 Hey everyone, this is our opening discussion in our series on persuasion and argumentation. So in this video, we're going to take a look at the history of persuasion and some of the ways that it affects us today. But to do that, I wanted to start our conversation by putting things into context by examining a way that we confront persuasion on a, you know, regular basis. If not daily basis, then certainly on a weekly basis. If not, if not more frequently. So you may be wondering who I wonder what we're going to talk about. Is it going to be, is it going to be big pharma? We're going to talk about the influence of big pharma and how they persuade or maybe political campaigns and how they push this in one direction or another and use persuasion or maybe the persuasion of the huge retailers and how they capitalize on their huge market or whatever. Actually, what I want to look at is a bit more pervasive than that even for us on our day to day lives. It has a major influence on us. I want to talk a little bit about our grocery stores. If you've been grocery shopping in the last 50 years or so, then you have been in the midst of one of the most persuasive oriented organizations and layouts in the history of the world. So just for a few examples here. Let's start with a big picture here and think about how grocery stores are laid out, for example. When you walk into a grocery, picture your local grocery store right now. Think about the things that you maybe need the most frequently. So you may be going to the store for the most, probably things like dairy or things that are perishable like that that expire. Where are they located? You know, in this example and this layout, you're probably coming in on the bottom left of this display and you've got to go all the way to the upper right corner of the store to get to that stuff. So in order to do so, you've got to go through all the other things and maybe picking up things that you didn't even know you needed, right? Or didn't think you needed, but now you know you do because you had to walk right past them to get to what you really came for. So even the layout of the store, just the broader layout of the store is persuasive in nature. It's persuading you to look at things and think about things that you may not have considered before. In a more detailed level, we look at things like the produce section in particular. Produce section is chaos. It's not usually straight lines and things. It's designed to, first of all, slow you down. Everything in this area is designed to slow you down. They want you to spend more time here because they know that the more time you spend in a particular section of the store, the more likely you are to buy things from that particular section and see things that, again, I didn't even realize they needed this. But certainly I do. So let me grab three of these fruits and four of these vegetables or whatever. They need to get that stuff out on a high turnover so they want to have people spend more time there. So you can see here they've arranged it in a way that it's not just a straight through and through. You can't just pass through. You're going to have to dodge and different little carts and display areas and things. Also, frequently in these parts of the stores, they'll have more of a rough floor. So that when you're going over it with your cart, if you're going over to high speed, it's going to rattle you down, right? So they want you to do that. So you slow down. Again, slowing you down. The music is designed to slow you down. The lighting is more subtle and slows you down. Everything about the section of the store slows you down, right? So think about that. I mean, that's amazing persuasion at work and applied persuasion here. And then finally, one other thing about grocery tours, look at where all the kids' cereals are. They don't put the kids' cereals on the top shelves. They don't put them where they're at. They put them right where little kids are going to see them, where they're going to reach off the cart and grab them and say, I want this and where that's true for all things in the grocery stores and stores in general. They put things for kids because what's that do again? Not only does it get you to maybe consider buying those things, but it also gets you to slow down because you've got to stop and say, no, no, no, we're not getting that and then have an argument with your kid or whatever and debate with them about whether you're going to get this super chocolatey cereal. And so everything here is designed to slow you down. This is persuasion at work in a daily, more of an everyday situation that we don't even think about a lot. There are situations where we see it coming. Political campaigns, you see that persuasion coming. Things like that, you see it coming. The grocery store, congratulations grocery store. You guys have done an excellent job over the years of refining your persuasion. It's amazing. Everything there designed to slow you down. So just food for thoughts as we get started here. Why is persuasion important? We encounter it all the time in our everyday lives. So let's take a look at starting with one of the foundations of persuasion. Where did this all start? Where does it come from and how is it built from there? So we started the ground floor here with ancient Greece, really, where we start to see organized focus on what does it mean to be an effective persuader. And we start with Aristotle here, our guy Aristotle. And you've probably come across his three famous modes of persuasion or what he considered the three different most valuable pieces of persuasion, ethos, pathos, and logos. You've probably heard that in other courses before. You talk about it in English. You talk about it in public speaking, if you've had that. So Aristotle really introduced this idea of there's a method to this persuasion stuff. And it involves these three characteristics, ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos, of course, being credibility, not only the person, but their content and things. Pathos involves the emotional appeals that are involved. And logos being logic. And logos was enormous for the ancient Greeks. Ethos and logos, pathos was important as well. But they were all about logic. Original persuasion was all about logic. How can we persuade people's minds, get them to change their minds? In fact, if you go back and look at Plato's Apology where he kind of transcribes, so to speak, or writes about the defense of Socrates against the charges that were brought about him and eventually led to his death, his argument there is all about logic. It's not about pathos. It's not about any of that kind of stuff. It's really just he's appealing logically to them, probably to a too great an extent in that situation because it ended up not working for him. But the ancient Greeks really followed the Aristotelian pattern there of ethos, pathos, and logos. We fast-forward a little bit through history. We get to the next building block here, which is ancient Rome. And one of the first Romans, or the most famous Romans to really study persuasion and the oratory arts is Cicero. This is our guy Cicero here. And Cicero said there are really five components of persuasion. He said first, there's the invention or the discovery of the evidence and the arguments. So again, a focus on logic here, let's come up with what is our evidence? What are our arguments here? Then he said the second step is we need to organize those. So first, we need to discover what those are or invent those, those, that evidence and arguments. And then we need to organize them in a logical way. Then we can start to add, he said the third part is to add some artistic stylization, you know, to stylize these arguments and maybe even think about the audience a little bit. So here we have the introduction of audience analysis just a bit. Then Cicero felt it was important to memorize all of this. We've kind of gotten away to that in contemporary times, but back then it was very important to memorize all of this argument and make it feel like it was coming straight from your head and you weren't relying on other note-taking elements or things like that. Then finally he said an effective persuader has to be able to skillfully deliver those arguments. So again, thinking about the invention of those arguments and the organization and stylization of those arguments, the memorization of those things, but then you have to be able to deliver the good, so to speak. You have to be able to effectively deliver those arguments. So those were his five kind of elements of persuasion. And then you also have another famous Roman here named Quintilian. And Quintilian said that you must also, that's not enough, you must also be a good man as well as a good speaker. And kind of harkening back to Aristotle's ethos in terms of credibility, Quintilian said you have to be a good man as well as a good speaker. If you're not a good man, if you don't have that ethos, if you don't have that credibility, then nobody's going to buy what you're selling. Nobody's going to believe it. So you have those arguments and the development and persuasion amongst the ancient Romans. Then we fast-forward quite a bit here. We're going to stretch forward all the way to the mid-20th century to the 1950s and really 1949, but close to 1950 year where two researchers named Shannon and Weaver came up with what they called the mathematical model of communication. And you can see the basics here and really this is a really solid foundation for what has become the now the transactional model of communication, which is more the contemporary model, but a very early element here of communication where you have Shannon and Weaver develop that model. And then in 1952, two other researchers named Bremenbeck and Howell used that model to kind of create their definition of persuasion. And their definition says basically the persuasion is the conscious attempt to modify thought and action by manipulating the motives of men toward predetermined ends. So again, the conscious attempt to modify thought and action by manipulating the motives of men toward predetermined ends So we see here in the work from Bremenbeck and Howell that we have a shift from what the ancient Romans and Greeks felt was really important, which is the logical aspect of persuasion. A shift from the logic to the internal motives of the audience to considering we're manipulating the motives of men here, the motives of people. So we're looking inward at the motives of the audience. So a shift from just what reasonable arguments can I create, which as we saw again in Plato's Apology, we see that doesn't just work by itself for Socrates. Socrates probably would have done well to consider those internal motives of the audience and focus a little bit on that. So we have that shift from logic that comes along in the 1950s, shift from logic to the internal motives of the audience. Then we move forward a few more years here again. In the 1970s, we have this lovable character. His name's Kenneth Burkey's kind of Godfather of rhetorical criticism and rhetorical analysis and very famous researcher and author in those areas focused on persuasion as well because persuasion is heavily involved with the interpretation of those symbols and things. So Kenneth Burke kind of defined in 1970s, one of the pieces he defined, persuasion is the artful use of resources of ambiguity, which is kind of a fun exercise in ambiguity itself. The artful use of resources of ambiguity. So Burke here focuses on and places an emphasis on what we call identification. Identification meaning that connection with the audience, meaning again recognizing audiences are egocentric. They care most about those things that impact them most directly. So Burke said, we need to focus here. Effective persuasion focuses on that sense of identification and says what connection do I have and does this topic have with the audience and how can I use that to appeal to them? So again, obviously we're past the 1970s now when we move into what we could think about in terms of persuasion today. So we're going to use a definition put forth in a textbook by an author and researcher named Richard Perloff in 19, sorry 2016, not 19 anything, 2016 where he says this is his definition of persuasion and a contemporary definition of persuasion. The symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their own attitudes or behaviors regarding an issue through the transmission of a message in an atmosphere of free choice. So we've expanded this definition a little bit, but Perloff basically has five elements to his definition here. So let's take a look at those. First of all, he says that persuasion is a symbolic process. As we know, all communication is a symbolic process, really. Language is symbolic, but we also use artifacts of persuasion, meaning stuff, things that we use that have meaning to people and we use different symbols and so they don't have to be just language or words, it could be other symbols, but the persuasion centers around these symbols. It is a symbolic process that uses symbols. We use symbols in order to persuade and we choose those symbols, we craft those symbols carefully, but it's really all part of a symbolic process. So the second part of Perloff's definition here that we could look at is that when he says they try to convince other people, which communicators try to convince other people. So we have here an attempt at influence. We have this attempt to influence from one person to another or one person to a body of people or body of people to a body of people or whatever. This attempt to influence, it's not just happening by accident. There's a decision that's made here that we're going to try and persuade these people in some way. We're going to try and alter their attitudes or behaviors or thoughts in this area. So it's a specific and intentional attempt to influence somebody else and try and convince those people. So that's number two. It's a symbolic process. There's an attempt to influence here. The third part here would be change their own attitudes or behaviors and the key word there is really own. Change their own attitudes. Persuasion really is about self-persuasion. We can lead a horse to water but we can't make a drink. We can provide these persuasive arguments. We can discuss their importance. We can make all these great cases and connect it through identification. In the end though, it's that person who really makes a decision whether or not they're going to be persuaded or that they have to persuade themselves whether or not they're going to accept or deny the information that we're giving them or the arguments that we're making. So there's an element of self-persuasion here that people have to really change their own attitudes and behaviors. We can provide all this information. We can again lead them to that water. But in the end, they're the ones who are ultimately responsible for that persuasion. There's also a transmission of a message. We're doing this through the transmission of a message. That it's not just something that we hope will float down from the heavens or whatever. That this is something we are specifically crafting and sending a message about to these people. And then finally, that this all take place in the atmosphere of free choice. It's not persuasion if we are holding someone with a weapon. If we've got a gun on them or holding a knife at their back and saying, yes or else that's not persuasion, that's coercion. That's forceful coercion. Persuasion takes place in an atmosphere of free choice. People are choosing to accept or not accept the information and the persuasion that we are providing. But it needs to take place in an atmosphere of free choice in order for it to be considered persuasion. So there we have the definition that's going to kind of inform the rest of our discussion on persuasion. It's the symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their own attitudes and behaviors regarding an issue through the transmission of a message in an atmosphere of free choice. With that in mind, with this free choice in mind, we want to define what are the criteria for responsible persuasion. There are really three criteria that need to be in place for this to be responsible persuasion. So free choice, ultimately freedom of choice in this persuasion. So first of all, both sides really need to have an equal opportunity to persuade. And each has an approximately equivalent ability and access to the media of communication as well. So we want equal opportunity, ability and access as much as possible. So you don't want this to be a one-sided fight. In other words, you don't want one side to be so outweighing the other that it doesn't make it a fair fight at all. So they need to have equal time, equal opportunity to persuade, equal access to the audience, so to speak. They also need to have an approximately equivalent ability. You don't put a professional boxer or MMA fighter in the ring with a teenager who's never been in a fight before. That's not a fair fight. Ultimately, for responsible persuasion, we need two people that are at approximately the same ability and have the ability to persuade equally. And then finally, access to the media of communication, equal access to the media of communication. You know, it's interesting that in political campaigns, especially in congressional political campaigns, the incumbent wins the vast majority of the time, something like 90% of the time. And most observers attribute this to the fact that incumbents or people who hold that position currently have, first of all, access to more media, access to the bully pulpit, so to speak. They can get on TV whenever they want because they're discussing current policies and they're in demand in that way. They also have typically more money. They're able to fundraise better and it puts them, it gives them so much more access to the media of communication. And so they're effective in that way. That's a huge part of why they win, like 90% of the times when they run because they have just more access to the media. So for effective and equal persuasion, we want people to have essentially access to the same media and equal access to that media of communication. We also want for responsible persuasion, we need a revelation of agendas. We can't have people with hidden agendas. We need to kind of be an open book. We need for the audience to know what that persuaders about and what they're shooting for in general. So we can't have deceit going on and hiding what we're doing. And then finally, the third and final response or the criteria for responsible persuasion is that the audience be critical receivers, that we have the presence of critical receivers in the audience. People that aren't just going to let things wash over them and accept whatever the person says, but people that are going to actively think about and consider whether or not this makes sense, whether or not they agree with it, whether or not it jives with their values and their behaviors and things. So we need the presence of critical receivers in order for it to be responsible persuasion as well. So we want all of these things to be in place when we are engaging in persuasion and we want to also keep this in mind when we are on the opposite end, when we are receiving persuasion, we want to keep these things in mind as well. A couple of models of persuasion that we can look at. First of all, a very simple one. We kind of touched on this already with the development of Shannon and Weaver's SMCR model, their mathematical model of communication really evolved into what we call the SMCR model of persuasion then. And so the SMCR model starts with, it stands for source, message, channel, and receiver. So it starts with the source. The source is the individual or group that has something that they want to persuade about. So we need to think about, when we look at this model, we need to think about the source in terms of who is this person, what do we know about them? What's their background? What are their qualifications? What is their agenda here? What is their motivation in all of this? So there are lots of things to consider about the role of the source in the process of persuasion. There's also the importance of the message. How are they composing the message? What language are they using? Are they doing so in an ethical way and piecing this information together and sharing this information in an ethical way? So we need to consider the message as part of that effort of persuasion as well. We can also consider the channel of persuasion and the channel in communication. What we're talking about here is just how that message is being communicated. Through what means are they communicating that message and why are they making those choices? Why are they sharing this on TV instead of the internet or in print instead of, you know, face-to-face campaign or whatever. However, they're doing it. What's the advantages and disadvantages here? Both for us as persuaders. What's the best way for us to get our message out there? But then as receivers of persuasion, why are those choices being made? What's the significance there and what advantages and disadvantages that provide for the persuader that I need to be aware of? So the channel is very important as well. And then finally, the receiver. And if you're the persuader, we need to be thinking about the receiver in terms of who is this person? How can I best reach them? How does identification play a role here? If I am the receiver, then I need to be thinking with my critical mindset in terms of what's the real message here and what's coming into this and what's what am I not being told and so forth. So the receiver also plays an important role then in the persuasion process. And we can't forget the most basic element of feedback here that the receiver also then provides feedback to the source which will then impact the next iteration of that message and so forth and create this sort of loop. So the SMCR model is really basic, but it's a really good way to just understand the very basics of what's happening in the communication process and therefore what's happening as part of the persuasive process as well. A little different model that we could use to look at persuasion as well was developed by Hugh Rank, a researcher named Hugh Rank. And so Rank's model really focuses on what he calls the intensify and downplay schema. So the intensification or downplaying of these messages. So in terms of the intensify and downplay message, you basically have four strategies here. I guess you call them four strategies for intensification and downplaying. On the intensify side, the strategies would be to intensify your own strengths and intensify the opponent's weaknesses, pointing those out and magnifying those. On the flip side, you want to downplay your own weaknesses and downplay your opponent's strengths. That makes sense. So we have the basic strategies then of the intensify and downplay schema. Then there are also specific tactics that you can use within each one of these. So for intensify, we would use things like repetition. The more we get something out there, the more people are going to hear it and maybe process that and internalize that. We use association to intensify. We kind of attach our argument to something that's already got a positive reaction from the audience. We use that. We use composition and really give great thought to the way that we compose our arguments and put things together and how all that works together. So those are always in tactics that we can use to intensify an argument. Then on the flip side, we can also downplay an argument at times. If we want to use the downplay, we would maybe do things like omission. We need to think about ethics and that's something that will come later, but we could omit certain material. That's a downplaying tactic for persuasion. We could use diversion, which is sort of a fallacy of logic, but we could divert the audience's attention from our weaknesses onto something else. Then we also have confusion where we could just confuse the issue and so people don't really understand that as well. Those are all downplaying tactics. Now again, you could and we will debate the ethics of each of those, but they are nonetheless tactics. Rank's model says for persuasion, you basically have two options. You can intensify things or you can downplay things and then there are specific ways that you can go about doing that. There are other theories that are really important and foundational in the area of persuasion. These are things that I would encourage you to look at. Cognitive dissonance theory, theory of reasoned action, social judgment theory, elaboration likelihood model, the inoculation theory, and then the narrative paradigm. We're not going to spend time in this discussion going over each of those in detail, but these are just some of the historically foundational theories of persuasion as well that I would encourage you to examine and get to know a little bit in order to understand the fundamentals of persuasion. This is the first in our series of discussions on persuasion and so coming soon, I hope you'll also take the opportunity to view and to dig into these other topics that we'll be discussing, including persuasion, ethics, and Christian responsibility, focusing specifically on not just the ethics of persuasion, but the Christian responsibility within persuasion. The misuse and abuse of symbols. We'll talk about the importance of the symbols in persuasion and how they're used, how they're misused, all those types of things. The persuasive process. We'll talk about this in three steps, first the tools of motivation, then the content premises of persuasion and the cultural premises of persuasion as well. We'll talk about becoming a swader then. A persuader, get very into the applied tactics of what does it mean to become a persuader and then finally we'll take a look at persuasion in practice in a couple different ways by examining social campaigns, how persuasion is used in the media, and then how persuasion specifically is used in advertising. In the meantime, if you have questions about this topic or anything else relating to persuasion, feel free to email me. I'd be happy to chat with you via email and answer any questions that you might have. In the meantime, start sharpening those persuasive skills and also the skills of becoming a more critical consumer of these types of medium so that we can become a better critical receiver of persuasion and understand it better. And I will see you in time for the next video.