Summary of the Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard

Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion is a title written by the not-so-famous, (but extremely well-versed) Jay Heinrichs. Although the title is indeed a mouthful, it serves its purpose in drawing the reader in. Also; the extremely long title is a little hint of what Heinrichs entails in his book, an endless supply of information on how to correctly and influentially utilize rhetoric, the art of persuasion.

The novel Thank You For Arguing written by Jay Heinrichs teaches us the persuasive tactics behind an effective argument. Heinrichs emphasizes the importance of rhetoric by adapting persuasive tools to modern day situations. A former journalist and now an advocate for rhetoric, Jay Heinrichs has aimed to restore the art of persuasion by teaching it to his audience.

The most interesting part of the video is hearing how multi-million/large corporations view their audience/consumers. In the video The Persuaders, Douglas Atkin makes a compelling analogy, comparing individuals in cults to buying/joining a “brand” like Apple or Nike. These consumers feel the need to belong and have the company of others. Emotional branding has become part of American culture, they allow people to join a lifestyle. For example, Coca-Cola and Hallmark, both of these are multi million corporations that are directly associated with holidays like Christmas. They release commercials that appeal to individual’s emotions and makes them empathize

The emotional state of any given person’s mind can determine the way in which they think, act, behave, or respond to any certain event. When used correctly, persuasion is a deadly weapon at the tip of your tongue, and it certainly can, and will, help you obtain your desired outcome. So, if anyone may not know, what do you truthfully use to manipulate the thoughts of others? Well, whether you are aware or not, your strategies more than likely fall under ethos, pathos, or logos, that of which, I would like to uncover in the speech of Margaret Sanger.

Today, one can see the tactic of persuasion being used as a standard avenue to influence a person’s attitude or beliefs by presenting them with different messages that encourage things like using certain brand name products, vote a certain way, or where to take a vacation just to name a few. There are four types of people that include gullible people, skeptical people, firm believers, and people who are leaders who trust others as well as make others follow their ideas. Persuasion is a widespread topic of social psychology and may be done in different ways. There are two types of cognitive processes by which to persuade someone, which are the central route or the peripheral route. For this assignment I used mostly the central route approach as well as using a little of the peripheral route approach. To reinforce the peripheral route approach the use of pathos was also used during the video to play on the emotions of the watcher. This PowerPoint is effective at using the central route of persuasion, peripheral

All around our society we witness persuasion. Whether it is a certified dentist selling a toothpaste brand in between our favorite shows on TV, or a church group coming to the door and asking for donations. We see little children begging their parents for a toy, promising they will behave, and the parents give in because they just want peace, quiet, and some time to relax. We have heard of college graduates expressing their qualification for the job, and stating facts about the type of service they are applying for. We look right past it, but in our everyday lives we experience, or even use, the three modes of persuasion. These methods to persuade people were made by a greek philosopher, Aristotle. The first mode is known

Persuading an audience can be done in several different fashions, one of which is Hugh Rank’s Model of Persuasion. Rank’s model states that two major strategies are used to achieve the particular goal of persuasion. These strategies are nicely set into two main schemas; the first method is to exaggerate an aspect of something, known as “intensify.” While the second is to discredit it, which is referred to as “downplay.” Al Franken, Jeffrey Snyder, Harlan Ellison, and George Will, have all written persuasive articles about gun control.

Persuasion is how a message changes an individual’s attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs over time and can be divided into two branches: the central route and the peripheral route to persuasion. The central route to persuasion is used when making more detailed and elaborate decisions were high effort is needed, while the peripheral route serves as a mental shortcut that allows the individual to make a decision without over analyzing the details (Vernon, 2015). This cult used the peripheral route of persuasion to engage individuals through different cues such as the attractiveness of the recruiter and their expertise. For example, individuals unconsciously paid more attention to how the recruiter dressed and verbally expressed themselves instead of evaluating the message itself. Many members remember the recruiters being very laid back and making good eye contact instead of details of their message. The Unified Church also used sleep deprivation as a form of punishment to increase the individual chances of using the peripheral route. The leaders knew they would be too tired to think of all the details of the argument and had low need of cognition. Need of cognition is when the individual analyzes the argument carefully and in detail. When an individual became a full member of the cult, they were expected to raise $100 every day and if they did not

Gerard A. Hauser covers a plethora of details on how to create a well-made persuasive argument in his book, an Introduction to Rhetorical Theory; however, he covered three specific essentials that are necessary for persuasion: the components logos, pathos and ethos; purposive discourse and rhetorical competence; identification. I will argue for each constituent, respectively, to prove that persuasion cannot thrive without the aforementioned essentials.

We humans first concern ourselves with our survival needs: air, food, water and protection from predators. Once we believe that we have obtained all these needs we then look for a mate, we try to make a social connection and have an approval from society. No matter what the outcome entitles, we are never satisfied, never happy. Our minds become bored, needing constantly something to occupy them with a new challenge. A particular set of people know this; taking advantage of our easily controlled attention, advertisers. Advertisers manipulate us to purchase unnecessary things, products that we have no need for, they convince us to be “devoted narcissists”. We are bound to associate brand names that instantly bestow status upon us. Making us believe

There is little evidence that persuasion can be effective because subjects do not integrate the information into their own belief system. The experiment was designed to test the relative importance of attribution versus persuasive manipulations by comparing persuasion treatment with an attribution treatment. The persuasion techniques were designed to be maximally effective by using a credible source delivering a repeated message stating the benefits of change. The attribution techniques were designed to be maximally

The fact that wars give rise to intensive propaganda campaigns has made many people suppose that propaganda is something new. The truth is, it is not. The battle with persuasion for power and men’s minds is as old as human history (Casey, 1994d)

After spending a good amount of the semester discussing and learning about Robert Cialdini, it is safe to say that no good discussion on influence and persuasion can go very far without talking about the man who wrote the book on influence. After learning about Cialdini, we now know what he identifies as the six weapons of influence. The six weapons are reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity. By weapons, what Cialdini really relays, are the six behavioral triggers that tend to create habitual and expected compliance. To see if these influences really exist in the real world, we made trips to places where we were going to be potential customers, being sold a product or service by someone. We

Petty and Cacioppo (1981) have developed the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion which explains the peripheral route to persuasion and the central route. In the peripheral route, persuasive influences are more tangential to the issues at hand. For egg- in a PSA targeted against smoking in youth, the peripheral route will show the teenagers having a better sex life after quitting smoking. (William G. Shadel, January 2009) Central processing occurs when the person at hand is aware about the main message of the PSA and is motivated to consider its content. We will analyze the use of celebrities for both these routes of persuasion and try to find out the effectiveness in each case.

Social psychologists have not only studied the effects of persuasion, but also the elements that contribute to attitude change. Carl Hovland (1953) developed the Hovland-Yale model of persuasion, in which he used a research team from Yale University. They found that there are a considerable number of factors that can influence how likely attitude changes are to occur, however they also noticed that some are more important than others [McGuire et al 1996]. One of the key factors they found that determines whether persuasion occurs is the communicator. Social psychologists have found that persuasion can be influenced depending about who is presenting the argument, which can impact on how an audience receives it. The credibility of the communicator plays a large role in influencing persuasion, in which