Persuasion Politics and Communication John A Cagle Fotheringhams

Persuasion, Politics, and Communication John A. Cagle

Fotheringham’s Functions of Persuasion n n n Energizing and initiating the persuasive process Selecting goals Deciding what instrumental effects to seek in achieving goals Selecting, securing, & analyzing audiences Acquiring and originating message content Selecting messages n n n n Selecting and creating conditions to facilitate message effect Structuring message elements into a single campaign Selecting media and forms of persuasion Encoding messages Transmitting messages Securing and interpreting feedback Making ethical decisions

Relationships among the interdependent functions of persuasion Initiation of process Problem solving Selecting goals Message Content Organizing campaign Events/ Instrumental effects Audiences selected Messages Selected Media Selected Ethics Creating conditions Action Transmitting messages Feedback Messages Encoded/ Style

Scott’s Components of Attitude Scott argues that three basic principles have been used in defining attitude in theory and research: convention within the discipline, the user’s own theoretical purposes, and the outcome of empirical investigations designed to establish the distinctions and similarities. Scott identified several components of attitudes as revealed in a survey of research: direction, magnitude, intensity, ambivalence, salience, affective salience, cognitive complexity, overtness, embeddedness, flexibility and consciousness. Scott observed that most attitude studies only measure direction, magnitude, and intensity.

Components n n n Direction is among the most widely accepted and one of the more complex properties. Direction basically depicts the course taken by the attitude. Two major components compose this property, positive feelings and negative feelings. Magnitude is the degree of favorableness or unfavorableness. Similar to direction, magnitude applies a measurement to the emotions defining the attitude. Intensity is the strength of feeling associated with the direction and magnitude.

n n The concept of ambivalence relates to the property of direction in that a person may have bipolar feelings simultaneously (e. g. , giving blood to the Red Cross). The property salience is broken down into two subdivisions, the prominence of the attitude and centrality of the attitude. Affective salience determines the degree to which the focal point was influenced by an evaluative content. The cognitive complexity property relates to the two previous properties in that it concentrates on the formation of the focal point. The essence of cognitive complexity is the abundance of the ideational content.

n n n The prominence of the conative component is clearly identified as the degree of overtness of an attitude. The “overt enactment” of an attitude is caused by the personal characteristics of each individual. An attitude is considered embedded if the concept is either highly isolated in a person’s mind or highly connected with other terms. Flexibility indicates the ease with which modifications alter an attitude.

n Consciousness, as a property of attitude, specifies the components available. For example, unconscious attitudes are in reference to behavior tendencies that lack cognitive and affective components. Conscious attitudes include all the components needed in an attitude.

Graber’s Condensation Symbols n n n A verbal condensation symbol is name, word, or phrase that arouses emotional, mental, or physical action involving the listener’s most basic values. Political speech communities are made up of many condensation symbols: Democrats, Republicans, and capitalism, to name a few. When audiences react to condensation symbols, they focus their attention to the symbols rather than the facts of the communication. Condensation symbols supply the listener with instant categorizations and evaluations. Therefore, when we hear a phrase, word, or maxim we identify with, we have a way of grouping events that can be positive or negative. In addition, we can also pass judgments about events in which we have minimal experience.

Theodore Newcomb (1953) Communication among humans performs the essential function of enabling two or more individuals to maintain simultaneous orientation toward one another as communicators and toward objects of communication. The term “orientation” is used as equivalent to “attitude” in its more inclusive sense of referring to both cathectic and cognitive tendencies.

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Tuna Casserole “Crap—I hate tuna casserole. ” - “I have cooked a delicious casserole for our dinner. ” + “I love you, Eve” John + + “I love you, John” Eve

Osgood’s Cognitive Dynamics (1960) n n “Insight into the dynamics of human thinking has been available in the writings of brilliant mean of all periods. Certainly Aristotle was aware of these dynamics when he dealt with the principles of rhetoric. . ” “But the intuitive grasp and common sense— essential though they may be to discovery in science—are not the same thing as explicit and testable principles of human behavior. ”

Some theory of cognitive interaction 1. 2. 3. Cognitive modification results from the psychological stress produced by the cognitive inconsistencies. If cognitive elements are to interact, they must be brought into some relation with one another. Magnitude of stress toward modification increases with the degree of cognitive inconsistency.

4. The dynamics of cognitive interaction are such that modifications under stress always reduce total cognitive inconsistency. a. b. c. The sign, or even the existence, of a relationship may be changed. The sign, or even the existence, of a cognitive element may be changed. Other cognitive elements that are in balanced relation with one or the other of the dissonant elements may be adduced (bolstering).

d. e. f. Other cognitive elements that are in a relation of imbalance with one or the other of the dissonant elements may be adduced (undermining). One or the other of the dissonant cognitive elements may be split into two parts, these parts being of opposed valence and dissociatively related (differentiation). Dissonant cognitive elements may be combined into a larger unit which, as a whole, is in balance with other cognitive elements (transcendence).