How Persuasion Informs Public Communication: Theory And Practice - Example

Running Head: Contemporary Issues, Persuasion: Issue/Debate in the literature: Your name Course name Professors’ name Date PERSUASION INFORMS PUBLIC COMMUNICATION THEORY AND PRATICE Introduction Persuasion is the changing of attitudes by presenting information about another attitude (social psychological factors underlying the impact of advertising). This paper underlines the effects of psychology in public communication. In the art of persuasion, one plays around with the psychology of its customers so that they end up buying that product. This essay lays its context to cosmetic surgery, which today is the fastest growing field of medicine. Culturally, this was a thing only spoken in whispers because the belief was that God gave us natural beauty, which man should not alter. For this reason, the few who engaged in such an exercise did it discreetly. Eventually the whole issue started coming to light and soon there was news of celebrities who have done so, to change their looks. This no longer was a thing done in the dark quarters or hiding, but a thing that the public knew very well that it existed (Ivana,2008). How did the public come to know of it and find it interesting; the media? The media carries all information and influences a lot on the thinking of the public. News comes through the media, and all adverts are through the media. Professional marketers take this advantage to make their products public, may they be good or bad. This is where persuasion comes in, and that is through advertisements. Advertisements may be through the radio and television and print media. Cosmetic Surgery To bring cosmetic surgery to the limelight completely, advertisers and other companies used the famous shows, e.g. “The Oprah Show” to show how ladies have benefitted from the whole thing. This would attract a large audience (mostly ladies), who would wish to have such desired bodies or faces. To give the advertisement more authority, doctors would be invited to such shows to explain how the procedure takes place. This would give more convincing power to consumers who would see the security in cosmetic surgery. Drugs used for the same effect would also be advertised by doctors who recommended the substances to viewers and listeners. At any time, persuasion begins with the basic process of communication. In the journal, Persuasion as a Dynamic, Multidimensional Process: An Investigation of Individual and Intraindividual Differences, the writer asserts that there are four elements of persuasion; the communicator and his credibility, the content of the message, conveyance of the message and finally, the audience. In our case here, selection of the audience is conducted by the marketer so that the communicator does not feed the wrong information to the right people. Men will not bother so much on how their faces and looks can be changed, but on the other hand women know that looks are everything. This is the target audience. The communicator must be a person of character who the audience can believe in and concentrate on what he says (Thompson, 1999). This where the media comes in. the media plays a very critical role in matters concerning health and any good marketer will know that, in matters of health, people tend to follow-up a lot on what the media will say. They believe that the media is very informative. This is oblivious of the fact that, what the media delivers can also be negative. In order to deliver the message about cosmetic surgery well, institutions have been using Television shows to pass the message across, shows such as “Extreme Makeover”. Such programs run in different episodes, so that the viewer can be able to follow up and see how extreme makeover changes a person’s looks. The intention of this is to create a basis of discussion and debate amongst friends and any other audience of the program. The credibility of the communicator is paramount and in these programs, cosmetologists and other professional beauty therapists are invited to carry out the process. This makes the debate hotter to the extent that other TV shows spring up to discuss topics on the same, this time round, they invite a finalist of a successful operation that changes his/her looks (Icek, 2010). Peter Christenson and Maria Ivancin in their journal: The “reality” of health: Reality Television and the Public Health”, note that the impact of television on its audience can sometimes be negative. This is a fact that marketers are very careful on so that whatever message they communicate should be positive so that it will have a positive effect. Shows in our media that have persuaded their audience negatively are such as “Fear Factor” and “survivor”. They lead some audience into trying out some of what they see, and they finally find themselves in a very tricky situation. Some of these shows have contributed a lot what we see going on today. The fashion that are coming up plastic surgeries gone bad, the want for women to have certain body sizes, the crave to have that lighter skin tone and a smoother one for that matter and many other changes coming with the generation today. Like we noted earlier, in persuasion, how the message I conveyed is of extreme importance. (Petty,& Cacioppo, 1986). The communicated message must be put in a way that the audience are affected to the point of having tears of passion in their eyes. Looking at how it’s done today, through soap operas, sitcom and dramas. What has been the driving behind these shows; the craving for being thin sexy and attractive. Shows like “America’s Next Top Model” have it all in black and white. What is the impact of such shows to their audience? For instance in the world, every girl wants to have the body and looks of Tyra Banks. But whatever they do in the end, in order to maintain such bodies is sometimes very risky. Peter Christenson and Maria Ivancin note that some commentators show a lot of concern about the impact of such shows. Some assert that, the fight to being attractive and sexy has led to eating disorders among adolescent girls. It is an honest opinion that the communicator here met his goal and effectively, though on the negative side, he still did. His job was to persuade you to watch and follow what the placement on the television and for sure you did. A successful marketer should be able to twist an individual’s thoughts and deviate them from what they think to what the marketer wants them to think (McGuire, 1969). Earlier on, it was noted that a lot of psychology is applied in advertising i.e. playing around with people’s minds and get to sell whatever it is you wish to. This brings us to discuss a point almost left amongst the four elements of persuasion, and that is, the content of the message. In the article “The psychology of communication and persuasion”, content of the message refers to the substantive transmitted information, themes and style in which they are conveyed. In our case here we are dealing with beauty, and therefore, the conveyer of the message must make sure that the message I catching and convincing to whoever it is meant for. It is for this reason theme like “You Should Look Hot” will always sell and then the lady who reads this will want to follow up just to get the tips (Jesse, September 1983). An example used by many writers is “the extreme makeover”. Peter Christenson and Maria Ivancin in their journal note that in this show, many of the participants suffer from conditions that need serious attention but not all have these severe problems. Yes, we may say these conditions are treated on the show but in actual terms does the doctor deal majorly with these conditions? The answer is no. As noted from Peter and Maria’s article, the doctor majorly deals with modification of people’s looks. Peter and Maria note that models who have all it takes to own the title super model, visit the show just have maybe, their breasts enhanced. To catch the audience, after the surgery is over, there must be that last catching phrase that “Before I wasn’t comfortable with my breasts, but now, they look gorgeous”. This phrase in itself will make another spend enough cash to have their breasts enhanced for sexiness. There is always one thing worth noting, that in all these adverts, and all these shows, the benefits always out-way the risks and therefore there is no any wrong outcome. The reason behind this is that, the advert must bring out the emotion in you so that you feel for the patient in question. At that time, you always wish that the surgery goes as planned to save the patient. For sure the patient is saved. Occasionally, one patient may die though on rare occasions, but the successful ones must always out-way the failures. At times, communication can make things look so simple and so straight forward, whereas in the actual sense they are not. Cosmetic surgery, which is as our case study is not as cheap as it may seem. Few are the doctors who have specialized in it; the hospitals are limited and equipment not readily available. From the advertisement, you may think that it is a matter of placing an appointment, and that’s all. Many are deceived by the shows until they try the actual thing, only to realize that it can be deadly and expensive. In the paper Cognition, Persuasion and Decision Making in Older Consumers the authors enlighten us on how persuasion changes attitudes. It does using two routes; centrally and peripherally. They assert that if attitude is changed centrally then it has the likely hood of being permanent on the individual but if it is changed peripherally, then it might be change at a later stage. In the first route, a person has favorable and unfavorable thoughts about the ideas brought up, which in the end make him merit the idea accordingly. On the other route, there are so many variables that affect how that person merits the information passed on to him. These variables affect the direction in which this person will think while other will affect the overall thinking of the person. Therefore one way to persuade such a person is by using authority. In some advertisements, a doctor will be seen for instance, recommending a certain slimming tablet. The user will have the confidence using that tablet just because the doctor has recommended it. Health communication in most cases utilizes fear to get the attention of its audience. They scare their audience in order to change their attitude. In other advertisements, they use art of showing a nice time so that the potential audience can be enticed into buying the product. For instance, after the extreme makeover has been accomplished on a person, the successful patients are shown having a nice time while recuperating. They are in spas, found within a large castle and being served by beautiful ladies or handsome men. This will increase the audiences’ appetite into performing the surgery, with the thought that most clinics that perform such cosmetic surgeries treat their clients in a similar way. Other adverts persuade their audience into vanity thinking and create fear by exposing their fears of getting old. Persuasion also offers so many solutions to the same problem with the attempt to make you stick to the same route. Persuasion also offers alternatives to the same thing just incase one direction fails. The bottom-line of doing all this is to make sure that the audience in question has its thoughts glued only at one point, and that is the product that is being marketed. In our case study, an advertisement will tell you that if you can not reach the clinic through their telephone, then you can reach them via the internet. They will go ahead to advertise some other drug that will go hand in hand with cosmetology. The same advert will offer other contacts that can be reached incase the others cannot be reached. You will find statements like, “there is more online”. At this point, if you go to the website in question, one will find other products you never knew . By doing this, they have covered a very large audience. Public communication requires someone or an organization with the zeal to convince people. Persuasion can be likened to the act of being a good public speaker or an orator. First and foremost, the content must be well researched, and one must make sure that they have all their alternatives well exploited and with them at hand. Public communication requires confidence even at that time when things may seem like they may never work, you must be out to convince that they must work. Persuasion withstanding, this art can sometimes has a dark side. This is because it may create false consciousness to the audience, “Cognition, Persuasion and Decision Making in Older Consumers. It asserts, that in such advertisements there is the lack of policy. Financial implications of cosmetic surgery are not shown or brought out. Such adverts do not show the political implications that led to the situation being the way it is. They do not analyze the problem from the beginning to make us understand how it came to be. We are left to our imagination of what may have happened. For instance, those who go for extreme makeover because of faces damaged at birth do not analyze to us whether the problem is persistent in the community or not. The financial implications to the families are not clear to us, whether the whole cost was cleared by the program or what. Public communication has brought cosmetic surgery to the limelight and day to day debate. From the billboards that parent with teenage girls hate to look at, to the television shows that always come before the children have even fallen asleep. The society today is driven by not what they know is right, but what has been persuaded of them through the media. From we learn from cosmetic surgery, it is true that communication has a lot of power in the quest to convince and persuade the public on what is right or wrong, or even bring some misleading information about what is right. References: Ivana Marková Persuasion and Social Psychology. Diogenes, February 2008; vol. 55, 1: pp. 5-8. Thompson, Persuading Aristotle: The Timeless Art of Persuasion in Business, Negotiation, and the Media (St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1999). Peter Christenson. The “reality” of health: Reality Television and the Public Health, American University. October 2006 Jon Gresko, Lynn Kennedy, & James Lesniak. Living in a Social World. Advanced Social Psychology Fall, 1996 Icek Ajzen. Persuasive Communication Theory in Social Psychology: A Historical Perspective. University of Massachusetts – Amherst McGuire, W. J. 1969. The nature of attitudes and attitude change. In: G. Lindzey & E. Aronson, eds. The handbook of social psychology, 2nd Ed., Vol. 3. Reading, MA: Addison- Wesley: 136-314. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. 1986. Communication and persuasion. New York: Springer Verlag. Jesse G. Delia. Social Psychology, Competency, and Individual Differences in Communicative Action. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, September 1983; vol. 2, 2-3-4: pp. 207-218. Carolyn Yoon et al. Cognition, Persuasion and Decision Making in Older Consumers. Marketing Letters, Vol. 16, No. 3/4, Sixth Invitational Choice Symposium (Dec., 2005),pp. 429-441Published by Springer. P. Karen Murphy and Patricia A. Alexander. Persuasion as a Dynamic, Multidimensional Process: An Investigation of Individual and Intraindividual Differences. American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 337-363. Read More