What is persuasive communication in social psychology?

2.1 Psychological Inoculation

Derived from persuasive communications theory, psychological inoculation involves first exposing adolescents to weak social influences promoting substance use, followed later by progressively stronger social influences. Through this process, it was hypothesized that the exposed adolescents would build up resistance to more powerful prodrug messages, similar to what they would be likely to encounter as they entered junior high school. Despite the prominence of psychological inoculation in the initial formulation of the social influence prevention approach, it has not been supported by the empirical evidence and consequently has received considerably less emphasis in more recent variations of the social influence model. Other components of the social influence model have assumed greater emphasis, particularly normative education and resistance skills training.

Abstract

Packaging in the store serves as a tool for persuasive communication. As such, a package represents a brand to shoppers in several ways—as a unique brand identifier, as a contrasting element that catches the eye, and as a carrier of brand meaning. However, package visuals are relative phenomena that interact highly with each other and with the context in which the package is presented—the latter typically being highly visually active store settings. Therefore, packaging's effect on the shopper should be tested in context. In this chapter, we discuss the relativity of visual phenomena, the communication roles of packaging in the store, in-store settings that may be used to test packages in context, along with the analytical roles of A/B testing, perceptual maps and regression analysis, and consumer neuroscience.

1.2 Internal Validity

Theoretical claims in social psychology typically involve claims about the causal impact of constructs upon each other (e.g., social norms cause conformity, persuasive communications cause attitude change). Once the constructs have been operationalized, then research that is informative for theory construction and evaluation is research in which one can argue not only that one variable is associated with another, but also that one variable (the independent variable) is causally responsible for variation in another (the dependent variable). Research that is more internally valid is research where causal claims are more defensible.

Internal validity is affected by the nature of the research design that is employed. Ultimately, confidence in causal claims is only possible in the case of what are called randomized experimental designs, in which the units of observation (typically persons) have been randomly assigned to levels of the independent variable. For instance, to examine whether group sizes (the independent variable) influences the quality of a group decision (the dependent variable), people would be randomly assigned to groups of different sizes. Random assignment means that the researcher typically must control and manipulate the independent variable. Random assignment is importantly not the same thing as haphazard or uncontrolled assignment. It involves careful planning so that the probability of any unit occurring in a particular level of the independent variable is constant across all experimental units.

For many research questions in social psychology, randomized experiments are not feasible. Accordingly a variety of quasi-experimental designs can be employed. As is later described, these involve the collection of longitudinal data, without random assignment of units to levels of the independent variable. Finally, from the point of view of internal validity, cross-sectional studies (also known as correlational) studies are the least valid, although data from such studies can be quite informative for other reasons. Additionally, the absence of covariation between the independent and dependent variables in a correlational study would certainly lead one to doubt the existence of a causal relationship between the two.

Are you ready for deliberate practice?

Now that we have a clearer picture of what constitutes expertise, let’s examine two key ways you can consistently become more confident in front of an audience and eventually evolve into a master of persuasive communication. Earlier I referred to a specific type of practice, “deliberate practice.” This is key number one.

Not all practice makes perfect. It takes a deliberate form of practice to approach mastery. Most people practice on skills they already have, what they already know. Deliberate practice is different. It focuses on consistently practicing what you’re not good at, what you may not even know at all. Research has shown that this is the only form of practice that enables you to become initially more comfortable and then evolve to eventually achieve confidence, competence and expertise.

Factors, Sequence, and Timing of Persuasive Communications

While the principles of persuasion in the last section elucidate the social psychological bases of how influence techniques work on a target recipient, there are other elemental factors behind effective persuasion. This section focuses on the components and sequence of persuasive communications. A number of message learning models have been posited and relied upon in the scientific community, and the majority focus upon three main components in persuasive communications: 1) the source of the message; 2) the message; and 3) the receiver, or targeted audience.13 A tacit variable layered into these factors is the channel or method of how the message is presented to the receiver (Fig. 3.2). Importantly, while these are components, there is a definite interrelatedness between them; the message itself may increase the credibility of the source, or conversely, the source’s credibility may enrich persuasiveness of the message. These vital components, and the factors that enhance or decrease their effectiveness, are worthy of more particularized exploration.

The source of the message is the influencer, or individual(s) communicating the message to the receiver. Source factors or source effects are the characteristics of the message communicator that can contribute or detract from the effectiveness of the message. Over the last 50 years, researchers have investigated source factors, particularly the communicator’s characteristics, such as credibility and likability. Credibility refers to the receiver’s subjective perception of the believability of the communicator (O’Keefe, 2002). The body of existing research reveals causal factors toward credibility are expertise (perceived authoritativeness or qualification) and trustworthiness (perceived integrity or character) (Hovland & Weiss, 1951; Hovland et al., 1953). Factors such as the communicator’s attractiveness, confidence, education, occupation, experience, and message delivery can impact the receiver’s perception of credibility (Chaiken, 1979; Bradac, 1981; Bradac & Street, 1989; Stiff & Mongeau, 2003).

The message is the communication presented to the receiver.

The channel of the message is the manner, means, or modality in which the message is transmitted or presented to the receiver; this can range from verbal communication to a myriad of platforms varying in breadth and scope, contingent upon the targeted audience. Importantly, the channels of communication are constantly evolving. When considering the Internet and mobile applications, new methods are developed and made available on a frequent basis. Many times, these platforms dictate the shape or form of the message. For example, Twitter, the popular social networking and microblogging service, only allows for 140 characters of text in a public message.14 While there is not a robust corpus of research relating to channel variables in message processing, Chaiken and Eagly’s early research did reveal that “modality differences in persuasion favored the written mode with inherently difficult-to-understand material, whereas the more usual advantage of videotaped and audiotaped modalities was found with easy material.” (Chaiken & Eagly, 1983, p. 241). These findings are particularly interesting when considered in the scope of scareware and ransomware textual messages and hoax viruses, which typically manifest as difficult-to-understand technical (or pseudotechnical) jargon/artifact filled messages seeking to cause a recipient to fearfully engage in action harmful to his/her computer or abstain from certain computer actions.

The receiver of the message is the individual or target audience whom the message is intended for or communicated to.

3.1 Message Learning Approach

One of the most influential programs of research on attitude change was that undertaken by Carl Hovland and his colleagues at Yale University in the years following World War II (e.g., Hovland et al. 1953). The Yale group studied how source, message, recipient, and channel factors affected the comprehension, acceptance, and retention of the arguments in a persuasive communication. Although no formal theory tied together the many experiments conducted by this group, they often attempted to explain the results obtained in terms of general learning principles such as the more message content you learned, the more your attitudes should change (see McGuire 1985). Contemporary research shows that people can be persuaded without learning or remembering any of the message content. That is, people are sometimes persuaded solely by the ‘cues’ associated with the message (e.g., the source is expert; Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Or, the message might elicit a favorable thought that persists in the absence of memory for the information that provoked it (Greenwald 1968). Message learning appears to be most important when people are not engaged in an on-line evaluation of the information presented to them, such as when they do not think they have to form an opinion at the time of information exposure. In such cases, subsequent attitudes may be dependent on the valence of information they have learned and can recall (Hastie and Park 1986).

Rhetorical meaning

Design scholars Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin have proposed a rhetorical approach to design, as a humanistic activity dedicated to productive inquiry and making. Thus, it is an architectonic art, a systematic integrative discipline of forethought, a master art of strategic thinking that organizes and structures patterns of thought into new and powerful ways; narrative and argument are core aspects. Rhetoric is concerned with discovery, invention, argument, and planning. At its heart is the issue of persuasive communication, in which each designed entity embodies a well- formed argument. This view of the product as an argument suggests that the designer is like a speaker composing a speech, to be delivered to a specific audience. A product design is a situated act, relying upon balanced, nuanced relations known informally as the “Rhetorical Stance,” from rhetorician Wayne Booth.81 Only through interdependence of the Classical elements (logos, ethos, pathos) can a speech be effective. Balance is found when it can change minds. An overemphasis on logos, ethos, or pathos will result in awkward, unnatural performance that does not achieve its goal of audience persuasion (i.e., move the user to favorable action). This argument is comprised of specific parts (drawn from Classical concepts initially outlined by Aristotle, Cicero, and other rhetorical thinkers), that should be held in balance: the logical structure of rational components (logos), human affordances and ergonomic qualities to ensure value (pathos), and a tone of voice or style (ethos). Rounding out is another aspect of narrative, or mythos, that conveys a unifying sense of story or plot structure for how the object fits the user's scenario.82

3 Self-efficacy in Promoting Healthful Lifestyles

Lifestyle habits can enhance or impair health (see Health Behaviors). This enables people to exert some behavioral control over their vitality and quality of health. Efficacy beliefs affect every phase of personal change: whether people even consider changing their health habits; whether they enlist the motivation and perseverance needed to succeed should they choose to do so; and how well they maintain the habit changes they have achieved (Bandura 1997).

The Benefits and Limitations of Agile and How to Apply It to BPM

We have seen that Agile offers several benefits (e.g., value to customer, organization, staff, and community) over traditional ways of working. We have seen, for example, that Agile focuses on developing a minimally marketable or viable product or service features, which will provide value to customers and community. In contrast to the traditional waterfall approach, it focuses on delivering value early to customers and community in short increments, which range in duration from anywhere between a few weeks to months. This seems helpful for the organizations and staff seeking to improve time to market and quality while reducing the cost of production and failure. Clearly then, agile ways of working not only help delivering value early, but they also seem appropriate in recognizing the risks and failure early to mitigate their impact.

A part of exploring the potential around Agile BPM also includes understanding the traditional problems and challenges when adapting a new concept. As with so many things, resistance or friction impede adaptation of a new way of thinking and working with agile concepts. For an organization adopting Agile BPM concepts, numerous challenges are possible. However, the most common challenges we have encountered are as follows:

Static Friction: The force that must be overcome before agile concepts can be implemented in a nonagile organization, for example, friction observed before piloting first Agile BPM project.

Dynamic Friction: The force that must be overcome to maintain uniform agile motion and the friction encountered when people don’t see immediate results after a new Agile BPM project. It is important for the Agile BPM leader to constantly communicate value of “inspect and adapt.” Once the BPM CoE and the organization learn to manage incremental value driven by agile process, dynamic friction starts diminishing by itself.

Political Friction: The force resisting agile progress because of politics that can come from the BPM CoE or the organization itself. A good Agile BPM leader can influence negative politics by persuasive communication in Agile’s favor.

Knowledge Friction: The force that must be overcome due to the BPM CoE and the organizational lack of competencies and resources who understand Agile and its precepts, workings, and value. Most organizations use external consultants or hire an Agile BPM specialist to train, coach, and mentor employees so that they gain an agile knowledge base.

Once a solid agile knowledge base is in place in the BPM CoE, this friction will generally start to diminish.

These frictions limit the ability of an organization to maximize the use of Agile BPM in an optimized Way of Working, Modeling, and Governing. Table 1: Indicates the typical friction factors across organizational areas.

Table 1. Example of Friction Factors Across Organizational Areas

Friction is not the only challenge organizations will face when moving from traditional BPM to an Agile BPM way of thinking. Other influencing factors cause Agile BPM to fail or to deliver significantly lower value than expected:

Innovation is only done from the process perspective: As it is in the IT world, the current view of Agile is very much defined by the Software/Application and underlying technology perspective; this gives rise to a degree of vagueness of requirements, especially within the business layer. We also see this in the process community, in which they limit business innovation and transformation to what they can see the process can do rather than working in its context. Often this is based on a traditional BPM focus around optimizing the existing processes. However, this view limits Agile BPM concepts from enabling true business agility. The reason is that the current IT Agile methods only have feedback loops between the Plan and Deploy phases for a BPM project, placing an emphasis on the feedback from what is possible in the process and creating a disjointedness loop back to the business. Resulting in Agile BPM teams not having gone through the multiple agile business iterations capturing the value and performance aspects relevant in the Analyze and Plan phase (the Business Layer Context). Therefore, Agile BPM needs a better business requirement loop, which is elaborated on later in this chapter.

Multiple changes at once: Changing both value and performance expectations as well as changing business requires the organization to introduce far too many changes during the iteration’s Design, Build, and Test phases. This makes it very difficult for the Agile BPM teams to complete the process analysis, process alignment, process changes, process design, process automation, and so on, in the required 2-4 week sprint cycle. Agile BPM, therefor,e needs to build a better requirement and execution approach into the overall approach.

Users are not sure of what they can get versus what they want: Business and process users are not always sure of what they can get from BPM initiatives. As Steve Jobs said, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”14

“Having a developer who has a deep understanding of the business is often better than an inexperienced business person with no understanding of how technology can enable work about “requirements.” This also touches upon the challenge we previously discussed in which many process experts limit the business innovation and transformation aspects to what they can see that the process can do. The result is that value derived from the process as well as the execution of the innovation cycle, therefore, for the most part, comes too short and does not deliver the desired result or value.

Limited executive sponsorship equals limited agility: Agility requires sponsorship at the highest level. It requires dedicating top performers and empowering them to challenge the status quo. That is, not just automating the existing siloed approach; executives need to resolve innovation and transformation blockers rapidly and with a focus on the final goal.

Agile Focus is operational and not strategic: Agile teams tend to focus on operational accomplishments and report it to tactical level, however, at the expense of strategic business objectives. In BPM, this is tragic, for missing the big picture can lead to long-term failure at the expense of apparent success in the short term.

Agile has too little governance: Agile teams often lack sufficient checks and balances; if this occurs, they can cause lots of damage in a very short time. Agile BPM must interlink with BPM Governance (see chapter BPM Governance).

Giving up on quality: Because of the high demands or urgency that is placed on process deployment, an Agile BPM team often falls back on the crutch of checking only for process pain points/process defects instead of maintaining a high level of quality of overall BPM changes. (see the chapters on BPM Change Management and BPM Governance)

Some of these failure points are indicated in the following Agile figure, which for many organizations represents the current agile method with its failures and problems.

In Figure 3 we see the Agile development method laid out to show the Analyze and Plan stages, followed by the design, build, and test cycle, all of which then ends with the deployment stage with the key criticisms, or weaknesses, mapped to the applicable points in the method.

Conducting the Questionnaire Study

After you have completed the previous steps, you are ready to implement your survey. Dillman et al. (2009) note that a well-constructed questionnaire is a good starting point, but many survey implementation details will have even more impact on response rates than the questionnaire you so carefully crafted and tested. Here are some of the more important implementation issues for paper and online surveys:

Consider the best time to administer a questionnaire. If you are planning to distribute paper questionnaires to a group, avoid handing out the surveys at the end of the day or shift. A better time to ask people to fill out a paper questionnaire (e.g., at a conference) is at a mid-morning or afternoon break. If you are using questionnaires as part of a field study, consider arranging time during the workday so respondents can complete the questionnaire as part of their normal work (this might make it seem more rewarding and relevant) (Charlton, 2002). Avoid distributing surveys during peak periods for your respondents such as the end of the business year, the end of a quarter in the United States, or during a critical project. Examine your calendar for national and international secular and religious holidays that might coincide with your proposed questionnaire distribution dates.

Develop a plan for follow-up for those who don’t respond midway through your survey open dates. The degree of follow-up will depend on your relationships with respondents. You might be sending questionnaires to carefully selected good customers, so your follow-up may be a single personal e-mail. In contrast to a simple e-mail reminder, Dillman (2000, p. 151) suggests a five-phase “contact” plan for mailed questionnaires that can be adapted for online or e-mailed questionnaires:

Send a brief “prenotice” letter or e-mail saying that a questionnaire is coming. Prenotices are brief, personalized letters that inform a potential respondent that a questionnaire is coming and, when appropriate, what general issues are the focuses of the questionnaire.

Send the questionnaire with a clear cover letter. If you are conducting an online survey, you will need a brief cover letter that the respondent will read before filling out the questionnaire. The cover letter is a primary persuasive communication that should induce respondents to fill out your questionnaire. The cover letter should convey the following information:

The date that the questionnaire was sent out and when the survey will close (so people who are away know whether they should even fill out the survey).

What will happen (when the questionnaire will arrive and in what format).

The general topic of the questionnaire.

The rationale behind the questionnaire and, most importantly, how the respondent will benefit from the results of the survey. You are likely to get a higher response if you use user-focused phrasing in the invitation rather than organization-focused phrasing.

A brief note about any incentives that will accompany the survey and how they will be delivered to the respondent (e.g., checks, PayPal, or online gift certificates).

A thank you.

A personal contact with e-mail and/or a phone number (and signature if mailed).

Send a thank you card or e-mail with a note stating, “There is still time to send the questionnaire back if you have not already sent it in.” This is useful when you do not have a system that tracks who has and who has not responded to your survey invitation. More sophisticated systems can track who has not responded and target only those respondents.

Send a replacement questionnaire.

Make a final contact (preferably by another mode such as e-mail or phone).

Personalize the survey. The cover letter should include a specific person’s name and title, not just a group name such as “Acme Corporation Satisfaction Committee.” Here is an example:

Scott Smith

Senior Vice President, Product Engineering

ACME Software, Inc.

Wayland, MA

Provide a way for respondents to contact you if they have questions. Provide an e-mail, phone, or website with information about your group and a specific person who can answer questions about the survey. Many people worry about giving out a specific name and contact information, but this is a way to show trust and respect for your respondent, and if you have followed good principles of questionnaire design, very few people are likely to call. If you follow the advice in the previous step to have a high status person sign-off, you might want to have an e-mail alias (such as [email protected]) set up that will relay questions or comments to you, rather than the vice president (with his or her permission of course).

If you will be putting your questionnaire online, a number of implementation details can improve your survey results (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliot, 2002):

Test your online survey with different operating systems, hardware (Mac, PC, tablet), browsers, resolutions, and connection speeds (especially slow speeds).

Be aware that mass e-mailings are sometimes being intercepted as spam by Internet service providers (ISPs). You might want to stagger your e-mailing somewhat. This author once sent out an e-mail survey request to 75 people through his ISP and unknowingly violated a spam/bulk e-mail policy, resulting in a loss of e-mail privileges and a serious fight to get those privileges back.

Legal Issues with Opt-in/Opt-out

If you are sending out large-scale surveys to your customers, check on your corporate policies regarding customer opt-in/opt-out requests. Some companies maintain a sales or marketing database that is tapped by different groups, including UX researchers and designers. Some databases may have a record of whether the customers want to receive different kinds of information, e.g., marketing literature, surveys, and product updates. If you send out a survey to customers who have opted out of receiving surveys, you may violate both company policy and state laws. For general information on laws related to opt-in/opt-out of e-mail material, see http://www.lsoft.com/resources/optinlaws.asp.

Provide a simple way for respondents to report problems with the survey. It is useful to include an e-mail address or phone number at the beginning and end of questionnaires.

Consider whether respondents need a way to save partially completed surveys. Different online survey tools often have a setting that allows a person to save a partially completed survey and then return by clicking on the original link.

Determine how much automatic validation you want to include in your survey. Do you want to force answers by having required questions or check for appropriate answers when you are using web or survey software?

Required (Mandatory) Versus Optional Questions

Online survey tools provide a feature that allows you to set some questions as optional and some as required. Required questions stop the respondent from moving forward in a questionnaire and provide some cue that some choice or entry is needed. When you design survey questions, you must ask, “What is essential?” and make those essential questions required. Some categories of required questions include the following:

Screening questions at the beginning of the survey that direct the respondent to a particular path in the questionnaire. Screening questions can include simple demographics such as job role or experience level.

Conditional questions in a survey that direct the respondent to more detailed or specific questions (which may or may not be required).

Essential questions that your team believes will provide the data needed to support hypotheses or make decisions. For example, in a customer satisfaction survey, you might have a set of questions relating to feature usability that will influence strategic or tactical planning.

Critical open questions that asks respondents to enter text statements that provide details that are important for making decisions. For example, you may have a required open question as a follow-up to a satisfaction question.