Self-persuasion is used to explain one aspect of social influence. This theory postulates that the receiver takes an active role in persuading himself or herself to change his or her attitude. Unlike the direct technique of Persuasion, Self-persuasion is indirect and entails placing people in situations where they are motivated to persuade themselves to change. More specifically what characterizes a self-persuasion situation is that no direct attempt is made to convince anyone of anything. Thus, with self-persuasion, people are convinced that the motivation for change has come from within, so the persuasion factors of another person's influence is irrelevant. Therefore, Self-persuasion is almost always a more powerful form of persuasion (deeper, longer lasting) than the more traditional persuasion techniques. Self-Persuasion, also has an important influence in Social judgment theory, Elaboration Likelihood Model, Cognitive Dissonance and Narrative paradigm.
History Self-persuasion came about based on the more traditional or direct strategies of persuasion, which have been around for at least 2,300 years and studied by eminent social psychologists from Aristotle to Carl Hovland, they focused their attention on these three principal factors: the nature of the message, the characteristics of the communicator, and the characteristics of the audience. It wasn't until later that the theory of self-persuasion was developed by Dr. Carl Hovland, of Psychology, who had conducted studies during his time at Yale University during the 1940s and '50s. His argument in creating the concept of self-persuasion was that the factors within us determine our decision-making; for example, one's personality, self-esteem, education, or interest.Persuasion: Theoretical and practical concerns, Available: http://www.uky.edu/CommInfoStudies/JAT/Telecommunications/hertog/520/lectures/Persuasion2.ppt
Motivation How can motivation and self-persuasion be connected? Webster defines motivation as the act or process of giving someone a reason for doing something: the act or process of motivating someone. Motivation involving self-persuasion pertains to the ability to motivate oneself for a higher reason or reward. Convincing a person to believe in your belief can be a challenge, however, trying to convince yourself is altogether another effort and challenge. Persuasion allows the mind the ability to be persuaded for reasons that exist for beneficial factors. Consider this: if you conquer your fears, would you consider this a giant feat or success? Through self-persuasion along with motivation, many people can tackle their fears, which in turn allows them to move to the next level or simply a higher level within society.
Self-persuasion permits a person's mind the ability to be influenced or persuaded if they choose to. The mind through persuasion can also deny or resist if it so chooses, regardless of self-persuasion. Self-persuasion is directly related to the processes of a person's mind and the influence of motivation the mind perceives. People would rather listen to themselves than to other people normally, except for those people who are indecisive. When people are trying to convince themselves or be persuaded into changing their minds, it can sometimes involve motivation or the act of motivation. People will listen to themselves and will automatically generate arguments that have personal relevance for them.T. Millon & M. J. Lerner (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of psychology (2nd ed). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
It might sound crazy to some people, but people are being encouraged to persuade themselves all the time. Many of these times are through motivation intensity. As people know, motivation can be a driving ambition that can easily sway people based on reward, self-persuasion through motivation can achieve great results.
Encouraging a person to change their mind through motivation can be attributed to levels of acceptance through a variety of levels of motivation. A good example would be if a parent informs their child to do well in school and if levels of success are achieved, then rewards will follow. This is an example of self-persuasion; the child is utilizing self-persuasion to achieve the goal of pleasing the mom and dad as well as receiving a reward. The child is convinced to improve their grades while being motivated by money. Think of it like this: when a child goes to the dentist, it is usually persuaded by a parent that the dentist is not bad and if they do well while at the dentist, they will receive a reward. This is self-persuasion brought on by rewards. When we want to change our behavior, say, to healthier eating, we might try to convince ourselves we don't like the forbidden foods as much as we do, knowing that forbidden food attracts weight gain and health issues, therefore self-persuasion decreases the need for the forbidden food.
Role-playing The experiment below discusses the effects that role-playing can have on self-persuasion.
Subjects first expressed their positions on whether college education should be general (liberal arts) or specialized (career preparatory), then were led to accept that they would write essays supporting one or the other of these positions. Next, they judged the validity of a standard set of statements representing both views and again expressed their opinions on the same issue. Validity judgments indicated that subjects tended strongly to accept arguments supporting their positions and reject opposing ones when expecting to defend their positions, but accepted nearly equal numbers of arguments on both sides when expecting to advocate the opposing position. Final opinion judgments were influenced by the assigned position's direction even though the role-playing task was not performed. It was concluded that the effectiveness of role-playing in inducing opinion change may be due in large to its success in getting subjects to evaluate.Anthony G. Greenwald, Ohio State University. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1969. Open-Mindedness of Counterattitudinal Role Player
As time moves forward, role-playing and self-persuasion have amassed. It has become established as a very effective tool for education, management, and forecasting choices in conflicts and negotiations. The understanding of role-playing also allows us opportunities to understand situations that we may not have seen before involving several things from social economics, environmental situations, and political viewpoints. Role-playing is also a way for people to develop certain skills such as listening, conflict resolution, and management effectiveness.
Recent studies involving role-playing and the ability role-playing has to change a person's mind are producing information that indicates passive effects role-playing once had are less now and communication through role-playing is more accepted. The basis for the effectiveness of role-playing procedures in persuasion is poorly understood, although several hypotheses have been advanced. The five hypotheses below, although not directly tested in the present research, must be regarded as promising.
• Selective learning: Playing the role of an advocate of a given position may facilitate opinion change by prompting selective attention to or retention of arguments supporting that position.Greenwald and Albert, 1968; Watts 1967 • Biased scanning: When the role-playing assignment is accepted, the subject may become temporally motivated to seek arguments that support his assigned position.Elms and Janis, 1965 Janis and Gilmore 1965 • Self as source: Arguments perceived as self-originated may be more readily accepted than ones perceived as externally originated.Greenwald 1968, King and Janis 1956 • Hand tailoring: An individual may be able to construct a communication that is uniquely effective for his belief structure. • Dissonance: Acceptance of the role-played position may be in the service of reducing dissonance aroused by counter-attitudinal performance.Festinger 1957
Issue importance Issue importance, within self-persuasion, is to be treated in terms of the priority of self-interest that is at stake for individuals as members of a significant group. Individuals who become emotionally involved with an issue will be most influenced. Thus, issues of high importance would produce a higher need for opinion change, which would then cause a maximal attitude change. Low issue importance would therefore create a minimal attitude change.
Attitude change Role-playing and issue importance can cause attitude change. The degree of involvement is based on the extent to which an attitudinal position is derived from and upheld by the individual and on the importance of the attitude to the individual's self. “Counterattitudinal role-playing has generally come to be accepted as a more efficacious technique of attitude change; while issue importance has generally pertained to the social significance and personal value of an attitudinal object.”(p. 191). For example, if you wish to play the role of a person who has a lot of courage and this particular issue is of high importance to you, you may through self-persuasion change your attitude to portray that attitude to others.
Theorists have identified ways in which people might be able to change their attitudes simply by thinking differently about an attitude object. These cognitive strategies used in self-persuasion are known as Epistemic and Teleologic. “Epistemic strategies involve re-conceptualizing the attitude objects known shortcomings in a more positive light. Teleologic strategies involve altering the accessibility of thoughts about those shortcomings” (p. 615). These strategies for deliberate self-persuasion presumably take some cognitive effort; that is why individuals high in need for cognition, who find effortful reasoning and problem-solving less stressful than individuals low in need for cognition, would be more inclined to use these two types of self-persuasion.
As seen in persuasion, an attitude may be adopted simply because it is associated with a highly credible, likable, or powerful communicator; but this form of attitude change will only persist as long as the cues that elicited it remain of high importance to the individual. However, individuals who utilize self-persuasion before a speech or a social gathering, can alter their attitudes before they receive a message. This way allows the individual to persuade themselves of its merits and avoid appearing gullible or easily influenced(p. 530). Therefore, the self-persuasion processes could become an important mediator of anticipatory attitude change. Anticipatory shifts occur when individuals merely expecting to hear a counterattitudinal communication, will then change their attitudes in the direction of the anticipated message.
Directional Changes in Attitudes (pro and counter) Pro and Counter Attitude: the majority of people are aware that pro-anything means you are for the issue. On the other hand, the majority of people are also aware that the term counter is against. For the most part, people also tend to agree with the idea that people with high self-esteem, seem to demonstrate their ability in a more than proper way when dealing with topics. Attitude affects nearly everything a person does, from success to defeat. A pro attitude in a person can be a confidence booster as well as a mechanism to allow persuasion into a discussion with the attempts to persuade change within the discussion. Attitude persuasion can affect the result of a debate as related to powerful self-esteem. Distractions can weigh heavily on the ability of a person involved in persuasion change about counterattitude.