Persuasion
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary:
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Per·sua·sion
n.
[L. persuasio; Cf. F. persuasion.]
1. The act of persuading; the act of influencing the mind by arguments or reasons offered, or by anything that moves the mind or passions, or inclines the will to a determination.
For thou hast all the arts of fine persuasion.Otway.
2. The state of being persuaded or convinced; settled opinion or conviction, which has been induced.
If the general persuasion of all men does so account it.Hooker.
My firm persuasion is, at least sometimes,Cowper.
That Heaven will weigh man's virtues and his crimes
With nice attention.
3. A creed or belief; a sect or party adhering to a certain creed or system of opinions; as, of the same persuasion; all persuasions are agreed.
Of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.Jefferson.
4. The power or quality of persuading; persuasiveness.
Is 't possible that my deserts to youShak.
Can lack persuasion?
5. That which persuades; a persuasive. [R.]
Syn. -- See Conviction.
Quotes About:
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Persuasion
Quotes:
"Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response."
- Amos Bronson Alcott
"To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them."
- St. Thomas Aquinas
"Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life -- there, if one must speak out, the real man."
- Marcus Aurelius
"The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what your saying, and they can't know what you've saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting until you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly."
- William Bernbach
"Let one who wants to move and convince others, first be convinced and moved themselves. If a person speaks with genuine earnestness the thoughts, the emotion and the actual condition of their own heart, others will listen because we all are knit together by the tie of sympathy."
- Thomas Carlyle
"Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world."
- Thomas Carlyle
See more famous quotes about Persuasion
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The Persuasions
| For The Record... |
| Members include Jimmy Hayes, bass; Jerry Lawson, lead; Herbert "Toubo" Rhoad (died on December 7, 1988, in Davis, CA), baritone; Joe Russell, tenor; Jayotis Washington, tenor. Group formed in New York, NY, 1961; played on street corners, in parks, and small clubs, 1960s; signed with Rhino Records, 1968; released first album, Acappella, 1970; released numerous albums throughout the 1970s; went on hiatus, 1980s; made a comeback, late 1980s; member Herbert "Toubo" Rhoad died while group was on tour, 1988; released numerous albums through the 1990s and 2000s. Addresses: Contact—Jerry Lawson, P.O. Box 1921, Scottsdale, AZ 85252. Website—Jerry Lawson Official Website: http://www.jerrylawson.biz. |
A cappella group
The Persuasions are perhaps the best known and longest-lived a cappella group in the history of pop. The group has been together since 1961, when they first sang on New York City street corners. Their unique sound encompasses all styles, including pop, gospel, doo-wop, and classical. They have been featured in a PBS documentary directed by Spike Lee, performed backing vocals for such musical icons as Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and Bette Midler, and have played several world tours. Although the group has yet to score a hit record, as lead singer Jerry Lawson pointed out to Larry Katz in the Boston Herald, "we're still out there, still working." No small achievement in the turbulent world of popular music.
The Persuasions started in New York City in the early 1960s, when Jerry Lawson met Jimmy Hayes at the department store where they both worked. They began to sing together at the store, in elevators—every chance they got. The duo soon met Joe Russell, who was so inspired by Lawson and Hayes that he left another singing group to join them. The lineup was completed after they recruited Herbert "Toubo" Rhoad and Jayotis Washington, a partnership that would last until Rhoad's death in 1988.
The group's chemistry was apparent to everyone who heard their first impromptu concerts. They met in parks, on street corners, and on basketball courts after working their day jobs, and performed for all who would listen. As their audiences grew, so did their ambitions. To achieve wider success, they decided to recruit a guitarist. But as lead singer Jerry Lawson later told Richard Duckett in the Worcester, Massachusetts, Telegram & Gazette, "Every time we got a little gig somewhere, the guitarist would get drunk and wouldn't show up." And, he told Hugh Hart in the Chicago Tribune, "It got to the point where it was like the Lord telling us, 'Just leave the guitar alone.'"
After they decided to remain a purely vocal group, the question of what to call themselves was settled. If they were to succeed as an a cappella pop group, they would have to "persuade" listeners to overcome their prejudices about what pop music should be.
As predicted, the group had a tough time persuading record executives to back a band an instrumentless band. In the interim, they played gigs in small clubs after working their day jobs. Their following continued to grow, and, finally, their break came in 1968. They were singing in a record store when the man who would become their manager, David Dashev, happened to walk by. As Lawson later explained to Larry Katz in the Boston Herald, "He made a phone call, put the phone in the middle of us and told us to start singing. It was Frank Zappa on the other end. A couple of weeks later we had a recording contract and five tickets to LA."
After their 1970 debut, Acappella, the Persuasions recorded new albums steadily through the decade, one of the most popular of which was the 1972 release Street Corner Symphony. Each song was arranged using a method the group developed as a method of working together. The first step was to have Hayes lay down a bass line. Next, Russell and Washington stepped in to layer on their parts. Finally Lawson's lead vocals were added, with the others supporting him much as an orchestra does a soloist.
The group's output slowed in the 1980s, years during which Jerry Lawson pursued other interests. After a hiatus of about six years, the band reunited again in the late 1980s, playing dates on the East Coast before heading west for a tour in 1988. Still fighting radio and recording formulas that worked against a cappella groups, the Persuasions nevertheless stuck with their winning style.
Tragedy struck during the West Coast tour. Rhoad died of a brain hemorrhage before a concert in Davis, California, in December of 1988. He was 44 years old, and like the others, had been with the group for 26 years. "He was one of the finest baritone singers and one of the finest gentlemen in the whole world," Joe Russell told Rip Rense in the Los Angeles Times. Rhoad was survived by a wife and two daughters.
Their number reduced to four, the Persuasions soldiered on. They played the rest of the tour's concert dates, but they left an empty microphone on the stage in Rhoad's place. They believed that was what Rhoad would have wanted them to do—go on singing, no matter what. But a lot of the heart had gone out of their music; they needed to grieve. After completing the tour, five long years passed before they released their next album.
The Persuasions came back from Rhoad's death with the 1993 tribute Toubo's Song. Back on their feet, they followed up with a new album, Right around the Corner, just a year later. Subsequent releases followed at a steady pace, and the latter half of the 1990s saw a rise in their popularity, culminating in the release of On the Good Ship Lollipop, an album of children's music, in 1999.
In 2000 the group had one of its most prolific years ever. The began by recording another tribute album, this time to the man who had given them their first recording contract—Frankly a Cappella: The Persuasions Sing Zappa. The group then covered Grateful Dead songs in another release that same year: Might as Well ... The Persuasions Sing the Grateful Dead. Following the success of this work, Rounder Records put out a previously unreleased recording of the Persuasion's gospel music called Sunday Morning Soul that had been languishing on the studio's shelves. In 2002 came a Beatle tribute, The Persuasions Sing the Beatles.
In the new millennium the group expanded their audience to include children, traveling to schools to teach children to sing a cappella. Still going strong in the twenty-first century, Lawson insists that the Persuasions, far from fading, are just hitting their stride. "We're picking up more and more fans every day," he told Duckett. More than that, though, Lawson attributed the group's staying power to their love of what they do. "I wake up every morning, man, and just thank God so much for what he gave us and for what we do, which is to go around the world and make people happy."
Selected discography
Acappella, Rhino, 1970.
We Came to Play, Collectables, 1971.
Street Corner Symphony, Collectables, 1972.
Spread the Word, Collectables, 1972.
We Still Ain't Got No Band, MCA, 1973.
More Than Before, A&M, 1974.
I Just Want to Sing with My Friends, A&M, 1974.
Live in the Whispering Gallery, Hammer N' Nails, 1976.
Chirpin', Elektra, 1977.
Comin' at Ya, Flying Fish, 1979.
No Frills, Rounder, 1984.
Good News, Rounder, 1988.
Toubo's Song, Hammer N' Nails, 1993.
Right around the Corner, Bullseye/Topic, 1994
Stardust, Relic, 1994.
Sincerely, Bullseye Blues, 1996.
You're All I Want for Christmas, Bullseye Blues, 1997.
Man, Oh Man: The Power of the Persuasions, Capitol, 1997.
On the Good Ship Lollipop, Rhino, 1999.
Sunday Morning Soul, Rounder, 2000.
Frankly a Cappella: The Persuasions Sing Zappa, Rhino, 2000.
Might as Well ... The Persuasions Sing The Grateful Dead, Arista, 2000.
The Persuasions Sing the Beatles, Chesky, 2002.
A Cappella Dreams, Chesky, 2003.
Sources
Periodicals
Boston Herald, February 2, 2001, p. S21.
Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1992, p. 9.
Los Angeles Times, December 15, 1998, p. 5.
Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, MA), September 19, 2002, p. C1.
Online
"The Persuasions," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (January 26, 2004).
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Persuasion
For other uses, see Persuasion (disambiguation).
...For Sir Elliot, baronet, the hints of Mrs Sheppard, his agent, was very unwelcome
Persuasion is the influence of beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviors.[1] Persuasion is a process aimed at changing a person's (or a group's) attitude or behavior toward some event, idea, object, or other person(s), by using written or spoken words to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a combination of them.[2]
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Methods
Persuasion methods are also sometimes referred to as persuasion tactics or persuasion strategies.
Weapons of influence
Robert Cialdini, in his book on persuasion, defined six "weapons of influence":[3]
- Reciprocity - People tend to return a favor. Thus, the pervasiveness of free samples in marketing and advertising. In his conferences, he often uses the example of Ethiopia providing thousands of dollars in humanitarian aid to Mexico just after the 1985 earthquake, despite Ethiopia suffering from a crippling famine and civil war at the time. Ethiopia had been reciprocating for the diplomatic support Mexico provided when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1937.
- Commitment and Consistency - Once people commit to what they think is right, orally or in writing, they are more likely to honor that commitment, even if the original incentive or motivation is subsequently removed. For example, in car sales, suddenly raising the price at the last moment works because the buyer has already decided to buy.
- Social Proof - People will do things that they see other people are doing. For example, in one experiment, one or more confederates would look up into the sky; bystanders would then look up into the sky to see what they were seeing. At one point this experiment was aborted, as so many people were looking up that they stopped traffic. See conformity, and the Asch conformity experiments.
- Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform objectionable acts. Cialdini cites incidents, such as the Milgram experiments in the early 1960s and the My Lai massacre in 1968.
- Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people whom they like. Cialdini cites the marketing of Tupperware in what might now be called viral marketing. People were more likely to buy if they liked the person selling it to them. Some of the many biases favoring more attractive people are discussed, but generally more aesthetically pleasing people tend to use this influence excellently over others. See physical attractiveness stereotype.
- Scarcity - Perceived scarcity will generate demand. For example, saying offers are available for a "limited time only" encourages sales.
Relationship based persuasion
In their book The Art of Woo, G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa present a four-step approach to strategic persuasion.[4] They explain that persuasion means to win others over, not to defeat them. Thus it is important to be able to see the topic from different angles in order to anticipate the reaction others have to a proposal.
Step 1: Survey your situation
This step includes an analysis of the persuader's situation, goals, and challenges that he faces in his organization.
Step 2: Confront the five barriers
Five obstacles pose the greatest risks to a successful influence encounter: relationships, credibility, communication mismatches, belief systems, and interest and needs.
Step 3: Make your pitch
People need a solid reason to justify a decision, yet at the same time many decisions are made on the basis of intuition. This step also deals with presentation skills.
Step 4: Secure your commitments
In order to safeguard the longtime success of a persuasive decision, it is vital to deal with politics at both the individual and organizational level.
Propaganda
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Propaganda is also closely related to Persuasion. It's a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. The most effective propaganda is often completely truthful, but some propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience. The term 'propaganda' first appeared in 1622 when Pope Gregory XV established the Sacred Congregation for Propagating the Faith. Propaganda was then as now about convincing large numbers of people about the veracity of a given set of ideas. Propaganda has been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists.
Conditioning plays a huge part in the concept of persuasion. It is more often about leading someone into taking certain actions of their own, rather than giving direct commands. In advertisements for example, this is done by attempting to connect a positive emotion to a brand/product logo. This is often done by creating commercials that make people laugh, using a sexual undertone, inserting uplifting images and/or music etc. and then ending the commercial with a brand/product logo. Great examples of this are professional athletes. They are paid to connect themselves to things that can be directly related to their roles; sport shoes, tennis rackets, golf balls, or completely irrelevant things like soft drinks, popcorn poppers and panty hose. The important thing for the advertiser is to establish a connection to the consumer.[5]
The thought is that it will affect how people view certain products, knowing that most purchases are made on the basis of emotion. Just like you sometimes recall a memory from a certain smell or sound, the objective of some ads is solely to bring back certain emotions when you see their logo in your local store. The hope is that by repeating the message several times it will cause the consumer to be more likely to purchase the product because he/she already connects it with a good emotion and a positive experience. Stefano DellaVigna and Matthew Gentzkow did a comprehensive study on the effects of persuasion in different domains. They discovered that persuasion has little or no effect on advertisement; however, there was a substantial effect of persuasion on voting if there was face-to-face contact. [6]
List of methods
By appeal to reason:
By appeal to emotion:
Aids to persuasion:
- Body language
- Communication skill or Rhetoric
- Personality tests and conflict style inventory help devise strategy based on an individual's preferred style of interaction
- Sales techniques
Other techniques:
Coercive techniques, some of which are highly controversial and/or not scientifically proven to be effective:
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Neurobiology of persuasion
Attitudes and persuasion are among the central issues of social behavior. One of the classic questions is when are attitudes a predictor of behavior. Previous research suggested that selective activation of left prefrontal cortex might increase the likelihood that an attitude would predict a relevant behavior. Using lateral attentional manipulation, this was supported.[7]
An earlier article showed that EEG measures of anterior prefrontal asymmetry might be a predictor of persuasion. Research participants were presented with arguments that favored and arguments that opposed the attitudes they already held. Those whose brain was more active in left prefrontal areas said that they paid the most attention to statements with which they agreed while those with a more active right prefrontal area said that they paid attention to statements that disagreed.[8] This is an example of defensive repression, the avoidance or forgetting of unpleasant information. Research has shown that the trait of defensive repression is related to relative left prefrontal activation.[9] In addition, when pleasant or unpleasant words, probably analogous to agreement or disagreement, were seen incidental to the main task, an fMRI scan showed preferential left prefrontal activation to the pleasant words.[10]
One way therefore to increase persuasion would seem to be to selectively activate the right prefrontal cortex. This is easily done by monaural stimulation to the contralateral ear. The effect apparently depends on selective attention rather than merely the source of stimulation. This manipulation had the expected outcome: more persuasion for messages coming from the left.[11]
See also
- Advertising
- Captatio benevolentiae
- Communication
- Compliance gaining
- Crowd manipulation
- Elaboration likelihood model
- Judge–advisor system
- Inoculation theory
- Persuasion design
- Regulatory Focus Theory
- Social psychology
- The North Wind and the Sun
External links
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Look up persuasion in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
References
{{reflist|refs=
- ^ Seiter, Robert H. Gass, John S. (2010). Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. pp. 33. ISBN 0-205-69818-2.
- ^ "Persuasion". Business Dictionary. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/persuasion.html. Retrieved 9 May 2012.
- ^ Cialdini, R. B. (2001). Influence: Science and practice (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
- ^ The art of Woo by G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-59184-176-0
- ^ Cialdini, R.B. (2007). "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
- ^ DellaVigna , S., & Gentzko, M. (2010). Persuasion: Empirical evidence. The Annual Review of Economics, 2, 643-69. doi: 10.1146/annurev.economics.102308.12430
- ^ Drake, R. A., & Sobrero, A. P. (1987). Lateral orientation effects upon trait behavior and attitude behavior consistency. Journal of Social Psychology, 127, 639-651.
- ^ Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., & Quintanar, L. R. (1982). Individual differences in relative hemispheric alpha abundance and cognitive responses to persuasive communications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 623-636.
- ^ Tomarken, A. J., & Davidson, R. J. (1994). Frontal brain activity in repressors and nonrepressors. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103, 339-349.
- ^ Herrington, J. D., Mohanty, A., Koven, N. S., Fisher, J. E., Stewart, J. L., Banich, M. T., et al. (2005). Emotion-modulated performance and activity in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Emotion, 5, 200-207.
- ^ Drake, R. A., & Bingham, B. R. (1985). Induced lateral orientation and persuasibility. Brain and Cognition, 4, 156-164.
- Herbert I. Abelson, Ph D. Persuasion "How opinions and attitudes are changed" Copyright© 1959
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