The Art & The Science



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¡Can you think of times when the media or attractive communicator changed your mind about
something?
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¡PERSUASION vs. COERCION
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¡Persuasion: a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their
attitudes or behavior regarding an issue through transmission of a message, in an atmosphere of
free choice.
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(Perloff, 2008)

¡Persuasion is a symbolic process
¡Persuasion involves an attempt to influence
¡People persuade themselves
¡Persuasion involves the transmission of a message
¡Persuasion requires free choice
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¡Coercion: a technique for forcing people to act as the coercer wants them to act, and presumably
contrary to their own preferences. It typically employs a threat of some horrible consequence if
the person does not do what the coercer demands.
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(Perloff, 2008)

¡Coercion and persuasion are not polar opposites. They are better viewed as lying along a continuum
of social influence. They are overlapping concepts.
¡
Persuasion:
• Advertising
• Loved one’s antidrug appeal
• Health public service messages
• Political campaigns
• Sales and telemarketing
• Friend’s attempt to influence another’s opinion of something
Coercion:
• Threatening messages
• Employer’s directives
• Interrogation
• Ban of smoking
• Enforcement of seat belt laws
• Communication in dangerously abusive relationship
persuasion
coercion
Nature of psychological threat
Ability to do otherwise
Perception of free choice

persuasion
coercion
Nature of psychological threat
Ability to do otherwise
Perception of free choice
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http://www.heavensgate.com/

¡Attitude SHAPING
§stimulating favorable impressions
▪Unknown political candidates; new brand; new company; first date, etc.
¡Attitude REINFORCING
§making impressions more salient
▪Political campaigns; reinforcing the image of the brand, etc.
¡Attitude CHANGING
§Change of “direction”
▪Antismoking campaign, African-American Civil Rights Movement, etc.

¡“Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it."
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¡Argued that both had a point:
¡ Plato - the truth is  important.
¡ Sophists - persuasive communication is a useful and important tool.
¡
¡Ethos = the nature of communicator
¡Pathos = emotional state of audience
¡Logos = message arguments
¡
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¡ WRITE DOWN:
¡What are the factors of ethical persuasion?
¡
¡Write down three examples of ethical persuasive communication and unethical persuasive
communication.

¡Kant – “treat other as ends, not as means“
¡
¡Utilitarianism – actions should be judged based on whether they produce more good than evil.
¡
Gandhi
Machiavelli
“evil means produce evil ends”
“the ends justify the means”
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¡Persuasion is profoundly civilizing influence. Of course, persuasion is not always nice. It can be
mean, ugly and untruthful.
¡
¡ BUT WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR DECISIONS WE MAKE!
EDUCATION

¡Likert scale
¡Semantic differential
¡Error choice technique
¡

¡An one-dimensional scale that consists of attitude-related statements and asks individuals to
indicate their agreement/disagreement with each statement along a numerical scale
¡
Stan is the best teacher in the world.
Strongly agree
Somewhat agree
Neutral
Somewhat disagree
Somewhat disagree

1)Generate more questions than you need
2)Get a group of people to score the questionnaire
3)Sum the scores for all items
4)Calculate the intercorrelations between all pairs of items
5)Reject questions that have a low correlation with the overall score
6)For each item, calculate the t-value. Reject questions with lower t-values (higher t-values show
questions with higher discrimination).
¡

¡Osgood, Suci, Tannenbaum (1957)
¡Respondents rate the attitude object on a number of (typically) 7-point bipolar scales that are
end-anchored by evaluative adjective pairs
¡(connotative meaning of words (freedom, marriage); ideas (capitalism); products (cell phones);
brands (Volvo); etc…)
good
harmful
kind
cruel
beneficial
dishonest
bad
honest
Barack Obama

¡Attitudes can be indirectly measured by the bias shown in answering a mixture of factual and
non-factual questions concerning a given topic
¡Respondents think it is a knowledge test
The average IQ of black people is:
A: 87%
B: 113%
The average IQ of Japanese people is:
A: 85%
B: 115%

¡Persuasion
¡Coercion
¡Persuasive communication effects
¡Historical perspective
¡Ethics
¡Attitude measurement
¡