What is Persuasion? – Meaning & Components of Persuassion

Persuasion is a fact that represents the intersection of social thinking and social influence of everyday life. Persuaders try to influence our beliefs and attitudes for e.g.: we will vote for them, buy their products, do them favours, or otherwise behave as they want us to.

The Communicator

Communication is key to effective persuasion. People are persuaded by highly credible communicators than those with low credibility. There are two separate components of credibility, expertise and trustworthiness. Effective persuader presents the truth in unbiased manner.

Expertise

Expert sources are typically more persuasive than non-expert sources.

Trustworthiness

Regardless of expertise, it is important that a communicator be perceived as unbiased and trustworthy. One way that communicators can encourage this perception is to argue for positions that seem to be contrary to their self-interest.

Communicators are seen as especially trustworthy when they have little to gain from the particular stance they adopt, but as somewhat less trustworthy when they have incentives for making statements or when they stand to gain per­sonally from persuading others of their position.

Another factor that enhances perceptions of trustworthiness is multiple sources. When several people say the same thing, they are more persuasive than when a sin­gle person makes the same argument, presumably because several individuals are perceived to be less subject to a personal, idiosyncratic bias.

Liking

Because we try to make our cognitions consistent with our affect, it fol­lows that we are likely to change our attitudes to agree with those of the people we like. Also, we tend to be influenced more by those who are similar to us than by those who are different from us.

Reference Groups

We are also persuaded when a position is adopted by a group of people we like or identify with. Such groups are called reference groups.

Two reasons that reference groups are so effective in producing attitude change are liking and similarity. Messages from in-groups are also more persuasive because they are processed differently from messages from out-groups.

Derogating the Source

Communicator characteristics can not only enhance the persuasiveness of a communication, also be used to discredit a commu­nication. When faced with a communication that is inconsistent with our attitudes, we can reduce inconsistency by deciding that the source of the communication is unreliable or negative in some other way. This is called source derogation.

Attacking the source of the communication is an effective way to reduce the pressure produced by a discrepant communication.

The Communicator as a Peripheral Cue

People who dislike or do not trust a communicator often reject the message by attacking the source. But sometimes a communicator’s conclusion is accepted simply because it comes from an expert or from an otherwise favourably evaluated source, regardless of the arguments put forth.

The prediction is that communicator characteristics are often used as simple peripheral cues to persuasion when we cannot or are not motivated to process arguments carefully. When we engage in little cognitive effort, we know we can rely on a trusted communicator’s viewpoint, so we can avoid thinking the argument through ourselves.

The Communication

In addition to the communicator, the communication itself, i.e., its content is important. Counter attitudinal communications about attitudes are important to people in changing attitude.

Discrepancy

A major factor that influences the degree to which we are persuaded by a communication is how discrepant that communication is from our own position. Generally speaking, the greater the discrepancy, the greater the potential pressure to change. But extremely discrepant statements cause us to doubt the credibility of the source rather than to change our attitudes.

Strong versus Weak Arguments

Sometimes the arguments in a communication are strong and compelling, and sometimes they are weak and specious. People respond more favourably to strong arguments in a persuasive communication primarily when they are motivated to pay close attention and are able to think carefully about the arguments. Thus, the strength of arguments is not necessarily a crucial factor in how persuasive they are. The effects of strong arguments depend on whether people are involved in an attitude issue and process arguments systematically or heuristically.

• Repetition: It helps strong arguments because people process them more completely. But it may hurt weak arguments because it exposes their flaws or simply makes them tedious.
• Peripheral Cues and Message Characteristics: Peripheral cues are very important in determining attitude change.
• Audience: A message loaded with logical arguments and facts may prove highly persuasive to some people yet fall flat on its face with others. Few reasons are that
• People differ in their need for cognition.
• Some enjoy analysing issues.
• Few prefer not to spend much mental effort.

There are two basic routes to persuasion:

The central route to persuasion occurs when people think carefully and leads us to evaluate the merits of persuasive arguments carefully and thoughtfully.

The peripheral route to persuasion occurs when people do not scrutinize the message but leads us to respond to persuasive arguments on the basis of snap judgments.