7.1: Persuasion Beyond Words

Learning Objectives

1. Define nondiscursive persuasion and explain how it differs from discursive persuasion, emphasizing its reliance on sensory and symbolic elements.
2. Explain how nondiscursive messages are processed, specifically relating it to the peripheral route of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and the use of mental shortcuts.
3. Identify and describe the persuasive impact of various nondiscursive elements, including color, sound, olfaction (scent), and typography.

What is Visual or Nondiscursive Persuasion?

The Oxford Reference describes visual persuasion as "the use of images to influence people's attitudes and/or behaviour: for instance, through meaning transfer, implied claims, emotional appeals, connotation, pictorial metaphor, and visual symbolism. This is a common strategy in advertising, political communication, and propaganda. Persuasive texts are occasionally wholly wordless (assuming the viewer's familiarity with the codes) but there is usually some verbal anchorage." Hence, visual persuasion is an important facet of Nondiscursive persuasion and sometimes referred to as visual rhetoric, visual communication and nonverbal persuasion.

Nondiscursive persuasion refers to influence that occurs without relying primarily on conventional language, logical arguments, or sequential reasoning. Instead, it focuses on how meaning and persuasion are conveyed through a broad range of sensory and symbolic elements that create instant connections:

• Images and Visuals: Powerful advertisements with striking imagery, icons, or headlines that evoke emotion or association.
• Music and Sound: A dramatic score in a movie, a memorable jingle in an ad, or specific sound effects that influence mood and perception without explicit words.
• Sensory Cues: This includes elements like typography, color, and even olfactics (scent), which can subtly shape feelings and associations.
• Experiences and Environments: The atmosphere of a retail store, the design of a building, or a shared emotional experience (like attending a concert or a rally) that shapes attitudes and behaviors.

Unlike discursive messages that build arguments over time through explicit language, nondiscursive messages often depend on instant connections made by visual and sensory information, as they typically have less time or space to convey their point (e.g., billboards, advertising, websites). While they may contain linguistic elements, their primary persuasive force comes from their symbolic and sensory impact.

Processing Nondiscursive Messages

Nondiscursive messages are frequently processed via the peripheral route of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM, discussed in a previous chapter regarding Persuasion Theories). This means receivers often use mental shortcuts (heuristics) based on factors like:

• Likeability (of the visuals, source, or associated feeling)
• Similarity (to oneself or desired ideals)
• Source credibility (implied visually)

Peripheral processing occurs when an audience has low motivation or ability to centrally process (engage in extensive, critical examination). Factors reducing motivation/ability include low personal relevance, distractions, limited time, or a complex message. While peripherally processed messages can lead to attitude change, this change is often less permanent and less likely to predict consistent behavior compared to centrally processed messages.

Types of Nondiscursive Messages

Color

Color has long been associated with emotional states. When we’re mad, we’re “seeing red.” We can be green with envy. When we are sad, we say we are feeling blue. An evil or malicious person is said to be black-hearted. Because the association between a feeling and color can be strong, some wish to conclude that colors cause feelings, that color is somehow tied to affective states, or that color causes certain behavioral outcomes. Research does not bear this out, however. “There aren’t many clinical studies that prove the effectiveness of color psychology, and the ones that exist are somewhat inconclusive” (“How Do Colors”). No matter the color of a team’s jersey, skill levels (and testosterone levels) do not appear to be affected by color. If color were causal, it would be hard to explain how the color blue is associated both with sadness and with calmness, or how the color yellow is associated with happiness as well as with cowardice. “Elements such as personal preference, experiences, upbringing, cultural differences, context, etc., often muddy the effect individual colors have on us” (Karthikeyan and Joy 65). In short, different life and cultural experiences equal different color associations. “According to color-in-context theory, color effects are rooted in the repeated pairing of color and particular concepts, messages, and experiences, and in this way, the mere perception of the color may evoke meaning-consistent affect, cognition and behavior” (Kesong et al.).

If colors have no objective bearing on our psychological states, they certainly have power over our purchasing decisions! Just as colors are often associated with feelings, colors are very much associated with brands. Marketing and branding rely heavily upon color association. Try to imagine Coca-Cola or Target without seeing the color red, or the Barbie logo in a color other than hot pink. Is it even McDonald’s without the iconic golden arches? Just a hint of dark green gets me thinking about Starbucks! Most companies carefully consider color in their branding.

The IDealogic Brand Lab, a branding agency, states: “When it comes to choosing a brand’s color scheme, it’s critical that designers understand how each color will resonate with various target audiences. This can vary depending on the demographic or behavioral differences in consumers (“The Science of Color”).

IDealab features colors frequently used in marketing and “their influence:”

• Red – creates a sense of urgency, triggers powerful emotions, and encourages appetite. It is associated with movement, excitement, power, fearlessness, and passion.
• Blue – trust, loyalty, dependability, logic, security, and serenity. Provides a sense of security and stimulates productivity. It is also known to be the preferred color of men.
• Green – health, tranquility, growth, freshness, prosperity, hope, and nature. Used to promote environmental issues. Green can encourage balance and harmony.
• Purple – commonly associated with wisdom, wealth, spirituality, imagination, and sophistication.
• Yellow – cheerful color that promotes optimism, warmth, happiness, creativity, intellect, and extroversion. Can be used to create a sense of anxiety that can draw in impulsive buyers and window shoppers.
• Orange – creates a sense of courage, confidence, warmth, innovation, friendliness, and energy.
• Pink – imaginative, passionate, caring, creativity, innovative, quirky. Often associated with femininity.
• Black – associated with sophistication, security, power, elegance, authority, and substance. Often associated with luxury and power.
• White/Grey – innocence, purity, cleanliness, simplistic, pristine. Represents cleanliness and can provide a modern feel.

"Color Emotion Guide" by The Logo Company is used with permission.

Sounds

Beyond visuals, auditory elements are powerful forms of nondiscursive persuasion, impacting us on emotional, cognitive, and behavioral levels often without conscious awareness. As British Neurologist Oliver Sacks noted, "Music evokes emotion, and emotion can bring with it memory… it brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can.”

Music, a universal human experience from lullabies to life's major milestones, is inherently emotional. It's culturally selected to sound expressive, inducing feelings, regulating mood, and reducing stress by releasing dopamine and altering time perception (Juslin & Västfjäll; Heshmat; Droit-Volet et al.). Its deep engagement with multiple brain regions also links music powerfully to memory, allowing musical emotions and recollections to outlast other forms of recall (Sacks; Hashmet). Beyond mood and memory, music directly impacts behavior, influencing physical movement (swaying, dancing), physiological responses (heart rate mirroring tempo), and emotional mirroring (Hashmet). This influence extends strategically to consumer behavior: retailers leverage music to affect product choice (e.g., French vs. German wine sales), perceived value (classical vs. Top 40), and shopping pace and sales volume (slower tempo, increased sales) (North et al.; Arendi & Kim; Milliman).

Sonic persuasion encompasses influence through sounds more broadly. As Stephen Connor points out, "One could always look away, but as sound theorists know, one can never close one’s ears.” This inescapable nature allows sounds, including paralinguistic cues (volume, pauses, intonation, accents) and general noises, to make forceful arguments (Goodale; Cantril & Allport).

Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast stands as a seminal example. Its "breaking news" format, combined with expertly crafted sound effects of panic and war, authoritative voices, and alarming on-the-scene reports, terrified listeners, demonstrating sound's profound early persuasive power (Goodale; Campbell).

Sound's pervasive nature means it can "saturate and short-circuit perception" more effectively than images (Chion). Iconic sounds (e.g., crickets chirping, a bomb's whistle, laughter) inherently elicit strong associations and emotions, conveying meaning and persuasive arguments beyond spoken words (Goodale). Early radio research confirmed sound's persuasive capacity, finding that auditory processing influenced comfort (hearing others laugh) and argument conviction (slow speech), and that sounds are more readily recognized than text (Cantril & Allport).

Beyond these direct effects, sound proxemics—the manipulation of spatial positioning through microphone distance, volume, reverberation, and mixing—can significantly influence an audience. Collins and Dockwray highlight how this creates underlying emotional messages, particularly in public service announcements, by "plac[ing] listeners intimately within the scene." Because auditory rhetoric often operates below conscious awareness and we lack a formal language to dissect it, understanding how sound functions as a powerful, non-obvious persuasive device is crucial (Collins & Dockwray).

Olfatics

Olfaction, our most ancient sense, is uniquely linked to the brain's emotional centers, bypassing the thalamus directly to the cerebral cortex (Pizzoli et al.; Van Hartevelt & Kringelbach, p. 1220). This intimate connection makes smell a potent trigger for vivid, emotional, and often involuntary memories—a phenomenon Marcel Proust famously described after tasting a madeleine (Van Campen, p. 2). Such memories are more evocative than those triggered by sights or sounds, highlighting the persuasive power of olfactory cues (Herz & Schooler, p. 27).

Research shows scents strongly influence consumer behavior. Studies by Haberman reveal that pleasant scents in advertising impact consumers' affective reactions, product evaluations, and purchase behavior. When a pleasant scent was present, customers were more swayed by the scent than by argument strength, suggesting cognitive resources shifted away from detailed processing (Haberman, p. 15). Similarly, simple, familiar scents in retail environments led to more positive attitudes, greater loyalty, and increased sales, unlike complex or unfamiliar scents (Haberman et al., p. 10). Gender-scent congruity also affects behavior; shoppers responded more favorably and spent significantly more time and money in stores scented with gender-appropriate aromas (Spangenberg et al., p. 1286). Ambient scents even improve brand recall and recognition (Morrin & Ratneshwar, p. 10).

Beyond retail, olfactory persuasion extends to other settings. Museums use scents to guide visitors and increase time spent in specific areas (Seljanko & Tookmaa, p. 20). In nightclubs, pleasant scents boosted dancing, improved evaluations of the evening, music, and mood (Shifferstein et al.).

Though research on olfactory persuasion is relatively new, these early findings clearly demonstrate smell's powerful links to memory, emotion, and, crucially, to behavior.

Typography

Your choice of typeface (font) profoundly impacts how an audience perceives your message. Fonts strategically convey mood, from urgency (like a bold protest sign) to credibility (like the authoritative serif fonts used by news organizations such as The New York Times). Just as handwritten script can reveal emotion, digital fonts should be selected to match the feeling and image you wish to convey. For professional contexts, a typeface like Times New Roman projects reliability and credibility, subtly influencing audience trust in your message or brand.

Serif fonts, characterized by small "tags" on their letters (e.g., Times New Roman, Garamond), are popular for formal print documents as they convey a professional, trustworthy, and traditional tone. While some can adapt for online content with careful sizing, they generally excel in contexts where credibility is paramount.

For effective visual persuasion, restraint and consistency are key. Overuse of typefaces, sizes, or emphasis (bold, capitalization, italics) creates visual clutter, overwhelming the audience and diluting your message. Emphasize sparingly to ensure impact.

Finally, layout and composition are crucial. Densely packed text or slides deter engagement. Strategic use of negative space (white space), clear paragraph breaks, and consistent heading styles enhances readability and emphasizes organizational structure. A well-composed layout allows your audience's eyes to follow a natural progression, improving comprehension and bolstering your message's persuasive appeal (e.g., how our eyes follow a line or curve in an image, or how headings guide us through a report).

Exercises

1. Think about a specific commercial space you recently visited (e.g., a coffee shop, a retail store, a movie theater lobby). Beyond the products or services themselves, identify and describe at least three distinct nondiscursive elements (e.g., specific colors, type of music, ambient scents, typography on signs, overall layout/lighting) that contributed to the atmosphere. How do you believe these elements subtly influenced your mood, perception of the brand, or even your behavior (e.g., made you linger longer, feel more relaxed, perceive higher quality)?
2. Given the insights from this chapter, why do you think nondiscursive forms of persuasion (like images, music, or scent) can sometimes be more effective or memorable than purely discursive, logical arguments, especially in today's fast-paced, information-saturated environment? Consider the limitations of relying solely on either discursive and nondiscursive communication in certain persuasive contexts.
3. Imagine you are creating a simple visual message (e.g., a poster, a social media graphic, or a product logo) for one of the following causes/products. Choose one:
   • A calm and relaxing meditation app.
   • An energetic and exciting new sports drink.
   • A trustworthy and established financial advisory service.
   • Your Task: Select a primary color palette (2-3 colors) and describe a suitable font style (e.g., serif, sans-serif, bold, light, script) you would use for your design. Explain why you chose these specific elements, referencing the principles of color psychology and typography discussed in the chapter, and how they would contribute to your desired persuasive effect and the brand's image.'
4. You are tasked with designing the auditory experience for a new retail space (e.g., a high-end boutique, a fast-food restaurant, a children's toy store). Beyond just selling products, your goal is to influence customer mood, behavior, and brand perception using sound. Describe the type of music you would choose (genre, tempo, volume) and explain what specific persuasive effects you would hope to achieve (e.g., encourage lingering, increase turnover, enhance feelings of luxury, create a fun atmosphere). What other intentional sounds or aspects of "sound proxemics" would you consider incorporating (e.g., ambient background noises, specific sound effects at checkout, manipulating microphone distance for announcements)? Explain how these elements would contribute to your overall persuasive strategy.

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Contributions and Attributions

LibreTexts. (n.d.). 05: Esoteric Appeals. In Persuasion, Critical Thinking, and Writing. Social Sci LibreTexts.