Persuasion is the act of influencing a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behavior. Research on persuasion and its affects is of interest to many fields, and is a frequent topic in the specialty of social psychology. Persuasion usually affects the decision making of an individual, and it is aimed at a variety of groups, including consumers, voters, and others.
Forms Propaganda is a form of persuasion used to indoctrinate a population towards an individual or a particular agenda. Coercion is a form of persuasion that uses aggressive threats and the provocation of fear and/or shame to influence a person's behavior. Systematic persuasion is the process through which attitudes or beliefs are influenced by appeals to logic and reason. Heuristic persuasion, on the other hand, is the process through which attitudes or beliefs are leveraged by appeals to habit or emotion.
Research interests Persuasion is studied in many disciplines. Rhetoric studies modes of persuasion in speech and writing and is often taught as a classical subject. Psychology looks at persuasion through the lens of individual behavior and neuroscience studies the brain activity associated with this behavior. History and political science are interested in the role of propaganda in shaping historical events. In business, persuasion is aimed at influencing a person's (or group's) attitude or behavior towards some event, idea, object, or another person by using written, spoken, or visual methods to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a combination thereof. Persuasion is also often used to pursue personal gain, such as election campaigning, giving a sales pitch, or in trial advocacy. Persuasion can also be interpreted as using personal or positional resources to change people.
History and philosophy
The academic study of persuasion began with the Greeks, who emphasized rhetoric and elocution as the highest standard for a successful politician. All trials were held in front of the Assembly, and the likelihood of success of the prosecution versus the defense rested on the persuasiveness of the speaker. Rhetoric is the art of effective persuasive speaking, often through the use of figures of speech, metaphors, and other techniques. The Greek philosopher Aristotle listed four reasons why one should learn the art of persuasion:
Truth and justice are perfect; thus if a case loses, it is the fault of the speaker. It is an excellent tool for teaching. A good rhetorician must be able to argue both sides to understand the whole problem, and There is no better way to defend one's self. He described three fundamental ways to communicate persuasively:
Ethos (credibility): refers to the effort to convince the audience of one's credibility or character. It is not automatic and can be created through actions, deeds, understanding, or expertise by the speaker. Logos (reason): refers to the effort to convince the audience by using logic and reason. This can be formal and non-formal. Formal reasoning uses syllogisms, arguments where two statements validly imply a third statement. Non-formal reasoning uses enthymemes, arguments that have valid reasoning but are informal and assume the audience has prior knowledge. Pathos (emotion): refers to the effort to persuade the audience by making an appeal to their feelings.
Ethics of persuasion
Many philosophers have commented on the morality of persuasion. Socrates argued that rhetoric was based on appearances rather than the essence of a matter. Thomas Hobbes was critical of use rhetoric to create controversy, particularly the use of metaphor. Immanuel Kant was critical of rhetoric, arguing that it could cause people to reach conclusions that are at odds with those that they would have reached if they had applied their full judgment. He draws parallels between the function of rhetoric and the deterministic function of the mind like a machine. Aristotle was critical of persuasion, though argued that judges would often allow themselves to be persuaded by choosing to apply emotions rather than reason. However, he argued that persuasion could be used to induce an individual to apply reason and judgment. Writers such as William Keith and Christian O. Lundberg argue that uses of force and threats in trying to influence others does not lead to persuasion, but rather talking to people does, going further to add "While Rhetoric certainly has its dark side that deals in tricks and perceptions... the systematic study of rhetoric generally ignores these techniques, in part because they are not very systematic or reliable." There is also in legal disputes, the matter of the burden of proof when bringing up an argument, where it often falls on the hands of the one presenting a case to prove its validity to another person and where presumptions may be made where of the burden of proof has not been met, an argument may be dropped such as in a more famous example of "Innocent until proven guilty", although this line of presumption or burden of proof may not always be followed. While Keith and Lundberg do go into detail about the different intricacies of persuasion, they do explain that lapses in logic and or reasoning could lead to persuasive arguments with faults. These faults can come as enthymemes, where more likely than not only certain audiences with specific pieces of knowledge may understand the reasoning being presented with missing logic, or the more egregious example of fallacies where conclusions may be drawn (almost always incorrectly) through invalid argument. In contrast to the reasoning behind enthymemes, the use of examples can help prove a person's rhetorical claims through inductive reasoning, which assumes that "if something is true in specific cases, it is true in general". Examples can be split into two categories real and hypothetical. Real examples come from personal experience or academic/scientific research which can support the argument a person is making. Hypothetical examples are made-up. When arguing something, speakers can put forward a hypothetical situation that illustrates the point they are making to connect better with the audience. These examples must be plausible to properly illustrate a persuasive argument.
Theories There are many psychological theories about what influences an individual's behavior in different situations. These theories have implications for how persuasion works.
Attribution theory
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