Taylor Scantlebury

Literary Review

February 24, 2015

Persuasion is a combination of power, influence, and motivation (Brambilla, & Leach,

2014). Power increases one’s ability to persuade and influence. This power can be seen with

people who possess knowledge, authority, or use the coercion during the persuasion process

(Henning, 1998). Influence is who a person is, and how they impact a message; this includes

traits like being trustworthy and credible. Motivation is the ability to incite others to act in

accordance with the suggestions and ideas presented. Motivation is the “call to action” or what

the speaker wants the audience to do. Persuasion is the process of changing or reforming

attitudes, beliefs, opinions or behavior towards a predetermined out come through voluntary

compliance. Persuasion is not the same as negotiation. Negotiation suggests some degree of

meeting in the middle. Rather than compromising, effective persuasion will actually convince the

opposing party to abandon their previous position and embrace yours.

In the 2005 article Isabelle Poggi explains how every act of persuasion is simply an effort

to influence people to pursue a goal. The goal of persuasion takes a look at the Aristotelian

persuasive strategies of logos, pathos, ethos and how persuaders uses these strategies to appeal to

the audience and convince them to pursue a goal. This article suggests an analysis of dialogue,

by looking at goals as tools to determine what strategies are being used within the dialogue

structure. When examining advertising, this kind of analysis clarifies the relationships between

the persuader’s and the audience’s goals and to explain how much and how directly the

persuader utilizes logos, ethos and pathos in his/her discourse. In the book Style, Rhetoric and

Rhythm (1967) Standish Henning wrote a general summary of Aristotle's appeals. This book

discussed in great detail what the three persuasive appeals of Aristotle were. Ethos, Pathos, and

Logos. Ethos refers to the personal character of the Speaker. Aristotle's believed that audiences

could be persuaded if they perceived a speaker as credible. It's the audience's perception of the

credibility of the speaker. Ethos includes such things as body type, height, movement, clothes,

reputation, vocal quality, word choice, eye contact, sincerity, expertise, and charisma. Pathos

refers to the psychological state of the audience. The psychological or emotional state of the

listener can affect persuasion because "our judgment when we are pleased and friendly is not the

same as when we are pained or hostile”. Logos is the substance of a message, or the logic

presented to provide proof to the listener. He claimed that the most effective persuasive attempts

contain all three concepts, making a steadfast base for victory. This manner of reasoning is what

enables the audience to find the message persuasive and convincing. In 2010, Cynthia King also

wrote an article explaining the work of Aristotle. King claimed that Aristotle believed that ethos

was the most powerful of the three persuasive mean. A scientific study has proven the power of

individual ethos. A study by Hovland and Weiss gave students messages that were identical in all

respects, except for their source. Sources perceived as highly credible yielded large opinion

changes in the students; while sources perceived as low credible produced small opinion

changes. All three of these articles explain the basics of persuasion. Each one has a slightly

different position to persuasion, which supports why further study and research can still be done.

Persuasion does take a set of skills and for it to be effective almost always needs to follow

certain guidelines. However, because there are exceptional cases and situations, persuasion is an

art, not a science.

In the 2014 article, Kwang Yeun Chun, Ji Hee Song, Hollenbeck, Candice, and Jong-Ho

Lee researched if contextual advertisements are effective. This article is important and useful

because the sample for my research question and the sample from this research are the same

demographic. This article suggests that because of the growing online market, advertisements

must become more contextualized to appeal to the audience. This article gives examples of how

the Theory of Priming effects the audience. The Theory of Priming states that media images

stimulate related thoughts in the minds of audience members. For example, if a person were to

see a cartoon character play a trick that inflicts pain or injury on another character, without

permanent consequences, it could make that person more likely to repeat the violent action in

real life. The results of the study showed that the audience prefers less complex contextual

advertisements online. Related to my research question, this means that college aged individuals

respond more favorably to advertisements that are straight forward and explain what exactly the

product is and to advertisements that don’t have so much going on that it distracts them from the

product. In 1998, Eleonora Curlo and Robert Chamblee examined the process of advertising and

persuasion and how identifying brands played a role in credibility. This article studies

advertisement-based persuasion; it suggests that viewer identification of the brand being

advertised positively affects attitude toward the advertisement, which in turn enhances positive

brand attitudes. Curlo and Chamblee also state that identification of the advertiser is key in

advertisement processing. Advertisements that enabled identification of the brand appeared

credible, which contributed to enhancing their persuasive impact of Ethos. These two articles

explain what components in advertisements make viewers have a more favorable attitude

towards them. This is important to my research because it allows me to see what researchers

have deemed essential to have in an advertisement. Both of these article show the importance of

having credibility in the advertisement.

These articles draw attention to significant parts of the process of persuasion and certain

criteria necessary for advertisements to appeal to the viewers. Most of these articles claim that

the only part of the message that is important is its influence, the position it supports, and the

clarity of the claim. These articles do not explain how to be a successful persuader, but how

people are persuaded.

References

Brambilla, M., & Leach, C. W. (2014). On The Importance of Being Moral: The Distinctive Role of Morality in Social Judgment. Social Cognition, 32(4), 397-408.

Curlo, E., & Chamblee, R. (1998). Ad processing and persuasion: The role of brand identification. Psychology & Marketing, 15(3), 279-299.

Henning, S. (1967). Style, rhetoric and rhythm: A general summary of Aristotle's appeals.

Modern Language Journal, 51(2), 112.

King, C. L. (2010). Beyond Persuasion. Journal of Business Communication, 47(1), 69-78.

Kwang Yeun, C., Ji Hee, S., Hollenbeck, C. R., & Jong-Ho, L. (2014). Are contextual

advertisements effective?. International Journal of Advertising, 33(2), 351-371.

doi:10.2501/IJA-33-2-351-371

Poggi, I. (2005). The goals of persuasion. Pragmatics & Cognition, 13(2), 297-336.