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The
Nature of Attitudes and Persuasion
What is Persuasion?
Why Study Persuasion?
Persuasion as an Alternative to Apathy or Coercion
The Nature of Attitudes
The Process of Persuasion
Glossary
Additional
Readings
Self
Test
What is Persuasion?
Persuasion
is, quite simply, the use of messages to influence an audience.
The messages that make up persuasive discourse are instrumental,
or means to ends or goals of the persuader. Companies use
persuasion in the form of advertising to convince consumers to
buy their products or services. Students use persuasion to
convince their parents to increase their allowance, or let them
go to see a particular movie, or to let them use the car.
Parents can use persuasion to get their children to study or to
clean up their rooms. People use persuasion to get their friends
to go to see a certain movie, or a band, or to hang out at the
mall. Persuasion can convince another person to go out on a
date. It can convince a teacher to accept a paper after the due
date. Of course, people can also use threats to get what
they want, but that is not persuasion. In persuasion, we try to
convince the audience that they should want to do what we want
them to do--not that they should do it “or else.”
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