4.4: Persuasive Strategies Related to the Audience or Context

Much research has been done regarding whether certain people are more susceptible to persuasion than others. Additionally, research has been done on which media are more persuasive with particular audiences.

Ladies and Gentlemen. Early research in the communication discipline seemed to indicate that women were more susceptible to persuasion than men. Some speculated that this was due to "women's greater verbal ability and thus generally better reception of messages" (Lau 36). Further research revealed, however, that these findings may have been due to other factors: one, that women are socialized to maintain social harmony while men are socialized to be assertive and independent; and two, sex differences in attitude change studies focused on topics that males would be more likely to have stronger opinions on, and thus could appear more resistant to attitude change (Lau 36). Research indicates that women and men have almost equal tendencies to change their attitudes (Eagly and Carli 17).

How do you feel about you? In addition to gender, self-esteem has also been studied as a factor in persuasion. Despite a great deal of research over several decades, the results are mixed; findings in this area are contradictory. Whether a person has high or low regard for themselves has not been established as a factor in persuasion.

Intelligence. As with self-esteem, the research results relating to audience intelligence is mixed, although Deaux et al. found that “highly intelligent people changed their attitudes more than less intelligent people when the message was complex; but when a message was weak....people of lower intelligence were more likely to change their attitudes” (185). The ability to process and scrutinize messages, as well as one's memory/recall abilities, may be factor.

I Forgot. People forget things over time. Memory is heavily studied in the field of psychology, and "forgetting curves" – how learned information slips out of our memories over time – are real. Studies show that persuasion is more persistent than would be suggested by standard forgetting curves, but not by much (Lau 37). It stands to reason, then, that a person with better memory functions will have better retention of attitude change over time. "If attitude change is a function of attention to and comprehension of a persuasive message, then the persistence or stability of that attitude change over time should be a function of the ability to remember the gist of the arguments in that message" (Lau 37).

Talk to me. "Although we may think of Madison Avenue as all powerful, face-to-face interaction is far more effective" (Gass and Seiter 17). Although persuasive messages abound in mass media, reach millions, and sometimes cost small fortunes, they are not more effective than good, old-fashioned personal persuasion. According to Roghanizad and Bohns, people "feel awkward and uncomfortable saying 'no,' both because of what it might insinuate about the requester and because it feels bad to let someone down" (223). It's much easier to ignore requests or persuasion attempts in less personal, mediated forms of communication.

"The medium is the message." This famous Marshall McLuhan quote eloquently expresses his belief that the medium through which we choose to communicate holds as much, if not more, value than the message itself. The channel by which we share a message matters: words printed in a newspaper hit differently than identical words spoken aloud by Morgan Freeman or those same words posted on social media or those same words heard on a radio commercial. How a persuasive message is delivered affects its persuasiveness. As we learned in the elaboration likelihood model and the systemic-heuristic model, some messages require a great deal of thought, elaboration, and mental energy. Some media are more conducive to this than others. Many persuasive messages rely upon heuristic cues, and some media are better-suited for this. “A written message may be more effective in conveying information and initiating systematic processing, particularly information that is difficult to grasp. More direct communication such as videotaped and live presentations, tend to initiate heuristic processing” (Deaux et al. 184). Complex messages and complicated issues may be better communicated in writing, followed up by an oral presentation. When a persuasive message is simple, printed messages produce less attitude change than audio messages and audio messages produce less attitude change than audio-visual messages (Chaiken and Eagly 605).