Page 36 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Social Psychological Foundations of Social Marketing 29

often requires a change in the attitudes of those voting for a policy. For
example, laws can be changed to ban cigarette smoking in public, but do-
ing so still requires policy makers to first endorse and vote for the policy.
Because attitudes guide behavior, a core means to achieve a desired behav-
ior is to change people’s attitudes. This observation rests at the heart of a
large body of literature in social psychology and marketing dedicated to
changing attitudes through persuasion (for reviews, see Petty & Wegener,
1998a; Fazio & Petty, 2007). Given that some behavioral outcome is likely
to be the end objective for many social marketing efforts, changing peo-
ple’s attitudes is likely to be intertwined with most such efforts. Later in
this chapter, we discuss when changes in attitudes are more or less likely
to result in behavior change.

Source, Message, and Recipient Factors

In the study of persuasion, scholars have long utilized a classic trichotomy
to describe variables involved in the success of a persuasive communica-
tion. Aristotle may have been among the first to describe such factors dur-
ing the fourth century BCE. Specifically Aristotle wrote of the importance
of ethos, characteristics of the speaker that enhance persuasion, such as
charisma or trustworthiness; logos, the logic of the argument within the
message itself; and pathos, recipient factors that facilitate or inhibit the
persuasiveness of a message and, in particular, emotional reactions
(Aristotle, 1991). In modern times, scholars have used the terms “source,”
“message,” and “recipient” to describe these fundamental inputs into the
persuasion process (McGuire, 1968).
This trichotomy provides an excellent starting point and organizational
structure for reviewing the factors that affect the persuasiveness of a mes-
sage. The next section reviews classic examples of specific source, message,
and recipient factors that have been shown empirically to affect persuasion.
In the discussion of these factors, the intent is not to universally summarize
every possible variable that might fall into these descriptive buckets. Rather,
the goal is to adequately summarize clear examples within each of these
categories so that readers can apply them as an organizing tool to assess and
evaluate variables present in their own social marketing efforts.

Source Factors in Persuasion

Source factors refer to aspects of the individual or organization delivering
the message, irrespective of the message content. Perhaps the most com-
mon source factor studied in the literature is the credibility of the source