Page 70 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Persuasion in the Political Context 63

In consequence, democracy is distinguished as a form of governance by
the extent of persuasion relative to coercion (Pratkanis & Turner, 1996).
Persuasion is “human communication designed to influence the auton-
omous judgments and actions of others” (Simons, 2001, p. 7). It is a form
of attempted influence in the sense that it seeks to alter the way others
think, feel, or act. The successful persuasion is one that directs and chan-
nels thoughts so that the target thinks in a manner agreeable to the com-
municator’s point of view. It disrupts any negative thoughts and promotes
positive thoughts about the proposed course of action (Pratkanis &
Aronson, 1992). This can occur either because an individual finds the ar-
guments contained in the message to be compelling or because the source
of the message is viewed as credible. These are two qualitatively different
types of processing: one relatively effortful that parses information in a
persuasive message, and another relatively effortless that focuses on super-
ficial, extraneous (e.g., source attractiveness) information (Chaiken, 1987;
Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The most effortful procedure for evaluating an
advocacy involves drawing upon prior experience and knowledge to care-
fully scrutinize and elaborate issue-relevant arguments in the persuasive
communication along the dimensions that are perceived central to the
merits of the attitude object. This is the so-called central route to persua-
sion, as expressed in Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) elaboration likelihood
model (ELM), or systematic processing, as expressed in Chaiken’s (1987)
heuristic-systematic model (HSM). Attitudes formed or changed by this
route are postulated to be relatively persistent and resistant to change;
such attitude change is rare because preexisting attitudes guide individu-
als’ exposure to and interpretation of media messages. In consequence,
people are usually exposed only to attitude-consistent messages, whereas
attitude-inconsistent messages are typically interpreted and recalled in
ways that reinforce rather than challenge existing attitudes (Lord, Ross, &
Lepper, 1979). It is neither adaptive nor possible for people to exert con-
siderable mental effort in processing all of the persuasive communications
to which they are exposed. Indeed, people often act as “lazy organisms” or
“cognitive misers” (Fiske & Taylor, 2008). This does not mean that people
never form attitudes when motivation and/or ability to scrutinize a mes-
sage are low, but rather that attitudes are more likely to be changed as a
result of relatively simple peripheral cues or well-learned heuristics re-
trieved from memory.
In the context of political behavior, as Popkin (1991, p. 7) states, “the
term low-information rationality—popularly known as ‘gut’ reasoning—
best describes the kind of practical thinking about government and poli-
tics in which people actually engage.” This reasoning draws on various