Master Persuasion Psychology

Introducing the general persuasion framework that we'll rely on for the rest of this course.

An understanding of the "attitude" concept is critical for understanding persuasion. We'll see how anything that people have "positive" or "negative" opinions about is something that can be influenced by strategic persuasion.

Modern theories of persuasion owe a lot to the early persuasion science research. The questions raised by these pioneers and their research findings inspired a lot of what we know today.

This is one of the most important videos in this course. We'll discuss the two general types of persuasive influences. More importantly, we'll learn when one class of influences is effective and when the other class of influences is effective. This is the key to being smart about your persuasive strategy!

One implication of the two routes to persuasion is attitude strength, and if you are at all interested in creating lasting change, you'll want to pay attention.

In this video, I present our grand model of persuasion in a simple graphical format. You'll see how all of the pieces fit together, and you can use this model as you think about your own persuasive approach.

In this section of the course, we're going to take a first look at the key determinants of message-related thinking. How do you know if someone is likely to pay attention to your persuasive content or not?

There are two general determinants of whether people are going to think about your persuasive content: motivation and ability to think. We'll revisit these ideas throughout the course.

In one illustrative example, we'll see how personal relevance is a major factor in whether someone feels motivated to consider your message. When your topic is relevant to the audience's lives, they will be much more inclined to carefully consider what you have to say, focusing on the strength of your argumentation as the basis for persuasion.

In this lecture, we discuss an example of "ability" and when people are especially unlikely to carefully consider what you have to say.

A final class of influences on whether people think about your message is a personality trait--the "need for cognition." In this video, we'll see what this trait is and how to spot someone who's likely to scrutinize your persuasive arguments.

Take the Need for Cognition scale and discover where you fall! This activity will also help you see how this personality trait is measured.

Let's wrap up the first part of this course by reviewing what we've learned so far. It's important to understand the general persuasion model and the determinants of thinking before getting to specific persuasion strategies.

Making sure your message is delivered by the right person is one of the key decisions in a persuasive strategy.

There are a few different ways to boost highlight your credibility--emphasize your expertise and your trustworthiness.

Plenty of research in persuasion science has shown the importance of likability in facilitating persuasion. As we'll see, simple influences like "similarity" and "physical attractiveness" can have critical impact.

Especially when people aren't motivated to think through an issue, conveying confidence in your claims can be persuasive all on its own.

In this fun exercise, you'll get some practice thinking through the specifics of ensuring the source of your message is persuasive.

In this brief lecture, we'll bring everything back together.

The content of your message is just one important element of the message itself. In addition to what your message is, how you present the message can also be influential.

One simple strategy to quickly increase your persuasive power is to clearly state your overarching message. Under some conditions, though, it might be better to let people draw the conclusion for themselves.

What's more important in a persuasive message: quality or quantity? It depends! In this lecture, we'll discover the tradeoff between these two considerations.

You've no doubt seen advertisements that rely on fear. Are they effective? In this lecture, we'll review the research on fear appeals and discover when they're most persuasive.

Making your message easy to understand has many benefits. In this lecture we'll see a few benefits that you probably haven't already considered.

Although this course focuses on how you can be most persuasive when delivering information to people, in this section, we'll look at just a couple ways people's opinions can be influenced more subtly, even without a message.

One way to influence attitudes without providing any particular information is to simply show people the person or topic a few times! We'll see what this is all about in this lecture.

A lot of people have heard of Pavlov and his dogs. The same general idea can apply to shaping people's opinions.

Tailoring your message to the people who receive it is a simple way to be more persuasive. In this section, we'll discover some specific ways in which tailoring can enhance persuasion.

Is it better to appeal to people's emotions or to their intellect? It depends on two things: (1) your topic and (2) your audience. We'll talk about a few ways to be smart about this decision.

It may sound obvious, but it can be very helpful to think about your audience's personality and make your message appeal to their personality type.

In an age of globalization, it has become increasingly important to consider people's cultural backgrounds. In this lecture, we'll discuss a key set of cultural values and how to effectively tailor your approach to match the values of your audience.

Some very new research has shown an interesting case of matching a persuasive message to the recipient's social status. In this lecture, we'll see how the concepts of warmth and competence play into this relationship.

A link to extra content on tailoring messages to the audience.

Okay, we've spent a lot of time talking about how matching can enhance persuasion, but new research suggests that the more important effect is that matching your message to the audience increases how much people think about your message. We'll consider one example of this in the case of personality matching.

In this activity, you'll practice thinking through how to approach persuasion depending on a particular audience.

We've spent a lot of time talking about persuasive influences that tend to be effective when people aren't thinking carefully about your message. But what about when people are motivated to pay think? How do you design arguments that are persuasive to them?

One important strategy for creating arguments that are convincing is to make sure you highlight desirable outcomes that seem likely.

In this exercise, you'll have a chance to practice creating persuasive arguments according to the principles of "desirability" and "likelihood."

A critical thing that underlies strong arguments is their ability to encourage positive mental responses. In this lecture, we'll discover the difference between positive and negative thoughts and see how they relate to effective persuasion.

To really ensure that your message will be persuasive to people who give thought to your arguments, it's worth pilot testing those arguments. In this lecture, I'll walk you through the best way to do this.

Sometimes people are ready to think about your message if only they were motivated and able. If you have a great message, you want people to pay attention. However, if you actually think you're better off convincing people with simple persuasion tricks, you want to prevent people from thinking too deeply about your message. This section will show you how you can get people to think or not, depending on your goals.

As you've already seen in this course, motivation is critical for getting people to think deeply about a persuasive message. We'll look in detail at two ways to accomplish this: making your message relevant and making the recipient feel responsible for a decision.

The other key element in knowing whether people will think critically about your message or not is their ability to think. In this lecture, we'll consider several strategies for influencing people's ability to think.

As we saw in another section, tailoring a message to your audience is one way to get them to pay attention.

One powerful way to influence people's likelihood of thinking closely about your message is to defy expectation. In this lecture we'll see how creating the unexpected can make people especially interested in what you have to say.

Although we usually think of the source of the message as something that can be persuasive when people aren't thinking deeply, it's also possible to use the source as a way to get people paying attention.

If you make your offer limited, it's not necessarily true that you'll automatically have a more compelling offer. Instead, scarcity can lead people to pay more attention to how strong your core arguments are.

Thanks for joining me in this course! May you be as persuasive as possible!

If you feel compelled to learn more about the science behind all of these persuasion strategies, this document includes all the relevant references.