PERSUASION (P.8)

PERSUASION

Persuasion is a common feature of everyday life. It is present in everything we do, from persuading oneself to persuading others. In a family life, persuasion manifests in children convincing parents on the kind of product to buy for then and even for general family use. A prospective employee through his application and at interviews attempts to persuade an organization to employ him. Governments attempt to persuade citizens to accepts its policies, corporate organization attempt to persuade their several publics to support them on some corporate matters.

Communication experts Winston Brembeck and William Howell describe persuasion as “communication to influence choice.” Another definition says persuasion is a process that changes attitudes, beliefs, opinions or behaviours.” Public relations practitioners are among the greatest users of persuasion strategies, often with the objective of influencing people in some desired ways.

Generally, persuasion is used to:

1. Change or neutralize opinions

2. Crystallize latent opinions and positive attitudes, and

3. Conserve favorable opinions.

Persuading someone or a group to think in a different way is not an easy task. It is more difficult when the views they hold are hostile. A good understanding of persuasive communication would however make it easy to get your public thinking your own way.

3.5.1 Factors in Persuasive Communication

Achieving persuasive communication is dependent on a number of factors. Public relations practitioners would find some of these put forward by Wilcox, Ault and Agee very useful:

1. Audience Analysis: Every audience has its own features, mindset, and characteristics. To get a message across successfully, requires a detailed understanding of the target audience. Knowledge of how the belief system and attitude of a group is a useful tool in helping a communicator prepare his message.

2. Source Credibility: There are general standards of message forms from specific communication sources. To make a message believable, it must come from a trusted source. For a public relations person, this tells you that in order to achieve persuasion; some forms of communication must be handled by some specific persons. For example, there are crisis situations when your public would only believe what the managing Director or Chairman of your organization says. Any word from the public relations director may not sell.

3. Appeal to Self-Interest: people get involved in issues or pay attention to messages that appeal to their psychic or economic needs. To get a message across, you must let the target know what is in it for them. They must know in specific terms what good they stand to enjoy if they do your bidding. Would it adds to their sense esteem, gratify their ego of give them a sense of belonging?

4. Clarity of the Message: The clearest message is the simplest message. Two important questions that would help you achieve clarity are: (a) what do I want the audience to do with the message (b) will the audience understand the message? A persuasive message must not leave the audience confused as to what it wants it to do.

5. Timing and Context: There is a time and context for everything. Telling a consumer of an increase in electricity bill when at that very point there is a power cut would not attract any favorable response.

6. Audience Participation: People are committed to making a thing work if they had been a part of the idea. Productivity is increased if employees are carried along in the decision making process. Getting people involved in a street march or walk for HIV/AIDS creates a participatory satisfaction that will make them donate more to it in financial terms.

7. Suggestions for Action: A good principle of persuasive communication to accompany the message with a proposed action. The suggestion must be easy to carry out with minimal technical or bureaucratic complexities.

8. Content and Structure of Messages: To achieve persuasion, content and structure must key into the audience. Communicators and writers have employed some useful devices over time for achieving this. Each of these devices must be used in consideration with other factors discussed above. Some of these devices are: drama, statistics, surveys and polls, examples, testimonials, mass media endorsements, emotional appeals, etc.

9. Persuasive Speaking: The use of appropriate persuasive techniques is vital to eliciting responses from targets of such messages. Depending on the audience, a persuasive message can give a one-side or two-sides to an issue. Studies by Carl Hovland have shown that one-sided speeches are most effective with audiences that are favorably disposed to a message, while two-sided speeches work better with audiences that might be opposed to the messages.

3.5.2 Persuasion and Ethics

We have examined the above propaganda techniques not to arm public relations practitioners with devices for deceiving or manipulating people. Ethical considerations demand that these techniques are not turned against our publics but to their favor. As public relations professionals, we are advocates of our clients and employees as well as the conscience of the public’s of which we are a part. The use of persuasive techniques demands additional guidelines as put forward by Professor Richard L. Johannesen of Northern Illinois University. According to him, the following criteria must be borne in mind by every public relations practitioner using persuasive devices.

1. Do not use false, fabricated, misrepresented, or irrelevant evidence to support arguments or claims.
2. Do not intentionally use specious, unsupported, or illogical reasoning.
3. Do not represent yourself as informed or an “expert” on a subject when you are not.
4. Do not use irrelevant appeals to divert attention or scrutiny from the issue at hand. Among appeals that commonly serve such a purpose are “smear” attacks on an opponent’s character, appeals to hatred and bigotry, innuendo, and “God”, “devil” terms that cause intense but unreflective positive or negative reactions.
5. Do not ask your audience to link your idea or proposal to emotion laden values, motives or goals to which it actually is not related.
6. Do not deceive your audience by concealing your real purpose, your self-interest, the group you represent, or your position.
7. Do not distort, hide, or misrepresent the number, scope, intensity, or undesirable features of consequences.
8. Do not use emotional appeals that lack a supporting basis of evidence or reasoning or that would not be accepted if the audience had time and opportunity to examine the subject itself.
9. Do not oversimplify complex situations into simple, two-valued, either/or, polar views or choices.
10. Do not pretend certainty when tentativeness and degree of probability would be more accurate.

Do no advocate something in which you do not believe yourself