16.4: Conclusion: Persuasive Speaking
Qi Dunsworth
Persuasion is one of the most powerful tools you will develop as a speaker. It is also one of the most important to use ethically. In this chapter, you explored persuasion as an attempt to influence attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors while still honoring your audience’s freedom to choose. You examined why persuasion matters in a world saturated with messages competing for your attention and learned that being “persuasively literate” helps you both construct stronger arguments and resist manipulative ones. You also encountered three key theories: social judgment theory, cognitive dissonance theory, and the elaboration likelihood model. Theses theories explain how and why audiences are persuaded, giving you a roadmap for crafting messages that your listeners are more likely to seriously consider.
You then explored four common types of persuasive claims: definitional, factual, policy, and value. Each one shapes the structure and purpose of a persuasive speech. Policy claims, in particular, highlighted the difference between winning passive agreement and prompting immediate action, reminding you that sometimes the goal is to change how people think, and other times it is to change what they do. Finally, you learned three organizational patterns. Monroe’s motivated sequence, problem–cause–solution, and comparative advantages can help you translate theory into practice by arranging your ideas in ways that are clear, compelling, and audience-centered.
Beyond the podium, these skills prepare you to navigate everyday persuasion in workplaces, communities, and digital spaces, from evaluating a viral post to advocating for policy change on your campus.
Key Takeaways
- There are four types of persuasive claims. Definition claims argue the denotation or classification of what something is. Factual claims argue the truth or falsity about an assertion being made. Policy claims argue the nature of a problem and the solution that should be taken. Lastly, value claims argue a judgment about something (e.g., it’s good or bad, it’s right or wrong, it’s beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral).
- Each of the four claims leads to different types of persuasive speeches. As such, public speakers need to be aware what type of claim they are advocating in order to understand the best methods of persuasion.
- In policy claims, persuaders attempt to convince their audiences to either passively accept or actively act. When persuaders attempt to win passive agreement from an audience, they hope that an audience will agree with what is said about a specific policy without asking the audience to do anything to enact the policy. Prompting immediate action, on the other hand, occurs when a persuader gets the audience to actively engage in a specific behavior.
- Persuasion is an attempt to get a person to embrace a point of view, or behave differently, on issues related to values, attitudes, and beliefs. Successful persuasion occurs when an audience member has the freedom to choose and elects to make the change voluntarily.
- Studying persuasion is important today because it helps us become more observant of others’ persuasive attempts, become more persuasive individuals, and have a more complete understanding of the world around us.
- Social judgment theory states that an audience’s latitudes of acceptance, noncommitment, and rejection can influence the effectiveness of persuasion. To make persuasive messages effective, persuaders need to be aware of the audience members’ stance on an issue.
- Cognitive dissonance theory reasons that people do not like holding to ideas in their heads that are contrary to each other and will do what is necessary to get rid of the dissonance caused by the two contrary ideas.
- The elaboration likelihood model posits that persuaders should try to get receivers to think about the inherent merits of the arguments being made (going through the central route) rather than having receivers pay attention to irrelevant aspects of the speech. The five basic factors that can lead to the audience paying more attention to the argument are: personal relevance and personal involvement, accountability, personal responsibility, incongruent information, and need for cognition.
- There are three common patterns that persuaders can utilize to help organize their speeches effectively: Monroe’s motivated sequence, problem-cause-solution, and comparative advantage. Each of these patterns can effectively help a speaker think through his or her thoughts and organize them in a manner that will be more likely to persuade an audience.
- Alan H. Monroe’s (1935) motivated sequence is a commonly used speech format that is used by many people to effectively organize persuasive messages. The pattern consists of five basic stages: attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action. In the first stage, a speaker gets an audience’s attention. In the second stage, the speaker shows an audience that a need exists. In the third stage, the speaker shows how his or her persuasive proposal could satisfy the need. The fourth stage shows how the future could be if the persuasive proposal is or is not adopted. Lastly, the speaker urges the audience to take some kind of action to help enact the speaker’s persuasive proposal.
- The problem-cause-solution proposal is a three-pronged speech pattern. The speaker starts by explaining the problem the speaker sees. The speaker then explains what he or she sees as the underlying causes of the problem. Lastly, the speaker proposes a solution to the problem that corrects the underlying causes.
- The comparative advantages speech format is utilized when a speaker is comparing two or more things or ideas and shows why one of the things or ideas has more advantages than the other(s).
References
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Frankish, K. (1998). Virtual belief. In P. Carruthers & J. Boucher (Eds.), Language and thought (pp. 249–269). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Frymier, A. B., & Nadler, M. K. (2017). Persuasion: Integrating theory, research, and practice (4th ed.). Kendall Hunt Publishing Company.
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Micciche, T., Pryor, B., & Butler, J. (2000). A test of Monroe’s motivated sequence for its effects on ratings of message organization and attitude change. Psychological Reports, 86(3_suppl), 1135–1138.
Monroe, A. (1949). Principles and types of speech (3rd ed.). Scott, Foresman. (Original work published 1935)
Perloff, R. M. (2017). The dynamics of persuasion: Communication and attitudes in the 21st century (6th ed.). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19(19), 123–205.
Sherif, M., & Hovland, C. (1961). Social judgment: Assimilation and contrast effects in communication and attitude change. Yale University Press.
