Change of attitude, behavior, thought, via a message… Persuasion and influence have been the subject of numerous studies with the aim of unlocking its secrets, analyzing its processes, optimizing efficiency. Persuade, how? Who ? and for what purposes? What are the tricks and the limits to know? This file will include several articles to come, with the aim of describing the mechanisms of persuasion, the situations in which it is exercised… and the means of recognizing it and protecting oneself once morest it!
A situation of persuasion is one of the particular cases of communication, and communication is established according to a simple scheme: a sender sends a message via a channel, this message is received by the receiver. In the case of persuasion, this translates into the presence of a source of influence for a meaningful message, and an influenceable receiver. There are therefore three possibilities for studying persuasion.
A brief reminder before embarking on this file will be available shortly.
1. First series of studies: the characteristics of the source of influence
1.1 The issuing source has the main qualities of persuasion: competence and sincerity, grouped together under the name of credibility.
Hovland and Weiss (1951) demonstrated the role of credibility in persuasion, through a simple and intuitive experiment. They presented to students of history, four texts. Each of these four texts was in fact constructed in two copies. One, signed by an expert in the field (a male journalist from a very serious newspaper, an expert in the field concerned, etc.), the other, signed by a source deemed competent (female journalist from a social directory , etc). Each student received only one of the versions of the texts, which apart from the signature, resembled each other in every way!
The authors measured by an attitude scale, the overall opinion of the students on four subjects to which the four texts referred, once before having read them, then once following.
The four subjects were:
- international politics at the time
Results
The results were clear and clear: there was a 22.5% change in attitude when the text presented was signed by the expert. the same text signed by journalists probably deemed incompetent in this area resulted in only 8.4% change.
In the field of health, the results were quite obvious: a 25.5% change in attitude when the journalist is considered an expert, once morest only 11.1% in the other case. The same applies to the steel industry: 18.2% with the expert and 7.4 for the journalist deemed not very credible.
On the other hand, the trend was reversed for the media: 13% change in attitude when the journalist was supposed to be an expert, 17% when the signature came from the journalist.
Not credible, who cares?
In the case of the media, the authors thought that this trend was due to an effect of attractiveness of the source. The charisma and the personal properties of the journalists actually play on the results!
As you might imagine, a source deemed credible is much more likely to have an impact on our attitude and our opinions, regardless of the quality of the reasoning or the arguments put together. This is the way professionals play, for example, or those who employ them, to give weight to their writings with their signature: “Mr Truc, expert, doctor, graduate, etc…” always has a good effect at the bottom of a text. If we look twice, any good author or editor adds signatures when he knows that this will mark the credibility of the article. Moreover, if in most cases, this signature and the resulting effect is legitimate, this is not always true, one suspects… How then can one find out regarding the validity of a source and do disregard his credibility to get as close as possible to the true information?
A little mistrust, a little research… and a hint of social psychology!
Simply by multiplying the sources, by verifying them when we have access to relayed information, by relativizing the power of the expert without taking away its legitimate importance. Certain methods such as discourse analysis make it possible to identify a little better the real credibility of a source: objectivity can thus be recognized by the use in the same text of an appropriate logic, clearly established arguments, a form of communication that aims to be both flexible and effective, citing its sources in a communicative context inviting the reader to verify the information presented.
From the point of view of the structure of the text itself, discourse analysis teaches us a lot regarding signs that reveal the author’s intention: for example, fictitious verbs (“this is how it is”, “this est comme ça”, etc…) reveal that the author obviously wishes to impose a point of view. This kind of discourse is particularly common among extremists of all persuasions, who state “factual truths” (according to them). A more flexible discourse will include much more self-reference (personal position and not factual truth), modalisation of possibilities (it is possible that…, maybe this is so…, etc.), words and expressions which refer a confrontation of points of view or a hesitation, a moderation of the information provided (“some will say… but others…”, “on the one hand,… on the other hand…”).
Source : Hovland, CI, & Weiss, W. (1951). The influence of source credibility on communication effectiveness. Public Opinion Quarterly 15, 635-650
