Theories of Persuasion, Essay Example

Theories of persuasion are used when trying to change people’s view of a situation by evaluating all employers. The main two are elaborate and cognitive theories: Elaborative-likelihood. Cognitive dissonance and social judgment theory. This article only elaborates on two of the three theories.

The Elaborative-likelihood model was developed how a message changes the attitude of the receiver. Its major assumptions are that people want to possess the correct attitudes and beliefs. Just like the angry citizens could not carefully every situation before they arrived to their resort to demonstrate. The second, the assumption is that one has to reach a compromise through paying attention to some facts than their own opinions (Festinger, 2007, p.120).

The Elaborative-likelihood theory approaches of persuasions include: central and peripheral routes. However, there exists a view that persuasion goes through careful evaluation of a persuasive speech and attention to associated cues that are peripheral to message content. Peripheral route evaluate things surrounding the message as well as the attractiveness surrounding that the message. It happened because of our nature as cognitive misers who look out for the easiest ways out of situations. The peripheral route may not favor my persuasion, as people won’t listen to the message content while demonstrating. The central route focuses on the strength of message arguments. It tends to be more measured and critically evaluated any change made in this way is long lasting.

According to Levine (2003, p.29), as a persuasive arbitrator, I would embrace the central route to elaborate my persuasion message to the extent that the angry citizens carefully reconsider their arguments. I would help the people scrutinize the information contained in a message. How people will process my persuasive message depends on: motivation to process the message and their ability to process information carefully.

I would further embrace the objective elaboration which encompasses bottom-up thinking, where together with the netizens; we would scrutinize the facts without bias. On the other hand, biased elaboration calls for top-down thinking that resulting in predetermined conclusions. This top-down thinking is evident with the demonstrators who have made decisions regarding the Fashion Brand being “greedy”, forgetting about the trademark rights laws holds and facilitate the lawsuit (Radakovic, 2010, p.230).

A report by Levine (2003, p.130) shows that message delivery in Elaborative likelihood will strongly contain strong arguments aimed at creating favorable views hence shifting the view of the demonstrators. The resulting crowd attitudes will be either resistant or persistent and stable. In addition, the demonstrating people will be guided by peripheral cues rather than expend the cognitive energy in the evaluation of arguments as well as process the information in the message. The rules I will engage their thinking process by fostering reciprocation, being consistent, social proof, being likable demonstrating authorities and scarcity of the message content.

Though Giving cues, may not affect my persuasion message, if not used the original angry attitude of the netizens will not change (Smith & Hoeskema, 2003, p.110). By increasing cues and my involvement, the likelihood of the central route, processing decreases credibility and reliance. My prior choice of central route is because our interactions highly motivated, high ability with high quality arguments and high levels of agreement. On the contrary if I had accepted the peripheral route, we would lack the ability to process information hence less unmotivated.

The cognitive dissonance theory developed by Fesinger in 2007 attributes cognitive dissonance to inconstancies between two cognitions the congestions in mind are knowledge, beliefs or opinions. The state of psychological tensions resulting to motivations of people to act in order to rid the feeling is called dissonance (Festinger, 2007, p.340). Cognitive elements can only exhibit three possible relations; irrelevant, consonant or dissonant relations. Dissonant relations results if the opposite of the first element follows the latter.

Petty & Ransack (2005,p.75) articulates that the person holding two cognitions experiences aversive motivational state pressure. The demonstrating netizens need to change their beliefs or behavior to avoid distress. In the course of my persuasion message, two factors will influence the degree of dissonance. The factors are the relative proportions of dissonant and consonant element and the value of the elements. The netizens hold the demonstration yet they know it’s illegal to hold such actions. They dully know that trademarks for company patterns protect it from the use by another. Hence the demonstrators knew they were wrong and that the fashion brand was following due procedure despite their urge to vent their anger. In order to reduce the crowd response I would embrace selective exposure, minimal justification and post-decision dissonance to create an attitude shift in the crowd. When persuading the netizens, I would concentrate on trying to change people’s behavior, thus change their attitude (Petty, 2008).

Cognitive dissonance theory has a four stage process that results in effective persuasion. In the First stage, I will begin initiation where the dissonance will be not as a result of inconsistent attitude, then intensification stage where the behavior cannot be drawn, freely chosen nor be justified. I may choose to issue them with either threats or strong rewards according to their response. When winding my persuasion, I would seek self-consistency, self-affirmations and personal responsibility in case of a bad outcome.

In addition (McLeod, 2008), Festinger, created a sequence to endure change of attitude. The model elaborated the two routes to persuasion. Cognitive dissonance creates an attention that as opposed to mindset, the behavior discrepancies and inconsistencies. In accordance to (Smith & Hoeskema, 2003) everyone possess an inbuilt drive to keep our attitudes and beliefs in harmony. Festinger’s initial experiment asked students to carry out some dull tasks continuously. Then they were paid $1 if they did so, but if they lied about the task being interesting, they would get $20. Most of the participants agreed to persuade people that the experiment was fun. The aim of Festingers experiment was to create cognitive dissonance via a forced compliance behavior.

The methodology used was to have 71 male students to turn the pegs on the peg board in an hour. The results were that those paid $1 found the task fun and enjoyable than those paid $20. Conclusively the experiment shows that those paid $1 experience dissonance. They overcame it by believing that the task would be fun.

Finally, I would embrace a logical appeal strategy in order to win over the demonstrators. The demonstrators will try to see the sense of reason behind my classic tactical persuasion. According to Petty (2008), the key would be to couch my factual arguments in the most rational manner, thus making them the best choice to adhere to. The importance of this persuasion strategy is that the demonstrators and those who disagree with me would see themselves as either lacking common sense or being irrational. For example I would ask them “Why do you engage in legal demonstration yet you could face legal consequence and risk being prosecuted?” Subsequently, in my logical appeal, I would show them that instead of using their time to demonstrate, they can use that extra time to do something of economic or positive value like working or using the time to equip themselves with knowledge of copyright laws .

In conclusion, the persuasive communication will invoke dissonance, encourage change of behaviors, creating a controversy lost interest and supporting after the change of attitude. Critical evaluation shows that dissonance has rate advantage of being measured scientifically, however it’s not possible to observe dissonance physically thus cannot be measured objectively. There lies ambiguity in the dissonance term. Finally cognitive dissonance low ecological validity is its setback is turning pegs doesn’t occur daily.

References

Cacioppo, J.T., Harking, S.G., and Petty, R.E. (2001). Attitude, Cognitive Response and Behavior, Cognitive Responses in Persuasion (31-77). (N.d.). New Jersey : Hillsdale. .

Festinger, L. (2007). Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. . Stanford, CA: : Stanford University Press.

Levine, R. (2003). The Power of Persuasion – How We’re Bought and Sold. Hoeboken,. John Wiley & Sons Inc.

McLeod, S. A. (2008). Cognitive Dissonance Theory. . Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html

Petty, R. (2008). Attitude change. In Gilbert, D., Fiske, S. & Lindzey, G. (Eds.). The Handbook of Social Psychology (4th Ed.). New York: : McGraw-Hil.

Petty, R., Petty, R. A., & Krosnick, P. (2005). Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences. ,. Mahwah: Erlbaum Associates.

Radakovic, M. (2010). Persuasion, The Essence of Diplomacy.

Smith, E., & Hoeskema, N. (2003). Smith EE, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Fredrickson BL, Loftus GR, Bem DJ, Maren S (2003) Atkinson & Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology, 14th Edition., : Thomson-Wadsworth. P 606. USA: Thomson-Wadsworth.