Bonus

• Which Filipino Dota 2 player was banned from

playing in a tournament China after saying “ching
chong” in a match against a Chinese team?
• Bonito flakes is a vital ingredient of which Asian
cuisine?
• Which Filipino player hold the record of scoring
the most points in a single quarter (37 points) in
the PBA?
• What’s the perfect date?
Jim West/Alamy Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display
 Persuasion

• Process by which a message induces change in

beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors

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 What Paths Lead to Persuasion?

• Central Route
– Occurs when interested people focus on the
arguments and respond with favorable thoughts
• Peripheral Route
– Occurs when people are influenced by incidental
cues, such as a speaker’s attractiveness
– Focuses on cues that trigger automatic acceptance
without much thinking

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 What Paths Lead to Persuasion?

• Different Paths for Different Purposes

– Peripheral route
• Superficial and temporary attitude change
– Central route
• More durable and more likely to influence behavior

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Central and Peripheral
Routes to Persuasion

The Hurdles of the Persuasion Process

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 What Are the Elements of
Persuasion?
• Who Says? The Communicator
– Credibility
• Believability
– Sleeper effect
» Delayed impact of a message that occurs when an initially
discounted message becomes effective, as we remember
the message but forget the reason for discounting it

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 What Are the Elements of
Persuasion?
• Who Says? The Communicator
– Credibility
• Perceived expertise
– Speaking Style: Speak confidently and fluently
• Perceived trustworthiness
– Eye contact
– Arguing against own self-interest
– Speak quickly

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• Who Says? The Communicator
– Attractiveness and Liking
• Physical attractiveness
• Similarity

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 What Are the Elements of
Persuasion?
• What Is Said? The Message Content
– Reason versus Emotion
• Effect of good feelings
• Effect of arousing fear

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• What Is Said? The Message Content
• Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
– Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request
to comply later with a larger request
• Low-ball technique
– Tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who
agree to an initial request will often still comply when the
requester ups the ante
» Used by some car dealers

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• What Is Said? The Message Content
– One-sided versus two-sided appeals
• Which one is more effective?
– Depends on whether the audience already agrees with the
message; if the audience is unaware of opposing arguments, it
is unlikely later to consider the opposition

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• What Is Said? The Message Content
– Primacy versus recency
• Primacy effect
– Other things being equal, information presented first usually
has the most influence
• Recency effect
– Information presented last sometimes has the most influence.
Recency effects are less common than primacy effects

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• How Is It Said? The Channel of
Communication
– Active experience or passive reception?
• Active experience strengthens attitudes
• Repetition and rhyming of a statement serves to
increase its fluency and believability

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• How Is It Said? The Channel of
Communication
– Personal versus media influence
• Media influence: The two-step flow
– Process by which media influence often occurs through
opinion leaders, who in turn influence others

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• How Is It Said? The Channel of
Communication
– Personal versus media influence
• Comparing media
– The more lifelike the medium, the more persuasive its
message

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• To Whom Is It Said? The Audience
– How old are they?
• Life cycle explanation
– Attitudes change as people grow older
• Generational explanation
– Attitudes do not change; older people largely hold onto the
attitudes they adopted when they were young

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• To Whom Is It Said? The Audience
– What are they thinking?
• Forewarned is forearmed—If you care enough to
counterargue
• Distraction disarms counterarguing
– Words can promote candidate/product
– Visual images keep us occupied so we don’t analyze the words

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What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
• To Whom Is It Said? The Audience
– What are they thinking?
• Uninvolved audiences use peripheral cues
– Ways to stimulate people’s thinking
» Use rhetorical questions
» Present multiple speakers
» Make people feel responsible
» Repeat the message
» Get people’s undistracted attention

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 How Can Persuasion Be Resisted?

• Strengthening Personal Commitment

– Challenging beliefs
– Developing counterarguments
• Attitude inoculation
– Exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that
when stronger attacks come, they will have refutations
available

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 How Can Persuasion Be Resisted?

• Real-Life Applications: Inoculation Programs

– Inoculating children against:
• Peer pressure to smoke
• The influence of advertising

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 How Can Persuasion Be Resisted?

• Prepare others to counter persuasive appeals

• An ineffective appeal can be worse than none
• A way to strengthen existing attitudes is to
weakly challenge them

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