Persuasion Study Guide

Persuasion: an attempt to get a person to behave in a manner, or embrace a point of view related to values, attitudes, and beliefs, that he or she would not have done otherwise.

The first type of persuasive public speaking involves a change in someone’s attitudes, values, and beliefs. The second type of persuasive speech is one in which the speaker attempts to persuade an audience to change their behavior

An attitude is defined as an individual’s general predisposition toward something as being good or bad, right or wrong, or negative or positive.

Value refers to an individual’s perception of the usefulness, importance, or worth of something.

Beliefs are propositions or positions that an individual holds as true or false without positive knowledge or proof.

Behaviors come in a wide range of forms, so finding one you think people should start, increase, or decrease shouldn’t be difficult at all.

3 reasons why people should study persuasion.

  1. when you study and understand persuasion, you will be more successful at persuading others
  2. when people understand persuasion, they will be better consumers of information.
  3. when we understand how persuasion functions, we’ll have a better grasp of what happens around us in the world

  

Social Judgment Theory: says that persuaders need to be aware of an audience’s latitudes of acceptance, noncommitment, and rejection in order to effectively persuade an audience.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory : reasons that people do not like holding to ideas in their heads that are contrary and will do what is necessary to get rid of the dissonance caused by the two contrary ideas.

elaboration Likelihood Model : persuaders should attempt to get receivers to think about the arguments being made (going through the central route) rather than having receivers pay attention to nonargument related aspects of the speech.

4 types of persuasive claims

Definitional Claim: claim over the denotation or classification of what something is.

Factual Claims set out to argue the truth or falsity of an assertion

Policy Claim—a statement about the nature of a problem and the solution that should be implemented.

Value Claim, or a claim where the speaker is advocating a judgment claim about something (e.g., it’s good or bad, it’s right or wrong, it’s beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral).

Monroe’s Motivated Sequence   

Steps Audience Response
Attention–Getting Attention I want to listen to the speaker.
Need–Showing the Need, Describing the Problem Something needs to be done about the problem.
Satisfaction–Satisfying the Need, Presenting the Solution In order to satisfy the need or fix the problem this is what I need to do.
Visualization–Visualizing the Results I can see myself enjoying the benefits of taking action.
Action–Requesting Audience Action or Approval I will act in a specific way or approve a decision or behavior.

Problem-Cause-Solution Format

you discuss what a problem is, what you believe is causing the problem, and then what the solution should be to correct the problem.

Comparative Advantages

The goal of this speech is to compare items side-by-side and show why one of them is more advantageous than the other.

Key Terms

  • Persuasion
  • Value
  • Belief
  • Attitude
  • Social Judgment Theory
  • Cognitive Dissonance Theory
  • Elaboration Likelihood Model
  • Pathos
  • Ethos
  • Logos
  • Personal Relevance and Personal Involvement
  • Accountability
  • Incongruent Information
  • Need for Cognition
  • Definitional Claims
  • Factual Claims
  • Policy Claims
  • Value Clams
  • Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
  • problem-cause-solution proposal
  • comparative advantages speech format

 

A PDF of this Persuasion Study Guide can be downloaded here.