HACETTEPE UNIVERSITY
2006 – 2007
BUS420 NEGOTIATION PROCESS
Subject: Persuasion
Instructor: Azize ERGENELİ
Prepared by:
•Burak TUNCA 20212258
•Vacide KÖK 20312273
•Melih AHİ 20211577
TABLE OF CONTENTS
AN ORIENTATION TO PERSUASION......
WHAT IS PERSUASION?......
A PRELIMINARY DEFINITION......
VIEWS ON PERSUASION......
Can the Persuasion Process be Understood, that is, Is a Theory of Persuasion Possible?....
What are the Sources of Knowledge for Persuasion Theory?......
What Are the Elements of the Persuasion Process?......
Should the Teaching of Persuasion Stress Understanding or Application?......
Is Persuasion an Acceptable Method of Influence?......
PERSUASION VS NEGOTIATION......
THE NATURE OF COMMUNICATION......
A MODEL OF THE PERSUASION PROCESS......
CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSUASION PROCESS......
Source Characteristics......
Target Characteristics......
Message Characteristics......
COGNITIVE ROUTES TO PERSUASION......
THE KEYS TO POSITIVE PERSUASION......
DECISION-MAKING THROUGH PERSUASION......
PERSUASION AND THE INDIVIDUAL......
As Persuader......
As Persuadee......
PERSUASION AND SOCIETY......
MOTIVATION, ATTITUDES, AND BEHAVIOR......
THE CONCEPT OF MOTIVATION......
Control of Motivation......
Attitudes and Values......
ANGER AS A PERSUASIVE TACTIC......
VARIABILITY OF RECEIVER RESPONSE......
General Characteristics of Receiver Response......
THE NATURE OF ATTENTION......
IMPLICATIONS FOR PERSUASION......
THE DECISION TO PERSUADE......
Alternative Decisions......
SELECTING THE SPECIFIC PERSUASION PURPOSE......
Factors Affecting Formation of the Specific Purpose......
The Process of Selecting the Specific Purpose......
Framing a Specific Purpose Statement......
LOGICAL APPEALS......
Strategy in Use of Logical Appeals......
MOTIVATIONAL APPEALS......
Strategy in Use Motivational Appeals......
LANGUAGE AND STYLE......
LANGUAGE AND STYLE IN PERSUASION......
ETHOS: CREATION AND EFFECTS......
THE NATURE OF ETHOS......
Definition......
EFFECTS OF THE PERSUASION PROCESS ON THE SOURCE......
SIGNIFICANCE......
PERSUASION OF THE SELF......
EFFECTS ON ACTION......
Before the Communication Act......
During the Communication Act......
After the Communication Act......
ETHICS AND PERSUASION......
Are Persuasion and Ethics Related?......
Should Ethics be Discussed Abstractly or Concretely?......
Should One Persuade Lacking Certainty?......
HOW TO BE A GOOD PERSUADER......
BEING A GOOD LISTENER......
Don’t Interrupt......
Don’t Finish the Other Person’s Sentences......
Talking Over the Other Person......
KEEPING ATTENTION......
Attention Breakdowns......
Visual Distractions......
Dealing with Constant Interruptions......
Say What You Are Going To Say......
MEMORY......
Remembering Names......
POWER OF WORDS......
TIMING......
THE PERSONALITY SPECTRUM......
TESTING......
ANSWERS......
REFERENCES......
1
PERSUASION PROCESS
AN ORIENTATION TO PERSUASION
The word "persuasion" undoubtedly stirs up diverse responses in people. For many, persuasion suggests something a bit distasteful, something more or less hidden, unfair; a subtle or not so subtle playing on or manipulating people, perhaps by appealing to emotion or to the baser nature. Persuasion suggests people doing things to other people without regardfor these people, their needs, or their integrity
Most of us would rather choose to do something, become convinced of the proper course of action rather than be persuaded. No one should try to decide how we should think or feel. Persuasion is at best at logical if not illogical; it emphasizes the emotions; it leads people astray.
Such negative connotations are so linked to the term "persuasion" that for some people these associations have become part of the denotative meaning of persuasion. This view is often associated with the belief that persuasion is so pernicious that most individuals are powerless to resist it. But it is important for us to develop sufficient common ground that the term "persuasion".
WHAT IS PERSUASION?
Persuasion is a complex process. Understanding this process will involve an understanding of the psychology of man. Further, we must look outside the narrow specifics of a given situation to the forces that bear upon inviduals in terms of their past history, the present, and their goals for the future.
Persuasion is integral to much of daily communication. Each of us is the target of massive amounts of persuasion from sources far removedfrom our daily conversations with family, friends, and associates. But thesedaily interactions also have much persuasion in them, and often the more important effects on our lives come from these "ordinary" interactions. Eachof us is alternately persuader and persuadee in these daily interactions.
Persuader and persuadee are both responding to forces outside as well as inside themselves. The reasons why a particular persuasive effort is attempted are as much a response to forces outside and inside that individualas are the responses to that particular persuasive attempt by the target.
Persuader and persuadee are typically involved in an ongoing system of relationships: one to the other and to the society at large. A tremendous amount of persuasion goes on between and among people. Much of this influence probably is unconscious: the persuader has no clear recognition that he is attempting to affect the behavior of anotherperson; the persuadee has no awareness that his behavior is being affectedby the other. We are much more aware of persuasion efforts being transmitted through the mass media.
Not all attempts at persuasion are successful. Some are successful for awhile and then are reversed. Others are not successful for a long time and then the desired goal is achieved.
People may respond one way in one situation but quite differently in another. What turns a person on one day may turn him off the next.
It is extremely difficult to measure the success or failure of a persuasive effort.
In the analysis of actual persuasion it is extremely difficult if not impossible to say accurately "This persuaded him." "The reason he did this was that I told him the truth." It may equally be untrue to say, "He did it of his own free will. I didn't try to influence him. I told him he could do whatever he wanted and I wouldn't interfere. It was all up to him."
To define the beginning or ending of a persuasive attempt may be exceedingly difficult. The entire previous experience of both the persuader and the persuadee are involved in any given persuasive situation. Furthermore, the cumulative effects of a whole lifetime of persuasive attempts may finally result in a dramatic conversion for which the persuader of the moment takes credit.
A PRELIMINARY DEFINITION
Persuasion is the communication process of getting someone to do something by convincing him that it is the logical and reasonable thing to do. We persuade each other constantly, many of our most familiar activities, convincing, requesting, arguing, flirting, coaxing, advertising, debating, buying, selling nagging, flattering and criticizing, are rooted in persuasion. Since infancy, we’ve persuaded and been persuaded countless times.
Communication suggests that two or more distinct individuals are involved and that the means employed stresses the use of symbols, particularly language, as the key instrumentality. In communication, meanings are not transferred directly from mind to mind but rather ideas in a mind are translated or encoded into symbols which are placed in a channel, picked up by the target from the channel, and decoded into meanings. The meanings that are stirred up may be more or less like those intended by the sender. We often confuse the process of communication and the question of the degree to which the communication is successful.
"Process" suggests something of an ongoing, interacting, interrelated nature. The process may go on even if it fails to achieve the goal set by a communicator. Thus it is important to carefully distinguish between the process and the result of that process in terms of accomplishing the intended goal of a sender. You may totally fail to influence your target but be engaged in a process of persuasion.
"The communicator seeks" raises important issues. It should be noted that both a sender and a target may alternate roles. You may be seeking to persuade a friend to vote for the Democratic candidate and he may be trying to persuade you to vote for the Republican candidate. You are both simultaneously persuaders and persuadees; however, until you are about to have a complete breakdown or blowup in communication, it is doubtful if you are simultaneously both—rather there will be some sense of alternation of roles.
"The communicator seeks" suggests some degree of conscious intent. Conscious intent becomes a very real problem in the definition of persuasion. Most of us recognize the idea that the mind can be viewed as having various levels of conscious awareness. Indeed, it takes a psychiatrist to tell us we are overeating so we will not have to compete in attracting the opposite sex or that we try to be a Don Juan because we are so insecure about our real sexual abilities. Behavior is the result of both conscious and unconscious forces, at least as we discuss these things in normal terms.Similarly, the decision to persuade may be the result of conscious andunconscious forces, and we may not be consciously aware that we are attempting to persuade. To the degree persuasion has negative connotations, we may repress the awareness.
"A desired response" may suggest some immediate action or behavior,or it may mean some type of mental assent or change. Perhaps the mostdramatic change occurs when a targetsimply is willing to expose himself to further persuasion, such exposure ultimately affecting a change inhis attitude. Again, we encounter the problem of the temporal dimensionin evaluating the persuasion process. Initial persuasion may cause a violently negative response but with time and perhaps additional persuasionfrom other sources, the target may come to accept the view offered. Or the target may be stirred to a very positive response, but in three weekshe has forgotten all about the matter and his attitude is exactly the sameas it was before.
In one sense, this definition makes persuasion almost synonymous with 'all communication, for in communication a sender seeks to win responseto his ideas. To some degree this is true; all communication can be viewedas persuasion. But for purposes of study, it is useful to limit persuasion communication in which the elements in the communication process are weighted by the communicator for the purpose of directing the response to a relatively specific goal. It is one thing to describe the ocean so a listener will understand more about the ocean (and clearly there are motivational links involved in this process), and another to attempt to form this description so that he will invest in a project or take up skin diving.
VIEWS ON PERSUASION
1. What is persuasion in terms of function, users, and setting? Initially, persuasion was thought of as oral communication largely limited to structured situations. Corax, credited with being the founder of rhetoric,normalized the already-recognized importance of effective speaking by advising petitioners how they might gain greater success in the courts. Aristotle treated three settings: public speeches of a ceremonial nature,\speeches in legislative settings, and speeches in judicial settings.
However, the expansion of education in the last century, the rise ofthe democratic ideal, the increased emphasis upon self-determination, thegreater concern with understanding all people, not just "those who matter,"made it inevitable that persuasion be perceived in a broader sense. Persuasion is now considered as a process in which all men engage. Persuasionis as much a phenomenon of the breakfast table as the conference table,of the common man as of the uncommon man. The mass media by onemeans or other floods potential targets with appeals for everythingfrom Ban to presidential candidates. Communication settings from the one-to-one conversation or letter to world-wide peace campaigns necessitatepersuasion. Further, the sit-in, passive and not so passive civil disobedience, the march, and the propaganda campaign using a variety of media areall powerful persuasive efforts.
2. What is persuasion in terms of media employed? Persuasion inthe writings of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Isocrates, was discussed almost solely in terms of oral communication. Speeches might be written but they became speeches only when delivered orally. With the advent of print, rhetoric not unnaturally expanded to include written communication as well. Indeed, the term rhetoric now is often thought to refer strictly to written communication. The term persuasion, although still seeming to be applied more to oral communication settings, has now come to include the use of all the media of communication. The increase in available media and the possibility of the use of multiple media have made media considerations more important factors in contemporary persuasion theory. Marshall McLuhan has been a significant popularizer of this increased emphasis upon the role of the medium. The oral mode of communication is still the most used medium for communication, and the electronic media are enhancing that domination.
3. What is persuasion in terms of definitional focus? Aristotle discussed rhetoric as the study of the available means of persuasion. But the emphasis in Aristotle's Rhetoric is upon the process by which the speaker creates and delivers his speech with the focus almost totally upon advance preparation of the speech.4 While this process of preparation involves an understanding of the nature of targets and the effect of certain situational elements, the speaker and the process of creating the message is the essence of the Rhetoric.
The Rhetoric describes the process of preparation as involving fourkey stages: invention, the finding and selecting of proofs; disposition, theorganization of material; elocution, the wording and styling of the material; and pronunciation, the delivery of the prepared material orally.signed.
Some definitions focus more sharply upon the message or items relevant to messages. Many definitions stress the use of language as a means of achieving the desired impact. Contemporary definitions take more note of, language in definitions of persuasion than was formerly the case.
Historically, the term "persuasion" has often been limited in terms of \ the appeals employed or the mental "faculty" being utilized. Some text-books today still retain the divisions of speeches to convince (reliance upon logic), to persuade (reliance upon emotional appeal), and to actuate, as well as speeches to inform or entertain. This distinction between persuasion and other forms also appears in the separation of courses in argumentation from those in persuasion.
Contemporary definitions of persuasion tend to focus upon the processness of persuasion and to stress the interaction and interrelationship of a number of factors in a complex matrix. While the source and the intent of the source remain a frequent key to the determination of the appearance of the process of persuasion, study of persuasion theory involves increasing emphasis upon the total process—all the elements—with greater attention to target response.
4. What is persuasion in terms of its function as a means or an end? General dictionaries have a tendency to define persuasion in terms of anend state: the condition of being persuaded. Akin to this approach is defining persuasion in terms of the success of the persuasive effort. Manyfind it difficult to separate the success of the effort from the definition of persuasion. For such people, persuasion has occurred when the target is persuaded, but it has not occurred when the target is not persuaded. This latter event is labeled as an "attempt" at persuasion. This approach produces great confusion. Persuasion is best treated as a process which may succeed or may fail. Whether success or failure results, the process of persuasion has taken place. Placing an emphasis upon results leads to great difficulty for two reasons: one cannot determine if persuasion is taking place until after the process is completed. Even then the difficulties of measuring responses are such that it is usually impossible to know if success or failure has resulted. Secondly, the responses usually involve some degree of success and some degree of failure or even negative persuasion.
Can the Persuasion Process be Understood,that is, Is a Theory of Persuasion Possible?
The answer to this question lies in the criteria used to judge the answer.If by understanding one demands complete, total understanding, the answer is obviously "no." If one demands a theory that yields absolute predictability of results, the answer is no. But if one is willing to grant thepresupposition that although man cannot know everything, this does notmean that what he knows is necessarily untrue, the answer will change.The working assumption of writers for over two thousand years hasbeen that persuasion can be profitably analyzed, that the process of persuasion can be understood at some level.
There is much about man that we do not yet understand; therefore,there must be much about persuasion that we do not yet understand.Further, theories of persuasion that gained wide acceptance in the pastare now often thought to be largely or totally untrue. Yet the idea ofbuilding from a theory toward further understanding is a familiar one. Indeed, one function of building a theory is to yield a means of testing thetheory. Such testing may cause a portion of the theory to be discarded,modified, or retained. Understanding is increased as a result of the promulgation and testing of the theory.
1. Can the persuasion process be reduced to formula? Obviously if the degree of understanding is not total, a formula that guarantees success is impossible. There have been many attempts to provide formulas for success. The secrets of selling, five ways to success, how to get your man,how to win friends without creating enemies—these are suggestive of the titles of books and articles widely available. As long as these books tend to focus upon certain key and rather general propositions of theory, the formulas are surprisingly useful. Feeding a crying baby who has been four hours without feeding is generally good advice. He usually stops crying, but not always.
Writers interested in extended analysis of persuasion inevitably stress that no formula works. But certain processes are described and certain techniques suggested which are useful.
2. What is the best approach to understand persuasion: to view it as a fixed, invariate procedure or as a variable process? Noting that Aristotle's treatment of logic became a prison for future logicians, BertrandRussell urges that Aristotle's followers and not Aristotle made his approachdescriptive and fixed.9 Similarly, persuasion theorists see the process of\persuasion as involving much flexibility, the interaction of many variables.However, as these theorists proceed to give advice to the communicator oras others take over the theory, the tendency is to treat the formula as rigidand prescriptive with universal laws rather than flexible and descriptive,with qualified generalizations.