Come
election time we must prepare ourselves to be bombarded with political ads
seeking to sway you one way or another. These ads seek to gain your vote and
nothing more. They do not want to inform the voter or give them the facts they
need to make a rational decision. Many schemes and techniques are put into use to take advantage of a lost mind.
Rather than relying on a careful
process of weighing and considering the strength of arguments, the person
responds to simple, often irrelevant cues that suggest the rightness,
wrongness, or attractiveness of an argument without giving it much thought”
(Aronson, 73).
We are all lost minds, and if we only get our
information from these ads then our vulnerability to their words is greatly
increased.
Take into account this political ad for Barrack Obama:
Identification-
Identification
is the most obvious and main method of persuasion in this ad. This ad stars and
is the perspective of the R&B icon Alicia Keys. Throughout the ad she is
seen giving speeches and communicating with average people promoting Barack
Obama and women’s rights. Many of us admire Mrs. Keys for her music and her
fame and because of this we are more likely to accept her opinion. Alicia Keys
was a great person to execute this method of persuasion given her reputation.
She is a kind, soft-spoken person whose music empowers women, and what is the
main focus of this ad? To empower women.
Another
group we may be able to identify with is black women. Throughout this ad we see
nothing but black women banding together for Barack Obama. If you are a black
woman, you may feel the need to stay consistent with who you are. We see this,
but we do not realize that the commercial has been framed to give us something
to stay consistent with of their choosing.
Identification
is a very powerful method of persuasion. It brings forth a strong commitment
without rational thought. A study showed that loyal customers tend to spend
more than satisfied customers, “the main effect of customer identification on customer spending
was strong, stronger than the customer satisfaction→customer spending effect”
(Netemeyer). Barack Obama takes advantage of this by capitalizing on your
loyalty rather than on your satisfaction.
Conditioning-
This ad
pairs two things together, powerful women and Barack Obama basically stating
that powerful women vote for Barack Obama. This leads us to believe that voting
for Obama will make us a powerful woman (if we are women). Alicia Keys again
serves as a perfect example of a powerful women voting in his favor. They pair
these two things together for us so we don’t have to, this is another way to get us to think irrationally but in favor of the candidate.
Reciprocity-
This method of convincing is when we feel the
need to return a favor. We as human beings may feel in debt to others if they
have helped us:
There is good evidence that a rule
for reciprocity governs much of
human experience: We report liking those who report liking us; we cooperate
with cooperators and compete with competitors; we self-disclose to those who have
disclosed themselves to us; we try to harm those who have tried to harm us; in
negotiations, we make concessions to those who have made concessions to us; and
we provide gifts, favors, services, and aid to those who have provided us with
these things” (Cialdini).
If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. In the
ad Alicia Keys says, “And now it’s our turn to thank him by voting for president
Obama in November.” She gives us the idea that women “owe” Obama in a sense and
since he has done so much for women, we feel compelled to vote for him to pay
him back.
Social Media-
Alicia Keys
is frequently tweeting about the events she goes to, which is intriguing. Why show her tweets that tell us how she feels about the people and Barack Obama? I thought
about the role this played in the ad, this method was not chosen by accident,
there are many ways to express what she is saying, but they chose Twitter. The
use of social media in this ad gives it a sense of modernity. It projects a
feeling of progress onto us and makes us feel like we are moving forward.
These
campaigns only seek to gain your vote. A well informed voter may not yield the
result the candidates wants, so instead the voter is less informed and more
persuaded. A play on irrational thought is more likely to sway the voter than
facts and truths.
References:
Aronson, E. (2011). The social animal. (eleventh ed.). New York: Worth Publishers.
Cialdini, R. B., Green, B. L., & Rusch, A. J. (1992).
When tactical pronouncements of change become real change: The case of
reciprocal persuasion. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 63(1),
30-40. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.1.30
Netemeyer, R. G., Heilman, C. M., & Maxham, J. (2012).
Identification with the retail organization and customer-perceived employee
similarity: Effects on customer spending. Journal Of Applied Psychology, 97(5),
1049-1058. doi:10.1037/a0028792
Author:
Walter Zavala
wzavala@regis.edu
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