Persuasive Comm Midterm

Who is the greatest contributor to rhetorical theory and analysis?

Aristotle

What mnemonic was created to help writers better think about and use sources

BEAM, which stands for background, exhibits, argument, method

It is best to construct a persuasive message so that it falls within the receiver's ___________ or ____________

LOA, LNC

What helps persuasive speakers to understand and approach their audience with the appropriate level of need thus making them more able or willing to respond?

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

What experiment demonstrated that sources with legitimate power are perceived as having authority and receivers are more likely to obey them even when it goes against their better judgement?

Milgram experiment

Type of source that tend to be published in newspapers or magazines

News sources

Type of source written to educate or entertain by writers who often are not experts in the field

Popular sources

Type of source produced by professional researchers seeking to advance or evaluate knowledge, who submit their work for peer review

Scholarly sources

Advanced source evaluation tool

See module 3 part 2 slides

Who taught persuasive education to anyone who could pay for their services? What did they focus on?

Sophists; practicality, not philosophical theory

Type of source that tends to be published in journals or magazines intended to be read by executives or practitioners working in a specific industry

Trade sources

What are emotional appeals?

a persuasive message that relies on emotion to be persuasive

Plagiarism undermines the standards of fairness, open mindedness, and truth seeking that __________________ endeavors require. It also undermines the value of your ___________________ because you miss the opportunity to increase your ________________ and develop your __________________

academic, education, knowledge, skills

Using the reasoned action approach to change attitudes includes...?

add a new behavioral belief, change the belief evaluation, change the belief strength

Using reasoned action approach to change subjective norm includes...?

add new normative beliefs, change existing normative beliefs, alter motivation to comply

What do attitudes involve? What are they tied to?

affect or the likes and dislikes as an affective or evaluative response (not a cognitive or knowledge-based response); tied to an object like an item, event, person, concept or idea

What are elements of delivery?

articulation, enunciation, pronunciation, tone, pitch, rate, pauses, movement, posture

Message is perceived as being similar to the attitudinal anchor and possibly closer than it really is from objective point of view

assimilation

What is the discounting model?

assumes that initial attitude change is a result of both source credibility and message content but permanent attitude change is based on message content

When is the best time for low credibility sources to establish credentials?

at the end of the message and rely on message factors to persuade the audience

Important roles in behavior

attitudes, social pressure (subjective norm), behavioral control, intention to perform the behavior

Assumption about what influences how you evaluate a persuasive message

attitudinal anchor

Position on a particular issue that person finds most acceptable

attitudinal anchor

The process of creating causal explanations for why things happen

attributions

Scholarly sources can provide information that other sources cannot including...?

authoritative information and data, concepts or methods used to analyze and interpret data, credible and reliable arguments, information about other relevant scholars in the field, and criticisms and evaluations of published works

What are the three types of needs that Maslow talks about? What's the highest level?

basic, psychological, and self-fulfillment; self-fulfillment

When is the best time for high credibility sources to establish credentials?

beginning of the message or in the middle but no later

Attitudes are related to _______________ and are ________________

behavior, learned

Beliefs we have about a behavior that we view as most important

behavioral beliefs

Best predictor of whether a person will actually perform the behavior

behavioral intention

Ads with high guilt levels resulted in anger and feelings of __________________________________ while ____________________ levels of guilt might be most effective at both gaining attention and eliciting an acceptable level of guilt

being manipulated, moderate

What are cognitions?

bits of knowledge that individuals have; attitudes, beliefs, or values

Adding consonant elements to reduce the ratio of dissonant to consonant elements

bolstering

Receivers may actually move their anchor away from the intended direction of the message

boomerang effect

Route with high elaboration, active involvement that involves expending cognitive energy to think about a process the message

central route

Ways to resolve dissonance

change the importance of certain cognitions, change the ratio of consonant to dissonant cognitions

Sources that aid in argument will give the author the necessary tools to support ______________, provide an opportunity to address potential ___________________ and limitations and develop ____________________ of claims

claims, criticisms, sophistication

What is the foundation for argumentation and rhetoric?

classical rhetoric

What is the most accepted consistency theory built on knowledge generated by balance theory and congruity theory?

cognitive dissonance theory

Beliefs deal with what dimension?

cognitive or informational

A theory that examines how receivers process persuasive messages

cognitive theory

Myth 6 is that there is nothing that can be done about "writer's block". What's the correction?

commit to a schedule of work, measure your output by word count rather than time spent, and use multiple writing techniques to relieve pressure

4 stages of decision-making context

conflict, decision, cognitive dissonance, dissonance reduction

What most people do in a particular situation

consensus

Key factors to attribution theory

consensus, consistency, distinctiveness

Whether the observed behavior occurs over time

consistency

two cognitions that are consistent with one another

consonant relationship

Background sources are those that provide ________________, demonstrate how others have viewed or studied the problem, _______________ the current state of research on the topic, and prepare your reader to understand where your paper fits within the larger __________________________

context, summarize, research conversation

A person perceives the message as being in opposition to his or her views

contrasting

Beliefs that tend to be strongly held and are harder to change; form early in life and are part of an individual's sense of self

core beliefs

What are virtues of style?

correctness, evidence, propriety, and ornateness

Individuals behaving in a manner that goes against their attitudes

counter-attitudinal behavior

What did Corax do in writing the first recorded written rhetoric?

created a system of argumentation so people could win their cases and thus their land, providing a way for the average citizen to have access to quality argumentation

Memory refers to...?

degree to which a speaker remembers the speech

What is essential to appealing to emotions and critical in establishing a speaker's credibility?

delivery

Choosing the disbelieve or reject information that would otherwise create dissonance

denial

What does pathos refer to?

designed to affect a listener's feelings

splitting the attitude object into acceptable or consistent parts and unacceptable or inconsistent parts

differentiation

People may change attitudes, beliefs, intentions, and actual behavior in this cognitive process to justify actions

dissonance reduction

The more important the cognitive elements involved, the more...?

dissonance that will likely be elicited

Two cognitions that are inconsistent with one another

dissonant relationship

How different the behavior is across situations

distinctiveness

When is humor not as effective?

does not increase perceptions of credibility and may even decrease them, difficult to generalize about the use of humor because it varies so greatly, can be offensive if it puts down people we like or groups we associate with

What are the attitude functions?

ego-defensive, knowledge, utilitarian, value-expressive, and social-adjustive

A person's commitment to an issue; related to a person's self-concept and self-esteem

ego-involvement

Three factors that influence the relationship between discrepancy and attitude change

ego-involvement, source credibility, and language intensity

the amount of thinking the receiver engages in about the content of the message

elaboration

Focuses on different ways people respond to persuasive messages

elaboration likelihood model

Myth 2 is that you must know everything you want to say before you can start writing. What's the correction?

embrace an exploratory approach to drafting; use concept maps, tables, index cards, sticky notes, or sketches; play around with your ideas

Types of language intensity

emotional and linguistic

What are ways to signal information from other sources?

enclose any borrowed words from another writer in quotation marks, use an attributional phrase to signal that the ideas and words originate with another writer, embed quoted passages in sentences of your own composition, and provide readers with an in-text citation

How to write a thesis paragraph...?

establish the part of the conversation you want to work in with "lead-in" sentences, establish you own line of inquiry as a response to the conversation, articulate your thesis as a response to conventional wisdom and established research, and explain significance of your thesis (why does it matter if you are right)

Persuasion can be ____________ and ______________________. Just because you ___________ doesn't mean you _______________

ethical, unethical, can, should

What are three important components of persuasion?

ethos, logos, pathos

What are the three persuasive appeals?

ethos, pathos, and logos

Myth 1 is that writing is a talent that people are born with, and I do not have it. What's the correction?

everyone can learn how to write; ask for or find samples of the kind of writing you must do and model them

Myth 7 is that since I cannot figure out the introduction I cannot write the paper. What's the correction?

expect it to be highly provisional and subject to change, skip ahead and write a low-risk section of the body of your essay

Myth 3 is that the first draft should be as good as it can be so it only needs "cleaned up" in revision. What's the correct?

expect your first draft to be messy, expect to add and subtract large chunks of text, and revision is more than just cleaning and polishing your text

You infer the cause of the behavior as being outside the person

external attribution

What is evidence?

factual statements originating from a source other than the speaker, objects not created by the speaker, and opinions of persons other than the speaker that are offered in support of the speaker's claims

True or false: attitudes and behavioral intentions are perfect predictors of behavior

false

True or false: databases of sources do not provide the option to restrict searches to scholarly sources

false

True or false: playing to emotions using pathos is completely ethical all the time

false

True or false: the more often the information is presented, the less likely the chance of comprehension

false

a persuasive message that attempts to arouse the emotion of fear by depicting a personally relevant and significant threat

fear appeal

What are types of response to fear appeals?

fear control (emotional response) and danger control (cognitive response)

Who is Corax?

first recorded written rhetoric

Coercion is social influence that involves ___________________ or ________________

force, threat of force

What are types of discourse according to Aristotle?

forensic, epideictic, and deliberative

Telling the audience they are about to be persuaded can make them resistant to the persuasive message

forewarning

When is humor effective?

gaining attention, generates positive emotions and tends to reduce negative reactions to being persuaded, leads to enhanced liking for the source

What are dimensions of credibility?

good character/trustworthiness, goodwill, intelligence/expertise

When you believe your behavior does not meet your own standards; represented along a continuum and a negative emotion

guilt

What are four features of powerless speech?

hedges or qualifiers, hesitation forms, tag questions, disclaimers

involves situation in which individuals are reminded of their current attitude toward an issue and then reminded that their behavior is not consistent with the attitude they fold

hypocrisy

Steps in applying the social judgment theory

identify the range of positions for different groups, determine majority-minority, if attitude change seems unlikely take a long-term view, remember movement toward social change is slow

Values/core beliefs are closely linked to our...?

identities and our sense of self

What are key factors of cognitive dissonance?

importance of the cognitions, ratio of dissonant to consonant cognitions, degree of cognitive overlap

Explains how we form impressions of other people; how we relate to other people depends in part on what we think about them and why we believe they're engaged in any given behavior

impression formation theory

Information not consistent with what the receiver believes to be true

incongruent information

Ego-involvement _______________ contrasting and assimilation effects

increases

Target messages at the outer edges of the receiver's LOA or LNC in order to gradually drag the anchor toward the desired point

incremental approach to persuasion

Beliefs are learned but some can also be formed by...?

indirect experience

General theory of immunizing against disease could also be applied to persuasion; to make an audience resistant to counter-persuasion, give them a small and weakened dose of arguments supporting the opposition

inoculation theory

What are types of resistance to persuasion?

inoculation theory and forewarning

Persuasion requires ___________. It focuses on messages that are _________________________________ to receiver.

intent, intended to persuade

You infer the cause of the behavior as being within the person

internal attribution

When and where do we persuade?

interpersonal and small group contexts, advertising and marketing, public relations, public health organizations and social issue groups

What are four parts to discourse?

introduction, clear statement, argument, conclusion

What are Aristotle's five canons of rhetoric?

invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery

two cognitions that are perceived as unrelated

irrelevant relationship

Method sources are especially helpful to demonstrate how the author got to the point and show author's ___________________, provide _______________________ or _____________________, and explain models used as _________________________________________________

key terms, general model, perspective, systematic critical synthesis

Rules for using humor...

know the audience so you can avoid offending, make the use of humor relevant to your persuasive goal, and combine it with other message and source factors

Language characteristics that indicate the extent the source deviates from neutrality

language intensity

Attitude change in central route tends to...?

last longer, be more stable, and be more resistant to change or counter-persuasion

Range of positions you find acceptable

latitude of acceptance (LOA)

Limited in outcome prediction when messages fall into the...?

latitude of noncommitment

range of positions about which you have no real opinion

latitude of noncommitment (LNC)

range of positions you find unacceptable

latitude of rejection (LOR)

An attitude toward an issue or object can be thought of as a range of attitudes rather than a single point along a continuum

latitudes of acceptance and rejection

What do beliefs do?

link an object to some attribute

A persuasive message that relies on logic and reasoning to be persuasive

logical appeals

When receivers are distracted during the message presentation, their ability to process the message is ___________________

lowered

What affects the pressure for change with cognitive dissonance?

magnitude of dissonance

Two key elements to use hypocrisy successfully

make the attitude of interest salient in an active way, make past failures to behave in accordance with the attitude salient

Values tend to be broad and offer the foundation for...?

many other beliefs and attitudes

Difference between the position advocated by a message and the preferred position of the receiver

message discrepancy

What are message variables?

message discrepancy, humor, delivery of the message, message incongruity

According to Plato, the ideal speaker is...?

moral and truthful

Case stories or examples used to support a claim; more vivid ad personal

narrative evidence

How can we distinguish between coercion and persuasion that fall on the continuum of social influence?

nature of psychological threat, ability to do otherwise, perception of free choice

Refers to the influence from group membership; also referred to as identification

normative influence

Two types of messages include...?

one-sided and two-sided

What is the extended parallel process model?

outlines the message components necessary for an effective appeal including guidance on how to construct a message that elicits the danger control response

What is behavior?

overt physical action on the part of an individual

Extent a person believes he or she is capable of performing a behavior and has control over whether it is performed or not

perceived behavioral control

Beliefs that tend to include issues that are less important to a person and are easier to change

peripheral beliefs

Factors that help us quickly decide how to process the message without having to engage in much elaboration

peripheral cues

Route with low elaboration and little thinking about the content of the message or the arguments it contains

peripheral route

Persuasion involves two or more ___________

persons

What are other source factors?

power, authority and obedience, normative influence and similarity, physical attractiveness, and likeability

Influence is a general term that refers to a __________ that affects something while coercion involves _______________. Propaganda involves mass audiences, emotional appeals, _____________________ of purpose, and a ______________ sound support.

power, force, concealment, lack of

What are issues in language?

powerful versus powerless speech and language intensity

What is cognitive dissonance?

pressure to change one's cognitions and to regain consistency; unpleasant and people are motivated to eliminate it

What did Rhetoric provide?

provided concepts for study of persuasion and introduced concept of persuasive appeals including ethos, logos, and pathos

The decision about the relationship between cognitions is up to the _________________

receiver

What are some best note-taking practices to avoid plagiarism?

record bibliographic data for the source, enclose all words taken directly from the source in quotation marks, record the page or pages on which the passage or idea appears, and attribute all words and ideas to their correct author

What are two types of two-sided messages?

refutational and non-refutational

What types of messages are most effective?

refutational two-sided messages

Exposing to opposing arguments is not enough to create resistance. What must also be done?

refute the opposing arguments

Basic source evaluation tool: Is the source...?

relevant, credible, timely, representative, and motivated by pursuit of truth and bias free

When using popular sources, beware of the intent. Use when you need to...?

represent conventional wisdom, get a provisional overview of the topic and related issues, find names of expert researchers, learn which fields are relevant to your topic, and learn jargon and gain ideas relevant to the topic

how effective the recommended response is in eliminating the threat

response efficacy

What are types of power bases?

reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, and expert

What does peer review certify regarding the research process?

rigor and reasonableness of the researcher's argument and interpretations

What are four general types of sources?

scholarly, news, trade, and popular

the extent the audience believes they are capable of performing the recommended response

self-efficacy

Individuals come to know their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and/or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs

self-perception theory

Reading analytically is to attend to, understand, assess, and comment on _________________ of moves a writer uses to maker an argument; the _____________________ between claims made and the evidence and logic used to support them, the _____________________________ and _____________________ of specific keywords or phrases a writer chooses to convey his or hew view; _________________ in data, ideas, methods, or perspectives; anomalous data, ideas, methods, or perspective once a __________________ has been established; the explicit or tacit organizing binaries or ____________________ in the piece

sequence, relationship, significance, implications, patterns, pattern, oppositions

the grimness of the threat presented in the message

severity

What does an effective fear appeal include?

severity, susceptibility, response efficacy, and self-efficacy

What are the three possible outcomes of persuasion?

shape, reinforce, change

People tend to cluster with those who _____________ their attitudes

share

With education, the intention is to ____________ information or knowledge but the line between education and persuasion is often blurry. Communication is the process by which one person stimulates meaning in the mind(s) of another person or persons through _______________ and _______________ messages

share, verbal, nonverbal

Ego-involvement affects the _________ of the LOR and LNC and as ego-involvement increases, the width of the LOR _______________

size, expands

Suggests that high credibility sources have more persuasive impact immediately following the message than do low credibility sources but that, over time, the effects of credibility wear off

sleeper effect

Ethos refers to..?

speaker's ability to be believable

Summary of many cases that is expressed in numbers and is used to support a claim

statistical evidence

What are types of consistency about attitudes?

stimulus-response, response-response, and evaluative

When did the study of persuasion begin?

studied and written about 2,500 hears ago when Aristotle wrote Rhetoric

Concerned with how something is said

style

Social pressure from an important other

subjective norm

What is functional theory?

suggest a functional matching message is most likely to change an individual's attitude when the message is directed at the attitude function the attitude serves

Synthesizing is more than just a __________________ and is instead an ___________________ account of the literature. Be sure to attribute ideas to the ______________________ and...?

summary, interpretive, researcher, weave quoted passages into sentences of your own rather than directly quote

how probable it is that the threat will affect the audience

susceptibility

Persuasion involves _______________________________ between two or more persons with intent to change, reinforce, or shape ___________________________________ of the receiver

symbolic communication; attitudes, beliefs, behaviors

Persuasion involves _______________________________ using a shared symbol system. Language and nonverbal behaviors are _________________. Persuasion involves verbal and nonverbal _____________________.

symbolic interaction, symbols, communication

The less cognitive overlap between the alternatives, the greater...?

the dissonance experienced

What is initial credibility?

the level of source credibility apart from any specific message

What is derived credibility?

the level of source credibility during and after the presentation of a particular message

Focuses on behavior as the ultimate outcome rather than attitude change

theory of reasoned action

Myth 4 is that there is one more source to read before writing can begin. What's the correction?

there will always be one more source you could read, start writing early in your research process, and be willing to revise as you consider further evidence

Sources that serve as exhibits give readers a suggestion for ways to _____________ about the topic, aid the audience in drawing _________________ and set up the author's ____________________ and interpretation

think, conclusions, explanation

Why study persuasion?

to be more successful persuaders, to become better consumers of information, and to better understand what they observe happening around them

Why measure intentions and behavior?

to study persuasion we have to measure variables of interest, in applied situations we frequently have to demonstrate the effectiveness of our messages and campaigns

What are the reasons to study, practice and understand rhetoric according to Aristotle?

to uphold truth and justice and play down their opposites, to teach in a way suitable to popular audience, to analyze both sides of a question, to enable one to defend oneself

Types of forewarning

topic and position forewarning, persuasive intent forewarning

Values that are more important than the issues causing the dissonance so the superior value transcends the lesser inconsistent value

transcendence

True or false: attitudes tend to be consistent

true

True or false: fear alone is insufficient for an effective message

true

True or false: the more credible the source is perceived to be, the more accepting the audience is of message discrepancy

true

How can you raise the magnitude of dissonance? What happens when the magnitude is large enough?

trying to raise the stakes of the issue for the receiver, developing many arguments in the hope of adding dissonant cognitions; receiver feels pressured to resolve the dissonance in some way

Plato focused on ______________________________ while Sophists were focused on...?

ultimate truth; how to flatter an audience

How to approach the text...?

use pre-reading strategies, mark up your texts using a pencil or pen, track your intellectual response to the reading, transfer notes to Word or a note-taking program

What does logos refer to?

uses reasoning to convince listeners

Core beliefs =

values

Reading analytically also means to uncover and reveal the tacit _____________ and ____________________ that anchor a writer's perspective; to understand the larger _______________ in which specific data or phenomenon are relevant; and to explore and reveal the ________________________ of the data, ideas, or methods

values, assumptions, context, implications

represented on a continuum with one extreme being complete control and the other being no control; between is a range of behaviors influenced by you and circumstances beyond your control

volition

3 factors for the intention-behavior relationship

volition, correspondence, time

If we understand why an attitude is held and how it serves the receiver, then...?

we can better understand how to alter those attitudes and know better how to leverage those functions to achieve persuasive outcomes

What can be used to infer attitudes? Are inferences always accurate?

what people say (verbal behavior), facial expressions (nonverbal behavior), actions people take, responses to a questionnaire; no, may be inaccurate

Invention is concerned with _____________ is said rather than __________ it is said and is closely related to the _________ appeal

what, how, logos

What are questions to ask about a source?

who is the writer? what is the purpose of the source? does the source provide ways to verify information? what type of source is it?

Arrangement is concerned with oration and...?

written argument

Myth 5 is that if I could just find the perfect source, I would understand exactly what to say about my topic. What's the correction?

your most important work is to make information meaningful by thinking carefully about what it tells you in regards to the problem or issue you are trying to solve, when you are confused try writing about your confusion, and identify strategies that you can use to overcome your difficulty