get him to try eating a dog? a goat? an egg? As you can imagine, if I suggest that he tries eating goat, he will think that position is too extreme and that as individuals we are far apart in what we believe. On the other hand, I might be able to nudge him up the continuum a little. Maybe, I could convince him to try honey. After all, no bees were harmed from making honey and it does not contain any meat. People with extreme views can be moved, but only in small increments. If I want the persuasion to work, I might be able to persuade him to try honey.
Now, think of a friend you might know who hunts, and fishes, and eats deer, rabbit, and squirrel. This friend of yours likes trying different types of jerky-like elk and moose. How hard would it be to convince him to try eating a dog? How about a goat? Since your friend has a large range of ideas he already accepts, adding one more animal to the list of things he eats might not be that hard. He would be much more likely to try a dog than would my vegan friend. It doesn’t matter how good we are at persuading as much as how close that persuasion is to what they already believe.
In any audience, you will have people all up and down the spectrum of beliefs. It is your responsibility to try to find out as much as you can about your audience before your speech, so you will know generally where they are. You will have more luck persuading people if you try to move them a little as opposed to move them a lot. Every semester, a vegan group comes to the University of Arkansas campus and passes out flyers promoting a vegan lifestyle. I’ve noticed their messages have slowly changed from meat is murder and you should never eat meat because production is hard on the environment to a more palatable message to try eliminating meat one day a week. Maybe these vegans learned about Social Judgement Theory or maybe they learned by trial and error that moving someone from one extreme to the next is an unlikely feat.
Alexander Edwards Coppock did his dissertation looking at small changes in political opinions, he found the following:
- When confronted with persuasive messages, individuals update their views in the direction of information. This means, if you give them good information, they are likely to be persuaded by it.
- People change their minds about political issues in small increments. Like mentioned before, they are more likely to move in small increments.
- Persuasion in the direction of information occurs regardless of background characteristics, initial beliefs, or ideological position. Translation, good information can be very persuasive regardless of what they believed before.
- These changes in political attitudes, in most cases, lasted at least 10 days. In other words, good facts help people to change their attitudes and that information can stick.
In summary, if you provide people information and attempt to persuade them in small increments regardless of their prior beliefs, they can change their political attitude and that change will stick.
Social Judgement Theory–What’s the Big Idea?
- People have preexisting beliefs on topics. Some people have many variations they are willing to accept, and other people are very set in their ways and will only tolerate a narrow set of beliefs.
- It is nearly impossible to get people to move from one extreme to the next. It is better to get them to move their position a little.
- If you try to move people with narrow views, they will likely reject your ideas and think you are too extreme.
- People who have a wide variance of beliefs are more open-minded to change as long as you don’t try to move them too far from their anchor position.
Michael Austin Believes We Should Encourage Open Discussion
Small acts of persuasion matter, because there is much less distance between people’s beliefs than we often suppose. We easily confuse the distance between people’s political positions with the intensity of their convictions about them. It is entirely possible for people to become sharply divided, even hostile, over relatively minor disagreements. Americans have fought epic political battles over things like baking wedding cakes and kneeling during the national anthem. And we once fought a shooting war over a whiskey tax of ten cents per gallon. The ferocity of these battles has nothing to do with the actual distance between different positions, which, when compared to the entire range of opinions possible in the world, is almost negligible.
None of this means that we can persuade our opponents easily. Persuading people to change their minds is excruciatingly difficult. It doesn’t always work, and it rarely works the way we think it will. But it does work, and the fact that it works makes it possible for us to have a democracy.
― We Must Not Be Enemies: Restoring America’s Civic
Is it personal?
The first reason people are motivated to take the central route or use high elaboration when listening to a persuasive message involves personal relevance and involvement. Personal relevance refers to whether the audience member feels that he or she is actually directly affected by the speech topic. For example, if someone is listening to a speech on why cigarette smoking is harmful, and that listener has never smoked cigarettes, he or she may think the speech topic simply isn’t relevant. Obviously, as a speaker, you should always think about how your topic is relevant to your listeners and make sure to drive this home throughout your speech. Personal involvement, on the other hand, asks whether the individual is actively engaged with the issue at hand: sends letters of support, gives speeches on the topic, has a bumper sticker, and so forth. If an audience member is an advocate who is constantly denouncing tobacco companies for the harm they do to society, then he or she would be highly involved (i.e., would engage in high elaboration) in a speech that attempts to persuade listeners that smoking is harmful.
Am I accountable?
The second condition under which people are likely to process information using the central route is when they feel that they will be held accountable for the information after the fact. With accountability, there is the perception that someone, or a group of people, will be watching to see if the receiver remembers the information later on. Think about what you do as a student when an instructor says “This will be on the test.” You immediately begin to centrally process the message.
Personal Responsibility
When people feel that they are going to be held responsible, without a clear external accounting, for the evaluation of a message or the outcome of a message, they are more likely to critically think through the message using the central route. For example, maybe you’re asked to evaluate fellow students in your public speaking class. Research has shown that if only one or two students are asked to evaluate any one speaker at a time, the quality of the evaluations for that speaker will be better than if everyone in the class is asked to evaluate every speaker. When people feel that their evaluation is important, they take more responsibility and therefore are more critical of the message delivered.
Incongruent Information
Some people are motivated to centrally process information when it does not adhere to their own ideas. Maybe you’re a highly progressive liberal, and one of your peers delivers a speech on the importance of the Tea Party movement in American politics. The information presented during the speech will most likely be in direct contrast to your personal ideology, which causes incongruence because the Tea Party ideology is opposed to a progressive liberal ideology. As such, you are more likely to pay attention to the speech, specifically looking for flaws in the speaker’s argument.
While there are many theories of persuasion that can shed light on why people are persuaded, these two give us a solid foundation to understand what we are up against as speakers. We must understand where our audience is, where we want them to be, and what will motivate them to get there.
Key Takeaways
- Persuasion is the use of verbal and nonverbal messages to get a person to behave in a manner or embrace a point of view related to values, attitudes, and beliefs that he or she would not have done otherwise. Studying persuasion is important today because it helps us become more persuasive individuals, become more observant of others’ persuasive attempts, and have a more complete understanding of the world around us.
- The Elaboration Likelihood Model assumes that people are persuaded via a thinking (central) or nonthinking (peripheral) route.
- Social judgment theory says that persuaders need to be aware of an audience’s latitudes of acceptance, noncommitment, and rejection in order to effectively persuade an audience. Second, cognitive dissonance theory reasons that people do not like holding to ideas in their heads that are contrary and will do what is necessary to get rid of the dissonance caused by the two contrary ideas. Lastly, the elaboration likelihood model posits that persuaders should attempt to get receivers to think about the arguments being made (going through the central route) rather than having receivers pay attention to nonargument related aspects of the speech.
References
Coppock, A. E. (2016). Positive, small, homogeneous, and durable: Political persuasion in response to information. [Doctoral Dissertation, Columbian University]. Proquest https://doi.org/10.7916/D8J966CS Available https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8J966CS
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, & Company.
Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203–210.
Frankish, K. (1998). Virtual belief. In P. Carruthers & J. Boucher (Eds.), Language and thought (pp. 249–269). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Frymier, A. B., & Nadler, M. K. (2007). Persuasion: Integrating theory, research, and practice. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.
Perloff, R. M. (2003). The dynamics of persuasion: Communication and attitudes in the 21st Century (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 5–6.
Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123–205.
Sherif, M., & Hovland, C. I. (1961). Social judgment: Assimilation and contrast effects in communication and attitude change. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Sherif, C. W. & Sherif, M. (1976). Attitude as the individuals’ own categories: The social judgment-involvement approach to attitude and attitude change. Attitude, ego-involvement, and change. Greenwood Press.
