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Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for Social influence. Persuasion can influence a person's , attitudes, , , or Behavior.
Persuasion is studied in many disciplines. Rhetoric studies modes of persuasion in speech and writing and is often taught as a Classics. Psychology looks at persuasion through the lens of individual behaviour and neuroscience studies the brain activity associated with this behaviour. 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 behaviour towards some event, idea, object, or another person (s) 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.
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 leveraged 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.Schacter, Daniel L., Daniel T. Gilbert, and Daniel M. Wegner. "The Accuracy Motive: right is better than wrong-Persuasion." Psychology; Second Edition. New York: Worth, Incorporated, 2011. 532. Print,
The Greek philosopher Aristotle listed four reasons why one should learn the art of persuasion:
He described three fundamental ways to Communication persuasively:
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 , 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 Fallacy 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 you're 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.
Dispositional attribution, also referred to as internal attribution, attempts to point to a person's traits, abilities, motives, or dispositions as a cause or explanation for their actions. A citizen criticizing a president by saying the nation is lacking economic progress and health because the president is either lazy or lacking in economic intuition is utilizing a dispositional attribution.
Situational attribution, also referred to as external attribution, attempts to point to the context around the person and factors of his surroundings, particularly things that are completely out of his control. A citizen claiming that a lack of economic progress is not a fault of the president but rather the fact that he inherited a poor economy from the previous president is situational attribution.
A fundamental attribution error occurs when people wrongly attribute either a shortcoming or accomplishment to internal factors while disregarding all external factors. In general, people use dispositional attribution more often than situational attribution when trying to explain or understand the behavior of others. This happens because we focus more on the individual when we lack information about that individual's situation and context. When trying to persuade others to like us or another person, we tend to explain positive behaviors and accomplishments with dispositional attribution and negative behaviors and shortcomings with situational attributions.
A typical instantiations of these techniques in therapy isExposure and response preventionexposure / response prevention for OCD.
This conditioning is thought to affect how people view certain products, knowing that most purchases are made on the basis of emotion. Just like you sometimes recall a memory from a certain smell or sound, the objective of some ads is solely to bring back certain emotions when you see their logo in your local store. The hope is that repeating the message several times makes consumers more likely to purchase the product because they already connect it with a good emotion and positive experience. Stefano DellaVigna and Matthew Gentzkow did a comprehensive study on the effects of persuasion in different domains. They discovered that persuasion has little or no effect on advertisement; however, there was a substantial effect of persuasion on voting if there was face-to-face contact.
Festinger suggests that we are motivated to reduce this dissonance until our cognition is in harmony with itself. We strive for mental consistency. There are four main ways we go about reducing or eliminating our dissonance:
Cognitive dissonance is powerful when it relates to competition and self-concept. The most famous example of how cognitive dissonance can be used for persuasion comes from Festinger and Carlsmith's 1959 experiment in which participants were asked to complete a very dull task for an hour. Some were paid $20, while others were paid $1, and afterwards they were instructed to tell the next waiting participants that the experiment was fun and exciting. Those who were paid $1 were much more likely to convince the next participants that the experiment really was enjoyable than those who received $20. This is because $20 is enough reason to participate in a dull task for an hour, so there is no dissonance. Those who received $1 experienced great dissonance, so they had to truly convince themselves that the task actually was enjoyable to avoid feeling taken advantage of, and therefore reduce their dissonance.
The Elaboration likelihood model (ELM) forms a new facet of the route theory. It holds that the probability of effective persuasion depends on how successful the communication is at bringing to mind a relevant mental representation, which is the elaboration likelihood. Thus if the target of the communication is personally relevant, this increases the elaboration likelihood of the intended outcome and would be more persuasive if it were through the central route. Communication which does not require careful thought would be better suited to the peripheral route.
When communication targets an underlying function, its degree of persuasiveness influences whether individuals change their attitude after determining that another attitude would more effectively fulfill that function.
This often occurs in negative advertisements and comparative advertisements—both for products and political causes. An example would be a manufacturer of a product displaying an ad that refutes one particular claim made about a rival's product, so that when the audience sees an ad for said rival product, they refute the product claims automatically.
When trying to sort incoming persuasive information, an audience evaluates whether it lands in their latitude of acceptance, latitude of non-commitment or indifference, or the latitude of rejection. The size of these latitudes varies from topic to topic. Our "ego-involvement" generally plays one of the largest roles in determining the size of these latitudes. When a topic is closely connected to how we define and perceive ourselves, or deals with anything we care passionately about, our latitudes of acceptance and non-commitment are likely to be much smaller and our attitude of rejection much larger. A person's anchor point is considered to be the center of their latitude of acceptance, the position that is most acceptable to them.
An audience is likely to distort incoming information to fit into their unique latitudes. If something falls within the latitude of acceptance, the subject tends to assimilate the information and consider it closer to his anchor point than it really is. Inversely, if something falls within the latitude of rejection, the subject tends to contrast the information and convince themself the information is farther away from their anchor point than it really is.
When trying to persuade an individual target or an entire audience, it is vital to first learn the average latitudes of acceptance, non-commitment, and rejection of your audience. It is ideal to use persuasive information that lands near the boundary of the latitude of acceptance if the goal is to change the audience's anchor point. Repeatedly suggesting ideas on the fringe of the acceptance latitude makes people gradually adjust their anchor points, while suggesting ideas in the rejection latitude or even the non-commitment latitude does not change the audience's anchor point.
The principle of reciprocity states that when a person provides us with something, we attempt to repay them in kind. Reciprocation produces a sense of obligation, which can be a powerful tool in persuasion. The reciprocity rule is effective because it can be overpowering and instill in us a sense of obligation. Generally, we have a dislike for individuals who neglect to return a favor or provide payment when offered a free service or gift. As a result, reciprocation is a widely held principle. This societal standard makes reciprocity extremely powerful persuasive technique, as it can result in unequal exchanges and can even apply to an uninvited first favor. Reciprocity applies to the marketing field because of its use as a powerful persuasive technique. The marketing tactic of "free samples" demonstrates the reciprocity rule because of the sense of obligation that the rule produces. This sense of obligation comes from the desire to repay the marketer for the gift of a "free sample".
"The power of the crowd" is thought to be highly involved in the decisions we make. Social proof is often utilized by people in a situation that requires a decision be made. In uncertain or ambiguous situations, when multiple possibilities create choices we must make, people are likely to conform to what others do. We take cues from those around us as to what the appropriate behavior is in that moment. People often feel they will make fewer mistakes "by acting in accord with social evidence than by behaving contrary to it."
In The True Believer, Eric Hoffer noted, "People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. . . . They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility."
In the Milgram study, a series of experiments begun in 1961, a "teacher" and a "learner" were placed in two different rooms. The "learner" was attached to an electric harness that could administer shock. The "teacher" was told by a supervisor, dressed in a white scientist's coat, to ask the learner questions and punish him when he got a question wrong. The teacher was instructed by the study supervisor to deliver an electric shock from a panel under the teacher's control. After delivery, the teacher had to up the voltage to the next notch. The voltage went up to 450 volts. The catch to this experiment was that the teacher did not know that the learner was an actor faking the pain sounds he heard and was not actually being harmed. The experiment was being done to see how obedient we are to authority. "When an authority tells ordinary people it is their job to deliver harm, how much suffering will each subject be willing to inflict on an entirely innocent other person if the instructions come 'from above'?." In this study, the results showed that the teachers were willing to give as much pain as was available to them. The conclusion was that people are willing to bring pain upon others when they are directed to do so by some authority figure.
There are two major reasons why the scarcity principle works:
Later, Cialdini added a seventh principle or cue, "unity", referring to a shared identity which embraces both the influencer and influencee.Dooley, R., What is Unity, Cialdini's 7th Principle?, accessed on 17 October 2025
By appeal to emotion:
Aids to persuasion:
Other techniques:
Coercive techniques, some of which are highly controversial or not scientifically proven effective:
Methods of persuasion vary by culture, both in prevalence and effectiveness. For example, advertisements tend to appeal to different values according to whether they are used in collectivistic or individualism cultures.
To educate the general population about research findings and new knowledge about persuasion, a teacher must draw on their pre-existing beliefs from folk persuasion to make the research relevant and informative to lay people, which creates "mingling of their scientific insights and commonsense beliefs."
As a result of this constant mingling, the issue of persuasion expertise becomes messy. Expertise status can be interpreted from a variety of sources like job titles, celebrity, or published scholarship.
It is through this multimodal process that we create concepts like, "Stay away from car salesmen, they will try to trick you." The kind of persuasion techniques blatantly employed by car salesmen creates an innate distrust of them in popular culture. According to Psychology Today, they employ tactics ranging from making personal life ties with the customer to altering reality by handing the customer the new car keys before the purchase.Lawson, Willow. Persuasion:Battle on the Car Lot, Psychology Today published on 1 September 2005 - last reviewed on 31 July 2009
Campbell proposed and empirically demonstrated that some persuasive advertising approaches lead consumers to infer manipulative intent on the marketer's part. Once consumers infer manipulative intent, they are less persuaded by the marketer, as indicated by attenuated advertising attitudes, brand attitudes and purchase intentions.Campbell, Margaret C. "When attention-getting advertising tactics elicit consumer inferences of manipulative intent: The importance of balancing benefits and investments." Journal of Consumer Psychology 4, no. 3 (1995): 225-254 Campbell and Kirmani developed an explicit model of the conditions under which consumers use persuasion knowledge in evaluating influence agents such as salespersons.Campbell, Margaret C., and Amna Kirmani. "Consumers' use of persuasion knowledge: The effects of accessibility and cognitive capacity on perceptions of an influence agent." Journal of consumer research 27, no. 1 (2000): 69-83.
One way therefore to increase persuasion would seem to be to selectively activate the right prefrontal cortex. This is easily done by monaural stimulation to the contralateral ear. The effect apparently depends on selective attention rather than merely the source of stimulation. This manipulation had the expected outcome: more persuasion for messages coming from the left.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Archive). Harvard Business Review. October 2001.
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