COMMUNICATION & PERSUASION ARE THE MAGIC KEYS FOR ADVERTISING & MARKETING FIELDS

After WW II, the World has totally changed forever. After World War II, the USA had become the most powerful nation on the earth and unquestioned leaders of the world. While, before World War II, America was somewhat isolated to their own country, the only concerns they had been mainly with there own affairs.

It was the largest armed conflict in history, spanning the entire world and involving more countries than any other war, as well as, introducing powerful new weapons, culminating in the first use of nuclear weapons. The US accomplished Atomic power, the reasons behind are:

• It had been developed for use as a weapon.

• Americans saw in it a bright vision and future ahead.

• Unlimited power and peaceful purpose.

America had achieved many things after the War but social science researches felt that the world was still filled with; Prejudice, Discrimination, and Intolerance. To understand how people’s; beliefs, attitudes and behaviours, researchers created ‘Social World Change’.

Social Science experts, to bring the ‘Social World Change’ and to modify these socially approved ways through carefully designed ‘Persuasive Communication’.

After observing ‘laws’ of Persuasion, researchers found out that, once those ‘keys’ of the Communication-Persuasion relationship was available, they could be used to unlock the mysteries of how Opinions and Attitudes could be modified. Those ‘keys’ were named ‘Magic Keys’.

The first generation of research on persuasion and attitude change was led by Carl Hovland of Yale University from the late 1940s through the 1960s. Hovland and colleagues sought to discover which factors influenced the success or failure of persuasion. Hovland and their companions decided to conduct ‘Experimental Research’.

The experiments were conducted at the Yale Program of Research on Communication and Attitude change, Yale University. They conducted 50 experiments. The work involved the efforts of some 30 social scientists.

Nevertheless, many scholars of the time felt that the laws of Persuasion would operate similarly in both the experimental and real-life situations and that uncovering the keys to the process in the laboratory would also lead to an understanding of their operation in Communication-Persuasion. During this process, social scientists define ‘Communication’ as “the process by which an individual (the communicator) transmit stimuli (messages usually verbal) to modify the behaviour of other individuals (the audience).”

After defining, ‘Communication’ -- Harold D. Lasswell had formulated a well-known statement that indicates the proper study of the act of communication was to look of who said what to whom over what channel with what effect, (Linear model developed).

The main category of analysis was:

• Communicator

• Message (content)

• Audience

• The Actual responses made by the audience (Reaction).

After the Linear model, Hovland and his associates, measured persuasion in terms of the amount of attitude and opinion change, by focusing on three variables:

• Attention 

•   Comprehension

• Acceptance  
  

An attitude in an effective (affect) the feeling of liking and disliking based on beliefs (cognitions) about an object which leads to a readiness to behave (behaviour) in a certain manner. However, opinions rarely change without new arguments being presented. It can be reasoned that one opinion is better supported by the facts than another, by analyzing the supporting arguments. In casual use, the term opinion may be the result of a person's perspective, understanding, particular feelings, beliefs, and desires. The model of Hovland suggests the following steps in the process of changing attitudes and opinions. 

• A recommended opinion (the stimulus) is presented.

• Assuming that the subjects have paid attention to and understood them.

• The subjects will change their attitudes toward incentive rewards for making a new response are greater than those for making the old response.

Hovland and his partners separately conducted experiments on Communicator, Message, and Audience.

Communicator:

The researchers limited their investigation to the influence of the following two factors:

1. Expertness (skillfulness by virtue of possessing special knowledge)

2. Trustworthiness (the trait of deserving   trust and confidence)

The experiment:

Take two groups – Group ‘A’ and Group ‘B’ and used four different topics to investigate the influence of the following two factors mentioned above.

The effects of sources on factual information and on opinion were measured by the use of Questionnaires administrated before, immediately after, and after the four weeks of communication.

Results:

• Low-credibility source → Attributed that highly biased and unfair communication and presentation, while, High-credibility source → less biased and unfair.

• High-credibility source → Greater and positive effect on opinion, while, Low- credibility source → Negative effect on opinion.

• Attention of Audience to the communication →Not affected opinion of the audience. But the audience’s opinion effect when the message was said equally well, no matter what the credibility of the audience.

Content:

The researcher discussed three major classes of such in centuries, which are as follows; Positive Appeal, Negative Appeal, and Substantiating argument.

The experiment:

• Researchers worked on Negative Appeal (Fear).

• Selected 3 High school groups ( random sampling)

• And also selected 1 control group

The content used as a lecture was about ‘Causes and Precautions of tooth decay’. But the control group was given a lecture about ‘Human eye’.

For 3 groups ‘A, B and C’ respectively, the researcher also used different appeals to communicate:

· For group A use strong appeal about causes of tooth decay

· Group B uses moderate appeal about causes of tooth decay

· Group C minimal appeal about causes of tooth decay

While for the control group:

· Group D communicator used lecture of the human eye

All the groups were tested before and after the lecture.

Results:

• Stronger appeal → greater emotional tension observed as compared to moderate appeal while the moderate appeal was more effective as compared to minimal appeal.

• Minimal appeal → more effective in terms of persuasion while moderate and strong appeal less effective in terms of persuasion but high in terms of emotional appeal

Audience:

The researchers used two factors, group membership and personality factor.

Group membership:

A person with strong group affiliations or connections is the most resistant to communication that present info contrary to the group standards. Personality factors:

Easier to persuade individuals with high intelligence than those who have low intelligence ability.

The experiment:

To measure opinion change and personality factors, researchers selected a group of 78 male college students. The group was facilitated with written and oral material based on different topics. 4 weeks earlier to giving this material a questionnaire was provided to the students.

Result: 

• High persuade ability → associated with low self-esteem, depression and highly aggressive.

• Those who persist aggressive, not social and are difficult to persuade.

Audience Responses Patterns:

• Active

• Persuasive 

Actively participant in a communication (giving a speech, arguing an issue, debating aside) change opinion and argued more effectively than just reading or listening.

Conclusion:

Exactly, no ‘Magic Keys’ found during whole experimentation by Hovland and his associates, they were unable to find out the 'Social World Change'. Their research was also not successful to discover the change in behaviour, opinions and thoughts can be modifiable or not, through Communication & Persuasion. 

However, the current researchers and authors claimed that this model of Hovland is handy for advertising and digital marketing industry, where they are using this tactic to persuade the customers or buyers with creative modern communication platforms - Social Media.