Persuasion: An experimental study of team decision making

This paper studies persuasion within teams and investigates why teams commonly take, by some measures, better decisions than individuals. The analysis is based on data from electronic communication within teams of two players. Thanks to the experimental design, changes of an individual’s decision can be attributed to the content of the team partner’s message. The results for knowledge-related and strategic problems show that individuals’ decisions change upon receiving more informative and sophisticated arguments and remain the same otherwise. This individual behavior is an essential part of the information aggregation in teams and can explain the advantage of teams in decision making and in games.     

Differential impact of Web site content: Exploring the influence of source (public relations versus news), modality,and participation on college students’ perceptions

This experiment examined the impact of source, modality, and participation on perceptions of credibility, salience, attitudes, and general Web site evaluation. The data showed no significant differences between online stories coming from either public relations or news sources on any of the study's dependent variables. However, significant differences did emerge for the effects of multimedia and audience engagement.     

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Meta-cognition and resistance to political persuasion: evidence from a three-wave panel study

ABSTRACT

We investigate the temporal course of meta-cognition and resistance processes following exposure to counter-attitudinal information in the 2012 Presidential election. Using a unique 3-wave survey panel design, we tracked eligible voters during the last months of the 2012 campaign and experimentally manipulated exposure to negative political messages targeting Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on an online platform. As predicted, we found that politically unengaged (vs. engaged) individuals were less likely to counter-argue a message attacking their favored candidate. Resistance, in turn, led to increased attitudinal certainty, polarization, and correspondence with actual voting behavior over the course of the campaign. These findings provide the first analysis of the longitudinal effects of meta-cognitive processes underlying persuasion for real-world attitude change and behavior.     

The effects of CSR communication in corporate crises: Examining the role of dispositional and situational CSR skepticism in context

Although consumer skepticism about corporate social responsibility (CSR) is on the rise, research is sparse on the psychological dynamics of this skepticism, particularly when CSR communication serves as a company’s crisis response strategy. Employing two between-subjects design experiments, this study aims to fill this gap by looking at the role consumer CSR skepticism plays in consumer reactions to CSR communications in different types of crises. The study 1 results show that dispositional CSR skepticism did not moderate the effect of crisis type on attitudes and intentions when CSR was used as a post-crisis response strategy. The study 2 findings, however, indicated that situational CSR skepticism significantly mediated the impact of crisis type and CSR motives on purchase intentions only when the crisis stemmed from some accidental rather than preventable circumstance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Self-deception facilitates interpersonal persuasion

Self-deception is both commonplace and costly, which raises the question of what purpose it might serve. According to the dominant explanation in psychology and economics, self-deception is an intrapersonal process that fortifies and protects the self from threatening information. An alternative possibility is that self-deception evolved as an interpersonal strategy to persuade others. To investigate interpersonal aspects of self-deception, we gave people a persuasive task and measured their information processing biases and their persuasiveness. Results revealed that people who were financially motivated to persuade another person in a particular direction demonstrated a self-deceptive information processing bias consistent with their persuasive goals. This information processing bias led people to convince themselves of the veracity of their persuasive goal, and subsequently to be more persuasive to others. These findings suggest that self-deception has interpersonal benefits that offset its costs.     

唐宋优谏戏中的戏剧化说服传播范式特征分析

优谏戏确立了融政治劝谏和取悦人主二重功能为一体的戏剧化说服传播范式,该范式在形态上形成三元式结构,同时还表现出说服目标一元化、说服动机潜隐化、说服主题隐喻化以及说服意向后置化等特征.     

Effect of framing on cognitive processing in public relations

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of message framing on cognitive processing by employees of an internal organizational message. A between-subject factorial experimental design with random assignment was used to test the moderating role of message frames on cognitive processing. Subjects in the study produced a significantly different number of thoughts in response to messages with different frames. The different frames presented also resulted in generation of different topics of thought for participants. This difference in cognitive response to a message may point to a difference in the salience of the message for the audience. The results of this study underscore the need for public relations practitioners to understand the needs and motivations of internal audiences and to contextualize internal messages for increased effectiveness in persuasion.     

Personal influence and pre-industrial United States: An early relationship model that needs resurgence in U.S. public relations

The personal influence model of public relations, using one's influence to seek favor with government and other power bases, is seen as most applicable in Asia but also is found elsewhere in the world. Only a few writings have explicitly broached the possibility that the personal influence model is practiced in the United States. Muzi Falconi (2010) argued that U.S. public relations emphasizes persuasion, espoused by Bernays and brought to fruition through one-way messaging. While it is easy to see persuasion as dominating U.S. practice, such observation ignores the prevalence of personal influence through at least 150 years of U.S. society. As early settlers built agrarian communities, interpersonal communication fostered community pride and solidarity. During World War II, Katz and Lazarsfeld identified personal influence as a major element in U.S. communication, overriding the mass media in importance. Even today much public relations activity in the U.S. consists of organizations seeking favor from the power elites. However, with the focus on message control, scholars have overlooked the efforts and effects of personal influence. The purpose of this paper is to identify early evidences of the personal influence model in the U.S. Today, the increasing power of social media and virtual stakeholders renders the persuasion model as somewhat specious. It is time to reexamine the concept of personal influence and the greater promise it holds for returning to what public relations was and should be in the first place—a function for maintaining relationships.     

Fostering democracy through social media: Evaluating diametrically opposed nonprofit advocacy organizations’ use of Facebook,Twitter, and YouTube

Nonprofit organizations contribute to a democratic society by allowing those with diverse opinions to assemble and voice these ideas. Social media has provided an extensive new marketplace in which such organizations can give voice to their ideas. Thus the purpose of this study was to explore and assess the use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) for advocacy by nonprofit organizations with diametrically opposed points-of-view on two social issues, the pro-gun/gun control issue and the pro-choice/pro-life issue. Results of this study indicate that nonprofit advocacy organizations are using social media to ethically persuade people to their point of view, for the most part through use of one-way communication. Moreover, organizations are using the various social media for different purposes, providing thanks and recognition on Twitter, and soliciting feedback and other two-way communication with stakeholders on Facebook. Use of authority figures to communicate messages is generally reserved for YouTube.