Persuasion

= Definition: = A deliberate attemt to influence the attitudes and/or behavior of another person. Gen Psych, Chapter 14, Pg. 455

= Examples: =
 * To encourage healthy eating, higher taxes should be imposed on soft drinks and junk food.
 * To conserve fuel and save lives, the 55 miles-per-hour national speed limit should be restored.
 * Financial incentives should be offered to high school students who perform well on standardized tests.

= Analogies: = Rhetorical and communication scholars have long asserted the significance of analogy in persuasion. A variety of persuasive roles have been stipulated for analogies. These accounts are inconsistent, so individual explanations are either inaccurate or incomplete. This essay aims to refine understandings of analogy by reviewing, critiquing, and synthesizing several classical and contemporary rhetorical analyses, a cognitive model of analogy processing, and dual‐process theories of persuasion. The synthesis, which is presented in an integrated set of propositions, offers a systematic view of the potential suasory roles of explanatory and expressive analogies. Suggestions for testing the propositions are discussed as well.

= Mnemonics: = P articulars E xist R emedial S chools U nless A ssociated S inks I mpress O mnivorous N otes

=In the News:= [|Mitt Romney's persuasion problem] William Buckley famously said that a conservative was someone who stood athwart history yelling stop. Mitt Romney, who says he is "severely conservative," would presumably point at history with a shotgun.

[|BEHIND OPRAH WINFREY'S POWER OF PERSUASION] In order to understand the psychology behind why people connect with her and accept her guidance, I spoke to Stuart Fischoff, the senior editor at the Journal of Media Psychology. In the early 1990s, Fischoff was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He says Winfrey is a master of impression management. She understands her influence and knows how to shape her image as a means of managing her persuasion power.

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