Persuasion is defined as the ability to convince another that your point is correct or otherwise influence their beliefs, attitudes or behaviors. Effective persuasion is generally considered to consist of four elements. First, one must have credibility. Credibility can be illustrated in one’s history of success and accomplishment, or experience. Second, one must have an understanding of the audience or target of persuasion. This understanding allow one to specifically tailor the message in a manner most likely to find support or reception in the audience. Third, one must have a strong and reasonable argument. In fact, have a strong argument is fundamental to the other three elements. With a string argument, one chance to succeed at persuasion are severely limited. Lastly, one most have an effective means of communicating one’s argument. To be sure, having the most credible and reasonable argument that has been crafted specifically to the audience’s emotions will be useless if one cannot make the argument clearly and in a language that the audience can understand.
An argument can be made that most human interaction require some element or aspect of persuasion; either in one’s effort to persuade another or resist another attempt at persuasion (PS, 2016). For example, all politicians have an ability to persuade, otherwise they would have little if any chance of getting elected to office. To be sure, during a campaign, one element of persuasion that many politicians chose to emphasize is their credibility. The try to convince voters, that their past success and experience proves that we should vote for them. Similarly, an advertiser must have persuasive skills or we would not buy the product they are selling. For an advertiser, knowing the audience would be the key element in that it will allow an advertiser to tailor their message in a way that will entice the target to buy a good r service.
One of the common goals of writing is to persuade. When writing to persuade the most important element is to have a strong argument. For example, my hope in writing this paper is the arguments that I’ve made above in regards to persuasion are strong and reasonable enough to convince the reader that my arguments were indeed correct or at least reasonable.
References
Psychology Today (PS). (2016). Persuasion. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/persuasion
