Page 308 - Essentials of Human Communication

Goals of Persuasion 287

ou’ll no doubt find yourself in a wide variety of situations in which you’ll have to per-
Ysuade others—to urge them to accept or reject a union proposal, redesign a company’s
website, negotiate a business deal, or donate blood or money or time, to give only a few ex-
amples. As with having to provide information, the higher up you go in your organization’s
hierarchy, the more you’ll find yourself having to persuade others.

Goals of Persuasion

It’s useful to view persuasion along a continuum. Let’s say, to take a current example from the Explore the Concept
news, that you want to give a persuasive speech on same-sex marriage. You might visualize “Persuasion” at
MyCommunicationLab
your audience as existing on a continuum ranging from strongly in favor to strongly opposed,
as shown in Figure 14.1. Your task is to move your audience along this continuum in the
direction of your persuasive purpose, which you can do in any of three ways (corresponding
to the goals of persuasion):
● Strengthen or weaken attitudes, beliefs, or values. Persuasion often aims to strengthen
audience views. For example, religious sermons and public service announcements usu-
ally seek to strengthen the existing beliefs of the listeners. At times, however, you may
want to weaken the existing beliefs of the audience—to suggest that what they currently
believe may not be entirely true.
● Change attitudes, beliefs, or values. Sometimes you’ll want to change how your audi-
ence feels. You may want to change their attitudes toward the college’s no-smoking
rules, their beliefs about television’s influence on viewer violence, or their values about
the efficacy of war.
● Motivate your audience to take action. Ultimately, your goal is to get people to do some-
thing—for example, to vote for one person rather than another, to donate money to a
fund for the homeless, or to take a course in personal finance.
If your purpose is to persuade the audience to oppose same-sex marriage, then any move-
ment toward the right of the continuum in Figure 14.1will be successful persuasion; if your
purpose is to persuade listeners to support same-sex marriage, then any movement toward
the left of the continuum will be successful persuasion. Notice, however, that it’s quite possi-
ble to give a speech in which you attempt to move your listeners in one direction but actually
succeed in moving them in the other direction. This “negative persuasion” could occur, for
example, if the audience perceives you as dishonest or self-promoting or feels that you pre-
sented biased evidence or faulty reasoning.

Strongly in Strongly
favor of opposed to
same-sex same-sex
marriage : : : : : : marriage

Figure 14.1
The Persuasion Continuum
Any movement along the continuum would be considered a result of persuasion.

Objectives Self-Check
● Can you explain the three major goals of persuasive speaking (to strengthen or weaken attitudes,
to change attitudes, to motivate action)?