Characteristics of Persuasion
301/ Social Psychology

Characteristics of Persuasion

Persuasion surrounds us; it is everywhere that humans exist. From politicians, teachers, religious leaders, police officers, sales persons, family and friends, we are literally surrounded. Anytime you log onto the internet and see an ad, when you are cruising down the road and see a billboard, when you pick up a sales ad for your favorite store, when you read reviews of a book before purchasing it, it is all persuasion. But why is persuasion so important, and how is it so effective?

There are three main parts to persuasion according to Feenstra (2011), “As we explore persuasion, we can divide the persuasive communication into three parts: the
It is effective because when we are already mildly interested in a product, we love to convince ourselves that we are right by having other people confirm it! They will have huge overweight person in a before picture, then a lean tanned, and beautifully toned person in the second. And obviously if it can work magic like that on them, it will work on me. They show us what we want to see, then they have people tell their personal stories to convince us that it is true, regardless if it is which we have no way of knowing, we want it to be, therefore rational appeals are effective.

The sleeper-effect can either kill persuasion or make it. If a person is initially convinced that the product a person is selling is a good idea, it might seem like a great thing to buy. They use it for a couple of months, but then they get tired of it and do not care anymore. On the other hand the sleeper-effect can work the other way. A person sees an item, they initially are not to interested, but then some time passes and they find a use for it, this justifies the purchases and increases the persuasion of the product.

The audience is the last part in an effective persuasion message. There are many factors to determining what kind of method will work best on an audience. First the communicator has to take into account the following: role of