THE MAGIC OF PERSUASION. Dr. Azim Ostowar Ghafuri
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single individual is that they must be reasonably harmonious. If a person has to attitudes toward two different types of actions he finds himself in a comfortable position. The man who cannot decide whether to fight or to run away is likely to achieve neither honour nor safety. People therefore try to avoid learning incompatible habits and attitudes.
INFORMATION AND ENVIRONMENT
If our physical and social environments were completely stable, it is theoretically possible that we could learn all that was necessary during our early years and then require very little in the way of new information. That is, once having acquired appropriate habits, attitudes and facts and having shaped these into a harmonious whole, we could then act in such a way as to satisfy our needs without further learning. This, however, is impossible because the environment never is completely stable.
In our complex society, a prodigious amount of new information about both people and things has to be learned every day if we are to guide our actions appropriately. Much of this information we gain from direct observation and more from person-to-person conversation. But most people rely on the mass media, directly or indirectly, to inform themselves many aspects of the social and physical environment that are important to them. Businessmen keep in touch with political and economic developments through the press, radio and TV in order to guide their day-to-day decision; others may inform themselves about the world of sports and use this information in conservation with their friends. And so that the mass media cater to so many needs and serve so many functions that is difficult to disentangle the various uses that different people make of them.
To maintain satisfactory relationship with other people we require a great many fact about the environment, some of which are received through the mass media. We need not only information about other people but information that may be useful in conservation, even though the subject matter itself has little relevance to our actions. Experiments have indicated that a reader will remember more of the content of a report if he knows or thinks he knows the author. Information can thus affect behaviour in social relationship even if it deals with a subject-matter that is quite extraneous.
Providing reassurance as to the correctness of stabilized attitudes and action patterns is also an important function of information and here again the mass media play a role. In a constantly changing environment people require assurance that they are actually doing the things that will help to satisfy their needs. Consequently, they welcome persuasion that tend to agree with their own attitudes or indicate the correctness of their actions. In many cases a person who has just bought a car will read the advertising for that make of car more closely than before, apparently to reassure himself that he made a good choice. In such cases persuasions do not change the direction of attitudes and behaviour but are likely to intensify and confirm them.
As a result of cultural and individual selective mechanism, each person gives his attention to different portions of the stream of information. He pays close attention to information about aspects of environment what are important to him and learn that certain sources are more likely to provide this information than others. If, for example, a group made up of people with varying interests and from a number of countries is given 15 minutes to read a newspaper and each individual is than asked to write down headlines of the stories he remembers, it is usually found that every person recalls a different list. Each will be likely to remember items dealing with his own country and most will recall items dealing with their own professional or non-professional interests. All may remember those stories that concern matters which have previously been prominent in the news and about which everybody is talking. (Stevens A., The Persuasion Explosion; Washington 1985)
Experiments indicate, each person develops certain habits perception, based on his needs and the way has undertaken so satisfy these needs.
People are far from passive audiences for persuasions. Instead, they are highly selective users, their choices depending in part on their individual characteristics and in part on the society in which they live. From the stream of information they select those, which are going to satisfy their needs adequately. INFLUENCING BEHAVIOR OF OTHER PERSONS
Since most individuals exercise a high degree of control over the information they receive, through such mechanisms as selective attention, distortion, interpretation and so on, it is sometimes concluded that efforts of persuaders to affect behaviour are doomed to failure. According to this way of thinking, persuasive information can only confirm a person in his existing patterns of action or will be used by him in doing something he wants to do anyway. If that were the case it would be futile to try to bring about changes in behaviour through propaganda, advertising or education. On the other hand there is a different view is supported by historians that persuasive information can bring about very substantial behavioural effects and changes in knowledge and attitudes. There seem to be several good reasons why, in spite of the powerful tendency to maintain stable behaviour patterns, a persuader can influence people’s actions and attitudes under certain conditions.
The most important of these reasons, which overlap somewhat with each other, are the following: Most people are on the look-out for changes in those aspects of their environment that are relevant to them. If they are informed of such a change they may adjust their behaviour or attitude patterns. In spite of their efforts to keep informed about things that are important to them, people are not always able to acquire the information they want. The stream of information may be inadequate. They may wish to do something and not know how. In very few cases is there complete harmony within the body of habits, attitudes and information that a person has acquired through his previous experience. People are often predisposed in two or more directions at the same time. Persuasion can sometimes reinforce one tendency so that it prevails over the others. Many people have a large number of interests and cannot keep track of them all equally. Persuasion can focus attention on particular subjects, sometimes at the expense of others.
Similarly, some attitudes are latest. A predisposition exists but doesn't result in action unless it is triggering function. People are faced constantly with the necessity of acquiring information and developing attitudes on new subjects. Persuasion can provide the desired information and can finish a basis for the new attitudes. Even deeply rooted behaviour patterns sometimes prove unable to satisfy basic needs. When this happens, due to a radical change in environment or other reasons, people are faced with the necessity of developing new behaviour patterns if they wish to avoid serious maladjustment, persuasion can then exert a powerful effect by suggesting new patterns of adjustment.
Persuaders who wish to influence behaviour make use of above mentioned situations. And also they can bring about behavioural or attitudinal effects if they make use of the fact that the existing stream of persuasion is frequently not adequate. A person may wish to buy a product and not know how to do it. If an advertiser can tell him about an easy-payment plan, this may be enough to bring about a purchase. Similarly warfare propagandists found it was much more important to tell men in the opposing forces how to surrender without being injured than to exhort them to surrender. In this case the propaganda material was directed to those who already had decided to give up but didn't know how to do it. Studies of the effect of persuasion an attitude and behaviour have emphasized the degree to which existing attitudes tend to be reinforced by information. Reinforcement, a form of reassurance, confirms existing behaviour patterns and doesn't ordinarily cause a change. But there are notable exceptions to this rule. Since most people engage in a wide variety of activities and associate with several different groups, they sometime develop two or more set of attitudes that guide them in various relationships. Election studies have found, for example, that some people are predisposed toward one political party because this is the choice of their family and friends, while they also predisposed toward the other because it more nearly reflect their economic interests. When election time comes political propaganda often helps them to decide which way to vote.
DEFINITION OF PERSUASION
Persuasion is the process by which a persons or people’s attitudes or behaviours are, without duress, influenced by communications from people. Not all communication is directly persuasive; some of it has such effects as informing, entertaining or deceiving. But persuasion, in which communication and belief intersect, is a