1 What is Persuasion?
Amber K. Worthington
What does persuasion mean to you? Can you think of any times that you have tried to persuade someone to do something? Some examples may include college students trying to persuade their instructors to provide them with an extension on an assignment, to accept an already late project, or to change a poor grade. College students persuade their friends to take specific classes or recommend specific instructors. They may even persuade one another to live in a specific part of town, attend a particular party, or eat at a certain restaurant.
Persuasion is a facet of communication that is seen across many interpersonal and familial relationships. Parents may try to persuade their children to clean up their room, pick a certain major, or abide by a curfew. Romantic partners persuade one another to decorate their home in a particular way, apply to a new job, or move to a new city. Persuasion is also pervasive in professional environments. Potential employees need to persuade future employers of their skills and abilities to secure a job offer. Conversely, employers need to persuade potential employees of the benefits of working at their organization to ensure they accept the job. Many professions, including advertising, sales, and politics are dependent on the ability to leverage persuasion to achieve desired outcomes.
We also need to consider the channels of persuasion that are influencing our choices. The advent of print media (e.g., newspapers, magazines), electronic media (e.g., radio, television, the Internet), and, more recently, social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) provide additional avenues through which persuasion occurs. These mediated sources of persuasion include specific appeals to buy products or services (e.g., advertising), as well as the more nuanced persuasion to adopt and promote a particular lifestyle, behavior, or popular opinion abounding on different platforms.
This all suggests that persuasion is utilized in almost all areas of our lives. However, most of us have never specifically thought about how much time we spend persuading others and being persuaded ourselves. It is important to realize, however, that this does not mean you are already persuasion experts. You have likely learned quite a bit about what works and what does not by trial and error; however, there is a long, rich history of the academic study of persuasion. Scholars across philosophy, psychology, communication, advertising, political science, health, and others have systematically studied persuasion for centuries. Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher who lived nearly 2,400 years ago, wrote extensively about how to persuade others. Around 300 years later, Cicero, a Roman statesman and philosopher, wrote several books on his beliefs about persuasion and rhetoric. Another 100 years after that, Quintilian, a Roman educator and rhetorician, opened a school on rhetoric and oral persuasion. More recently, social scientists have conducted thousands of experiments over decades to study persuasion and have developed rich theories to describe, explain, predict, and control persuasion phenomenon.
This open-educational resource is designed to survey the social-scientific approach to persuasive communication; thus, it will focus on the social science theory, research, and application of persuasion. This study of persuasion naturally begins with a discussion of the social scientific concept of persuasion itself.
Definitions are typically used to clarify a concept. These definitions provide distinctions about what is included in a concept and what is not. Definitions, however, can be troublesome as it is always possible to provide objections to any given definition. Some people may find a specific definition too broad, while others may find that same definition too narrow. This is because there are always gray areas in which the application of the concept is arguable (see O’Keefe, 2016). For example, with any concept, there are some cases that almost everyone agrees are cases of the concept (for example, ketchup is a condiment), and there are some cases that almost everyone agrees are not cases of the concept (for example, a burger bun is not a condiment). There are also some cases that fall into a gray area wherein many people disagree (for example, is hummus a condiment? or is it a dip?).
O’Keefe (2016) argues that, instead of definitions, focusing on the shared features of paradigm cases of a concept can be used to clarify the concept. These paradigm cases are “the sorts of instances that nearly everyone would agree were instances of the concept in question; they are straightforward, uncontroversial examples” (O’Keefe, 2016, p. 2). Identifying the common features of paradigm cases provides the opportunity to understand a concept’s ordinary application without requiring the rigid distinctions required in a definition.
A paradigm case of persuasion would therefore be shared features that are usually involved when we say that someone has persuaded someone else. O’Keefe (2016) provides five common features of paradigm cases of persuasion:
#1: When we say that one person has persuaded someone else, we are usually referring to instances in which there was a successful attempt to influence.
The concept of persuasion inherently includes the notion of success. For example, it does not make sense to say, “I persuaded her, but I failed.” It does make sense to say, “I tried to persuade her, but I failed.” This distinction indicates that simply saying “I persuaded her” implies a successful attempt to influence her.
#2: When we say that one person has persuaded someone else, we are usually referring to instances in which one person intends to persuade the other.
The concept of persuasion inherently includes the notion of intent. For example, if I say “I persuaded Casey to take Intercultural Communication,” you will likely conclude that I intended to procure that outcome. If I instead said “I accidentally persuaded Casey to take Intercultural Communication,” you would likely conclude that I did not intend to do so. The inclusion of the word “accidentally” is necessary to negate intent, which implies that usual use of the term assumes that the persuasion was deliberate.
#3: When we say that one person has persuaded someone else, we are usually referring to cases in which the person being persuaded has some measure of freedom (e.g., free will, free choice, and/or voluntary action).
The concept of persuasion inherently includes the notion of freedom of choice for the person being persuaded. For example, if I steal my roommate’s textbook to study for an exam, one would not say that I “persuaded” my roommate to lend me their textbook. By contrast, asking my roommate to borrow her textbook by convincing her that doing so was necessary for me to pass my exam is ordinarily recognized as an instance of persuasion.
When the person being persuaded has minimal or questionable freedom, it becomes debatable whether it is an instance of persuasion or not. For example, if I told my roommate that if she does not lend me her textbook I would evict her from the apartment and she complies, is this an instance of persuasion? There is no simple answer to this question, but this is an example of a borderline case of persuasion because the person’s freedom is not as obvious as the paradigm case example.
#4: When we say that one person has persuaded someone else, we are usually referring to instances in which the influence was achieved through some mode of communication.
The concept of persuasion inherently includes the notion that communication was used to achieve the outcome. For example, if I pushed my roommate down the stairs to get them to clean up a mess they left in the kitchen, this would not be an instance of persuasion. If I talked to my roommate and convinced them to go downstairs to clean up the mess they left in the kitchen, this would be considered persuasion. These two examples are distinct because the second uses communication, whereas the first does not.
#5: When we say that one person has persuaded someone else, we are usually referring to instances in which the person being persuaded has a change in mental state (that may or may not lead to a change in behavior).
The concept of persuasion inherently includes the notion that the person being persuaded has had a change in mental state. Some paradigm cases may be described only as changes in a mental state. For example, I could say “I persuaded Alex that adding a Communication Minor was helpful for his career goals.” This statement implies a change only in what Alex thinks about adding the minor. Some paradigm cases may be described as behavioral changes, which imply an underlying change in a mental state. For example, I could say “I persuaded Alex to add a Communication Minor.” This statement indicates that Alex changed his behavior, which has an underlying assumption that Alex’s thoughts towards adding the Communication Minor also changed as a precursor to the behavior change. This indicates that even when a persuader’s eventual goal is to influence what someone does, persuasion is usually accomplished by first changing what someone thinks. Persuasion thus ordinarily means that one person has influenced another by influencing their mental state, not directly influencing their behavior.
In persuasion theory and research, the relevant mental state has traditionally been an individual’s attitudes. Even when the ultimate goal is to persuade someone to change their behavior, the presumption is that that goal will be achieved by changing the person’s attitudes. As we will see later on when we examine individual persuasion theories, there are a wide variety of mental state precursors to behavior change beyond just attitudes.
What is Persuasion?
O’Keefe (2016) connects these five paradigm cases of persuasion into something that looks roughly like a definition of persuasion: “a successful intentional effort at influencing another’s mental state through communication in a circumstance in which the [person being persuaded] has some measure of freedom” (p. 4). This definition does not eliminate the gray areas of the concept of persuasion as it leaves open questions around how much success is needed or how intentional the effort needs to be. These shared features of paradigm cases of persuasion can, however, clarify the concept of persuasion and thus center the study of persuasion on instances that meet these criteria.
References
O’Keefe, D. J. (2016). Persuasion: Theory and Research (Third Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.