Persuasive communication, defined as any message designed to influence people’s attitudes or behaviors, is a core concept in social psychology.

Source

Paper related to this workshop and moc-persuasion.

Persuasive Communication: Source, Message, Audience

Benjamin D. Rosenberg, Alexander Marshburn and Jason T. Siegel

The following content (reaction paper) was generated by an LLM.

What is the summary of the paper?

The paper summarizes Hovland and colleagues’ work on the effectiveness of persuasive communication, focusing on the influence of the source, message content, and audience. It discusses the lasting impact of their research on various fields and uses citations to demonstrate the continued relevance of their ideas. The paper also explores specific aspects such as the effects of message organization, argument order, and the organization of persuasive messages on recipients.

What is the research question? (How) was it answered?

The research question is about the effects of message content organization on persuasiveness, specifically examining the impacts of conclusion drawing (explicit vs. implicit), one-sided vs. two-sided communications, and argument order (primacy vs. recency). It was answered through a combination of theoretical propositions and empirical evidence, suggesting that factors such as audience attentiveness, learning, associative, and acceptance factors influence the effectiveness of message ordering. The research also considered personality factors that influence persuadability, while acknowledging the role of preexisting attitudes as a separate area of study.

What research approach did the authors choose? Is it appropriate for achieving the chosen research objective?

The authors chose a research approach that involved summarizing and analyzing the contributions of Hovland and colleagues on the effectiveness of persuasive communication, focusing on the influence of the source, message content, and audience. This approach is appropriate for achieving the objective of providing a comprehensive picture of Hovland and colleagues’ work and its significant influence on the field of persuasive communication. The authors also aimed to demonstrate the enduring relevance of these themes by linking them to contemporary research, which supports the appropriateness of their approach.

What are the key findings of the article? What are the implications?

The key findings of the article revolve around the effectiveness of persuasive communication, focusing on the impact of explicit versus implicit conclusions, the effects of one-sided versus two-sided communications, and the influence of argument order on persuasiveness. The implications of these findings suggest that the persuasiveness of a message can be affected by the communicator’s perceived intent, the audience’s ability to process the message, their familiarity with the issue, and their attentiveness during the message delivery. The article also highlights the enduring influence of Hovland and colleagues’ work on the field of persuasive communication research.

What are the limitations of the article? How might future work build on this article?

The limitations of the article include a focus on personality factors influencing persuasibility while largely ignoring the features of the attitude itself, and not providing a conclusive answer to the primacy-recency debate in message acceptance. Future work could build on this article by exploring the role of attitude features in persuasibility, further investigating the conditions under which credibility effects are maximized or minimized, and reassessing the original ideas presented in “Communication and Persuasion” to uncover new insights that have not been extensively studied.

@incollection{rosenberg_persuasive_2022,
	title = {Persuasive Communication: Source, Message, Audience},
	isbn = {978-0-19-023655-7},
	url = {https://oxfordre.com/psychology/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.001.0001/acrefore-9780190236557-e-285},
	shorttitle = {Persuasive Communication},
	abstract = {"Persuasive Communication: Source, Message, Audience" published on  by Oxford University Press.},
	booktitle = {Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology},
	author = {Rosenberg, Benjamin D. and Marshburn, Alexander and Siegel, Jason T.},
	urldate = {2024-01-09},
	date = {2022-09-15},
	langid = {english},
	doi = {10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.285},
}