COM 242- Persuasive Effects
of the Media
What is Persuasion?
•
•
•
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The three dimensions of persuasion
Change in attitude
Change in behavior
Persistence of behavior over time
How Media Messages Persuade
without even Trying
• Entertainment messages can exert a
powerful influence on attitude and
behavior
• Possible to change someone’s attitude or
behavior without even consciously trying
to do so.
 Happy days - libraries around the country
reported to have a 500% increase in
library card applications after the character
‘the Fonz’ applied for a card in one
particular episode.
The Day After…
• The Day After - two researchers
discovered that exposure of the movie was
sufficient to change attitudes about the
seriousness of the nuclear war
The Day After Tomorrow
 The Day After Tomorrow- researchers
reported that after seeing the film, people
were willing to give 50% more money
toward the effort to mitigate changes in
climate.
Elaboration Likelihood Model
• Elaboration Likelihood Model
• Richard Petty and John Cacioppo
• Persuasion process as approaching a
persuasive situation with their defenses up
• Two main routes by which people might be
persuaded
Central Route to Persuasion
a. highly rational and cognitive route to
persuasion
b. careful scrutiny of messages
c. tendency to think up many
counterarguments
d. counter attitudinal messages-when the
message is different from the position that
the person holds
Peripheral-route to Persuasion
• less scrutiny of messages
• Certain cues in the message lead people
to accept the persuasive proposition
• E.g. Persuaded while watching movies
and programs that were designed to
entertain
Peripheral-route vs. Central
route
 Peripheral-route vs. central route
 Advertisers use creative ways to entertain
audience, people will process the ad as
another entertaining bit of media
 Viewers are more willing to change
attitudes and behavior with little though
and scrutiny (central route to persuasion
during TV commercials)
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0072415444/22501/04003.jpg
The Theory of Media Cultivation
• George Gerbner’s Theory of Media Cultivation
• The idea that consumption of entertaining media can
change people’s attitudes
• Process is gradual and cumulative
• World of media entertainment presents a particular view
of social reality
• eg. A person who is a heavy TV viewer, will tend to
believe that the world is more violent place than it really
is and more likely to express fear of criminal
victimization (attitude) and more likely to purchase a
home security system (behavior)
Characteristics of the Cultivation Theory
• Mainstreaming
• Everyone is similarly cultivated by the media
• differences expected on the basis of group
membership becomes less pronounced
• Resonance
• a persons real life environment strongly
resembles to environment depicted in the media
• a person receives a “double dose effect” of the
same messages
Weapons of Influence
Reciprocation
Commitment and Consistency
Social Proof
Liking
Authority
Scarcity
Reciprocation
•We should try to repay in kind, what another
person has provided us
•By the virtue of the reciprocity rule, we are
obligated to the future repayments of favors,
gifts, invitations and the like
Amway BUG
•Leave the product to the customers for some
time to try without cost and obligation
•Salesperson will collect it after trial period
•Sales was amazingly high
Consistency
High degree of consistency is normally
associated with personal and intellectual strength
●Fall in a habit of being consistent even when
situations where it is not sensible to be
●
Consistency
Consistency in toy sales
•Increase advertising before Christmas
•Undersupply the toy being advertised
•Parents have to get a substitute toy
•Increase advertising of the same toy after
Christmas
•Kids will want it even more than ever and
parents have to keep their word
Commitment
•Once a stand is taken, there is a natural
tendency to behave in ways that are
stubbornly consistent with the stand
•Will be even more committed to something if
they wrote it down (acts as tangible proof)
Commitment
Marketers use commitment in testimonial
contests
●“I like the company because ....”
●Consumers would tend to believe in the product
more
●
Social Proof
We determine what is correct by finding out what
other people think is correct
●
Social Proof
Product is “fastest growing”, “largest-selling”
●The message that marketers want to give is, “look
at all the people who decided to buy. It must be
the correct thing to do”
●
Liking
●
We tend to agree to the requests of people that
we know and like
Liking
Tupperware Party
The Tupperware reperesentator is a friend to
everyone invited to the party
●By providing the representative with a percentage
of the sales, the company arranges for its
customers to buy from and for a friend rather than
an unknown salesperson
●
Authority
We are trained from birth to believe that
obedience to proper authority is right and
disobedience is wrong
●Religious instructions contribute as well
●
Authority
Marketers commissioned the respect accorded
doctors by hiring actors to play a role of doctors
on behalf of the products
●An example is actor Robert Young warning
people on the damages of caffeine
●Encourages caffeine-free Sanka coffee
●Highly successful
●
Scarcity
•Opportunities seem more valuable to us
when they are less available
Scarcity
“limited number” tactic
●Deadline tactic (“while stocks last!”)
●
Intentional Persuasion in the
Media
Questions to Consider
•
How well do these messages work?
•
If they do work, what are the theoretical
principles behind their success?
Using Entertainment to Improve
Public Health:
•
Happy Days ~ Library card applications
•
Felicity ~ Date rape
•
ER ~ morning-after pill
Using Entertainment to Improve
Public Health:
•
Problems
–
May not be met with
enthusiasm on the part of
the creators or the
producers
–
Believe it interferes with
their creative license
–
Turns entertainment into
advertising
The Great American Values Test
(1979)
•
Sandra Ball-Rokeach,
Milton Rokeach, Joel
Grube
•
Persuasive impact of
TV in the real-world
The Great American Values Test
(1979)
• Program content
– Viewers encouraged to think
about and renew their
commitment to “freedom” and
“equality”
– Viewers convinced to place
high value on the importance
of the environment and living
in “a world of beauty”
• How was it conducted?
– Aired simultaneously on three
commercial channels in the
Tri-cities area in eastern
Washington (i.e. Richland,
Pasco, Kennewick)
– NOT aired in Yakima, a
comparable city
The Great American Values Test
(1979)
• Results
– Those who watched the program were more
likely to donate
– Uninterrupted viewers donated 4 to 6 times
more money than non-viewers
– Likewise, they donated 9 times more money
than interrupted viewers
– Their ideas of freedom, equality, and a world
of beauty were all elevated
The Great American Values Test
(1979)
• Limitations
– Differences in donations may have little to do with
interruptions during the program
– Individual differences among participants and their
households
How Does an Advertiser Determine
Success?
•
Cost-per-person
statistic (In
marketing: Cost per
thousand – CPM)
•
Response rate 
Effective if 99% of
the audience fails to
respond
Some Evidence for the
Effectiveness of Advertising:
•
Newspaper: Single-page ad  Min.
revenue = 10x the cost of the ad
•
TV
– Northwest Mutual Life Insurance Company ~
improved name recognition
– Mattel ~ increased value by a factor of about
25
Some Evidence for the
Effectiveness of Advertising:
• Mattel’s Children Issues
– Charles Atkin  heavy viewers of TV ads =
more likely to consume and to ask their
parents to buy the products they see
advertised
• 1965 Barbie Commercial
• 2006 Barbie Commercial
– Action for Children’s Television (ACT) 
lobbied Congress to prohibit children-directed
advertising
Key Ingredients of the Power of
Media Persuasion
Power of the Source
(Credibility)
• Experiment:
– Conducted a survey on the feasibility of atomicpowered submarines for future development
– One message source was the official newspaper of
the Communist Party, Pravada
– The other source was from J. Robert Oppenheimer,
a well-respected atomic physicist
– People were more likely to believe and change their
views after hearing Oppenheimer’s view- More
credible source than Pravada
Power of the Source
(Credibility)
•
2 Chief Components of Credibility:
1. Expertise- is the message source a real
expert in the topic that is being discussed?
2. Trustworthiness- is the source of the
message reliable and truthful?
Power of the Source
(Credibility)
• Case Study:
– Reynold’s cigarettes case study:
• The advertisement featured Patrick Reynolds- the grandson of the
Reynolds family-founder of a tobacco company (Camel, Winston
and Salem)
• Mentioned about the many cigarette-caused diseases and deaths in
his family
• He even provided detailed statistics on the diseases- adds impact to
the seriousness of the issue
• Tells others about his current medical condition
Power of the Source
(Credibility)
Audience perceives that the
message source has little to
gain from delivering the
message- the source will be
perceived as more trustworthy
Message Features
• Simplicity
– Very often, advertising people make the mistake of delivering complicated
messages- compares it with getting tangled in your own underwear
– Straight and to the point is best
• Repetition
– Repeated messages are more persuasive than messages that have been heard
only once
– Limits of repetition- after 3 exposures to the same message, persuasive impact
starts decreasing
– T.V commercials face “burn-out” with the audience- need infusions of new life to
curb consumer boredom
• Fear
– Fear appeals increase persuasion
– Protection Motivation Theory- audience fear is based on the severity of a
threat, vulnerability of a threat and their ability to respond effectively to the threat
Message Features
• Guilt
– Making the audience feel guilty for not responding to a persuasive appeal
– Relatively easy to make people feel guilty
– Guilt appeals are especially persuasive in the context of interpersonal
communication
– People are motivated to do things because they feel guilty
– Although people avoid people who make us feel guilty, there is no one person
that a person can blame in a media campaign
• Humor
– Being funny makes it easier to be persuasive
– Humor attracts attention to the message, creates a favorable attitude and
produces a general feeling that the message is less critical
– Humor might backfire- people might be more attracted to the joke instead of the
actual message
– However, humor is better tolerated than repetition
The Health Campaign
• Discusses the deliberate attempts to persuade people to change
their behaviors for their personal health
• Conflicting ideas about health-related behaviors- ban of cigarette
ads for example but the encouraging smoking through other media
outlets on the other hand
• Conducted 2 surveys involving over 3000 participants- evaluate the
effectiveness of a major campaign to encourage reproductive health
practices
• 11 different radio and TV spots- people exposed to the campaign
were more likely to adopt contraception during sex
• media campaign had a bigger effect on individuals who did not have
a rich interpersonal network
The Health Campaign
• Bolivia
– 1200 mothers surveyed in Philippines
– exposure to media campaign about preventing measlessignificant impact on increasing specific knowledge on measles
– media, instead of interpersonal communication seemed to be
providing the information
• University of Kentucky Study
– found that sensation seekers are more likely to use drugs and
more likely to respond to media messages that are high in
novelty and action
– Found out that it is easier to convince people to adopt a new
behavior rather than to persuade them to stop an unhealthy
habit, eg: smoking
Subliminal Persuasion
What IS Subliminal Persuasion?
• Sub·lim·i·nal
Pronunciation: (")s&b-'lim-&n-&l, 's&bFunction: adjective
1 : inadequate to produce a sensation or a perception
2 : existing or functioning below the threshold of
consciousness <the subliminal mind> <subliminal
advertising> —sub·lim·i·nal·ly /-E/ adverb
Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
What IS Subliminal Persuasion?
• Embedded message designed to pass below
the normal limits of perception.
• Indiscernible to the conscious mind, but are
alleged to be perceptible to the subconscious
mind.
– An image transmitted so briefly that it is only
perceived subconsciously, otherwise unnoticed.
Subliminal Messaging, Wikipedia, 2007
What Subliminal Involves
• Audio
– Back masking
• Television and Video
• Film
• Print
Urban Myth?
• Often used in
advertising and
propaganda.
• Effectiveness and
frequency of such
techniques are often
debated upon.
– No clear explanation or
documentation of what
subliminal messaging is.
Living VICARY-ously
• 1957
– James Vicary’s experiment:
• Slogans "Drink Coca-Cola"
and "Eat popcorn" were
flashed during a movie for 1/3
of a millisecond at fivesecond intervals.
– Vicary claimed that sales for
both Coca Cola and popcorn
sales increased by 57.5%
and 18.1% respectively.
– Vicary coined the term
Subliminal Advertising.
Living VICARY-ously
• 1958
– Vicary conducted a television test in which he flashed the
message "telephone now" hundreds of times during a Canadian
Broadcasting Company program.
– However, there were no increase in phone calls.
• 1962
– Vicary admitted to fabricating his claim.
– Attempts to recreate the results of Vicary’s claim have never end
up in success.
Sublime Advertising
• Advertising community
not particularly interested
in confessing to the use
of subliminal messages.
• No documented proof of
its prevalence.
– Statistically, about
10% of all ads use
some form of
subliminal technique.
Sparks, Media Effects Research
The Good, the Bad and the
Useless
•
So subliminal messaging can be use for
good too, theoretically
– Self-help audio CDs for weight loss,
relaxation and other desirable results.
•
Anthony Pratkanis and Anthony
Greenwald proved otherwise.
– Results: People had an Illusory Placebo
Effect.
– People placed emphasis on labels
•
Conclusion of study:
– Effectiveness of subliminal messages are
predicated on the notion that the message
enters the mind undetected.
Sparks, Media Effects Research
How does Subliminal Messaging
work?
• Subliminal perception (hypnosis, for example) are known
to affect the perceiver without any conscious knowledge
of the effect on his/her part.
– However, there is NO strong evidence that subliminal messages
are effective.
• Subliminal messages are potentially more powerful than
normal suggestions.
– This form of influence/persuasion is akin to hypnosis
• Where the receiver is encouraged to be in a relaxed state so that
suggestions can be directed to the deeper (more gullible) parts of
the mind.
Subliminal Messaging, Wikipedia, 2007
Experimentally Unfalsified
• It is suggested that the effects of
subliminal messages would be no more
than that of a glimpse of a billboard in the
corner of an eye.
• Controlled experiments that attempt to
demonstrate the influence of subliminal
messages found little to no effect.
Examples of Subliminal
Persuasion
• Product Placements
– 2001
• Josie and the Pussycats; The Movie
– There were so many product placements and logos that the movie looked like an
ad itself.
– Occurs in almost every scene.
– Viewed as a satire of how product placements have invaded movie screens.
O’Bar, W. M. (2005). “Subliminal” Advertising. Advertising and Society Review.
Examples of Subliminal
Persuasion
• US Army Recruitment
Campaign
– 2004
• The Simpsons
– While watching a
video for the Party
Posse, Lisa notices
the phrase "Yvan Eht
Nioj" being repeated
continuously by bellydancers.
» http://youtube.com/
watch?v=PVKAgD
CwajY
Examples of Subliminal
Persuasion
• McDonalds
– 2007-01-27
• A McDonald's logo
appeared for one frame
during the Food Network's
Iron Chef America series
• The Food Network replied
that it was simply a
technical glitch.
» http://youtube.com/
watch?v=2xPvYgTv
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