WHAT IS PERSUASION

Persuasion is a form of social influence. It is the process of guiding oneself or another toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic (though not always logical) means. Persuasion has probably always been a part of human life. It seems inevitable that peo­ple will try to influence other people, even their closest friends and family members. For centuries people must have operated on the basis of intuition and common sense in their attempts to persuade. Aristotle was one of the first to try to analyze and write about persua­sion, in his classic works on rhetoric. Years later, particularly when mass communication became more widespread, people began to study persuasion even more systematically. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, with its identification of seven techniques of propa­ganda, was doing some of this early work. Part of the motive for this more careful study of persuasion was obviously fear—the war-inspired fear that propaganda could win the hearts and minds of people.

Persuasion is only one type of mass communication, but it is a type in which many people are interested. The advertiser using mass communication to sell soft drinks, headache remedies, or automobiles is engaged in persuasion. So is the nuclear power industry when it hires public relations experts to help it convince the public that nuclear power is safe. So are the political candidate who buys newspaper ads, the public health organization that prepares radio spots to encourage people to stop smoking, and the religious organization that puts evangelical messages on television. All of these people are attempting to use mass communication messages to produce some kind of change in other people. Persuasion is closely associated with the propaganda even the definitions may relate in certain aspects by various authors. Initially many authors define propaganda that definition has appeared very close in defining persuasion. Let us examine:

Lasswell's classic work, Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927), presented one of the first careful attempts to define propaganda: "It refers solely to the control of opinion by significant symbols, or, to speak more concretely and less accurately, by stories, rumors, reports, pictures and other forms of social communication". He presented a slightly different definition a few years later: "Propaganda in the broadest sense is the technique of influencing human action by the manipulation of representations. These representations may take spoken, written, pictorial or musical form"

Both of Lasswell's definitions would include most of advertising, and in fact, would appear to include all of what is often referred to as persuasion. In fact, Lasswell has stated that "both advertising and publicity fall within the field of propaganda".