what if I told you persuasion is hiding all around us it's an everything from the design of a building to the font on a menu to our friends slightly weedling tone of voice it's right here in this video all of these things are part of efforts to communicate information that could influence our choices by making an effort to figure out when someone wants to persuade us we can protect ourselves from persuasion that isn't in our best interest like if someone comes up to us and starts assertively explaining a too good to be true credit card offer we can use our understanding of persuasion to assess what's true and what's less than true we might ask clarifying questions or flat out decline offers we don't need and by exploring the many forms persuasion can take we can craft better more precise arguments or situations and even use those powers for good there's no real way to live in a community and Escape persuasion so it's important to understand when it's happening how it can be used and make our choices with that understanding in mind because once we start thinking about persuasion we start to see it everywhere I'm Cassandra Ryder and this is study hall intro to human communication [Music] foreign communication is the idea that context plus message equals meaning now I promise that's all the math we're doing today we'll leave that to Jason in his Series in context where we're trying to influence or change others is part of what we call persuasion now there are a ton of contexts where communication changes and influences the world in some way but when the intent is also there we're stepping into the world of persuasion so we defined persuasion as the kind of communication intended to influence choices because the word persuasion is used in so many contexts studying it closely helps us to figure out what persuasion is and isn't we're focusing here on what's known as pure persuasion this refers to clear-cut cases of persuasion where the person doing the persuading usually knows they are intending to influence someone else with that in mind let's dig deeper into the definition of persuasion as communication intended to influence choices there's a lot to unpack in those four key words first let's focus on the word communication Communication in this definition means that persuasion is done using messages and those messages plus the context of the situation create some sort of meaning that I want you to understand and think about when you make decisions basically we aren't persuading someone to go somewhere if we yank their arm and drag them there symbols and messages include spoken or written words or symbolic actions like protests but physical force is coercion which is making people change using threats or force not persuasion next let's think about the intended part of the definition persuasion has a goal namely the goal is to have an effect on another person's beliefs attitudes or behaviors this means there's a desired outcome when persuasion is involved but that desired outcome could be quite different from the actual outcome for instance a British government agency tried to persuade the public to be more enthusiastic about polar research exploration when they launched an online effort to name one of their new research ships and if you were on the internet at all in 2016 you'll remember that people fell in love with the suggestion Bodhi Mick boat face needless to say that wasn't what the British government was expecting but even when we get an unexpected outcome communication intended to influence choices is still considered persuasion it's the intention and the idea that there was a goal behind the communication that matters which brings us to the third key word in our definition for persuasion influence to influence someone means to have an effect on the behaviors actions or character of that person it implies that persuasion's goal involves transformation of some kind specifically with persuasion we're trying to shape change or reinforce someone's beliefs attitudes or actions now that transformation can take several different forms the most subtle transformation is often response shaping this is when the Persuader shapes the response we have to something like they might get someone to discover something new and have a particular Viewpoint for instance a movie trailer shows us scenes with a lot of action and drama in hopes of shaping our response and perception of that movie favorably another category of transformation involved involves getting people to change what they're doing which is called response changing one way to change someone's response is through encouragement which is when a Persuader encourages and ultimately gets someone to start doing something they aren't doing already you can see this technique in public health initiatives that inspire people to exercise more or eat a balanced diet on the flip side when a Persuader tries to stop someone from doing something we can call that distinguishing since they extinguish some sort of response or behavior for example a large amount of persuasive power has been put behind getting smokers to quit and help them work through their addiction finally there's response reinforcing which is when a Persuader gets someone to continue doing something or reinforces their behavior like a local Fitness Gym running a campaign to get members to keep coming in for workouts in February and March When people's commitment to New Year's resolutions to exercise start to wane if the gym can help their members keep their exercise habits going they get to keep customers which is a lot more profitable than having to find new customers with defined categories of influence we start to see subtle pushes and pulls in everyday communication we're more likely to understand influence even as we are still moved by its subtle puppet strings when armed with these categories so far we've drilled into our definition of persuasion and we've got communication that's intended to influence the last piece is choice and including Choice as part of the definition of persuasion means that the receiver of the message has options persuasion doesn't take away any choices this brings us back to the difference between persuasion and coercion that we talked about before if we actually take away someone's choices through threats or Force we're outside the realm of persuasion like say normally the University's Ultimate Frisbee team picks a captain at the beginning of the year that person is someone who's very committed to the team and has the time for a little extra work this year both Paloma and Alicia have already been on the team for three years have time in their schedules and want some solid leadership experience the team hasn't had to pick between two potentially great captains before so they agreed to consider Paloma and Alicia for two weeks and then put it to a vote if one person wanted it a little more they might have just made a decision at their initial meeting but instead both Paloma and Alicia have been counting on this Captain role so whatever they do next both Paloma and Alicia fully intend to get people to vote for them Paloma and Alicia both get to work communicating in ways that are clearly intended to persuade people to vote for them and trying out different influence techniques Paloma tries response changing by encouraging she brings snacks to practice that have stickers on them that say vote Paloma for captain and she makes an effort to talk with each team member individually certain that she can win people over with her charisma she asks can I count on your vote directly but backs off if her teammates still seem to be on the fence Alicia instead focuses on stopping people from voting for Paloma she spreads a rumor that Paloma already has a bunch of other extracurriculars meaning she won't have time for all the work the captain needs to do her approach Strays a little closer to manipulation than persuasion in the end both intended to communicate a message that influenced the team's choice for captain and even though their strategies were different the team still had options and got to make their decision but paloma's enthusiastic approach was more persuasive and earns her the captain role even though both Alicia and Paloma had the intent to influence their teammates choices most of us have a gut reaction about which was a better way to persuade and gut reactions can be important signals when someone uses a lot of persuasion techniques on us in Rapid succession it can leave us feeling icky we might even feel like their efforts at persuasion are actually manipulation which is situated in the murky middle between pure persuasion and coercion manipulators are often trying to get us to make the decision they want without giving us the space to think about our own best interests manipulation doesn't fully eliminate Choice like coercion but a manipulative strategy might attempt to limit our awareness of the choices we have that's not to say that learning about persuasion makes us manipulators we can use persuasion in ways that mutually benefit everyone involved or simply benefit someone we care about like when we tell a child how healthy they'll be if they always eat their veggies and when we see that someone has successfully used manipulation to get what they want it's important that we understand why they were so persuasive so that we can avoid being taken advantage of by manipulators in the future but let's not pretend it's easy to be morally upstanding people all the time we will have to make our own choices about what's an ethical way to persuade and what crosses the line into unethical manipulation and that can be hard to do when we have our heart set on a particular outcome but with our awareness of what persuasion is and isn't we can see our choices more clearly Paloma made the decision to be open about her intent and communicate what she believes would make her a good captain for the ultimate frisbee team she effectively persuaded her fellow team members that her being Captain would be in the team's best interest Alicia on the other hand crossed the line into manipulation by sharing false information that served only her interests that attitude shaped people's perceptions of her leadership potential for the worse we've explored the four key aspects of persuasion but different types and attempts at persuasion really are everywhere so in another video we're going to delve into the ways that persuasion is accomplished through the six primary principles of persuasion that researchers have identified we'll also get into how to evaluate whether the ways we're being persuaded are ethical or unethical this analysis helps us make better choices and resist persuasive efforts that aren't in our best interest with persuasion hiding everywhere there's no way we can't hide from it but we can spot it around us and in our own behavior and that gives us the chance to make decisions in a more informed way both decisions about how we respond to people's efforts to persuade us and how we make efforts to persuade people thanks for watching study hall intro to human communication which is part of the city hall project a partnership between ASU and crash course if you liked this video and want to keep learning with us be sure to subscribe you can learn more about study hall and the videos produced by crash course and ASU and the links in the description see you next time