Political Persuasion: Political Blog

Persuasion is something we are introduced to in high school. We write “persuasive” essays, where we try to convince our peers that whatever we are saying is what they should agree with, or believe, etc. Then, in college we are asked to assess the techniques used to try and persuade people, and if it is not already made aware to us, we see how often others are trying to persuade us. Persuasion is most prevalent in advertisements. Advertisements have been around for as long as companies have been selling merchandise, telling us to pick their product and why it is better than the competitors. In today’s society, we see ad’s trying to persuade us everywhere: the television, billboards, in books, etc. Over the years, advertisements techniques have evolved. Every element of an advertisement can be broken down as a persuasion technique. Even though most of us know that ads are trying to persuade us, we still let them convince us to buy their product or vote in a certain direction. We are even persuaded to choose which candidate will run our country. In this blog, I would like to make aware to you how advertisements attempt to persuade you, by examining an ad from this year’s presidential elections.

The advertisement I chose is in support for Obama, and is opposing Romney’s campaign. This ad is targeting the working middle class. It creates, first of all, a separation between you and Romney, where Romney is the other. The ad is saying that you have to “stretch” your money to have the essentials for your family, while Romney makes millions more than you. The ad is clearly trying to persuade you to vote for Obama. Every aspect of this ad, though, is working together with that goal of persuasion.

Persuasion begins, according to Aronson (2011), with two routes, peripheral or central (emotion or logic). The peripheral route is based off emotions. Ads using this will try to connect to the audience using an emotional connection (does the ad make you happy, mad, scared?). The central route is based on logic. Ads using this route will try to connect with the audience by presenting them with facts and figures, so the ad makes you think it is the logical choice. The “Stretch” ad uses both. Aronson also states that there are three key factors that increase the persuasiveness of an ad: first, the source of the communication, second, the nature of the communication, and third, the characteristics of the audience. In the “Stretch” ad, the communicator is the president, but this could hinder persuasion as well as further it. Some of the population dislikes the president, while others support him and therefore may believe what is being said because he is the one saying it. The nature of the communication is obvious to all, the ad is attempting to get you to vote for Obama. This hinders the persuasion because we all know now that Obama has something to gain by presenting the opposing information about Romney. The characteristics of the audience, however, further this ads persuasion, because the audience also has something to lose (according to the ad) if they do not make the right choice (voting for Obama). I found that my ad used 5 techniques to persuade the viewer. These include: familiarity, conditioning, one vivid example vs. statistics, fear plus directions equals action, and motion and color.

Familiarity states that we like what is familiar, and the more we are exposed to a product the more we like it. For the “Stretch” ad, this works in the favor of the president. We are exposed to Obama all the time in the news, so we can all say we are familiar with him, but this is not what familiarity the ad is getting at. The ad is connecting us to the middle-class. Most of us are in fact middle-class Americans, and showing that Romney is not one of us makes us connect more with what Obama is stressing in the ad. We are familiar with the fact that many middle-class Americans have to stretch our dollars and what we connect with Obama because we are familiar with this situation, which is shown by pictures of workers just like us looking like they can’t afford to pay another dollar in taxes. The second technique, Conditioning, is the pairing of two stimuli, so that one stimuli will initiate the response that the pair stimuli originally had. We see conditioning used throughout psychologies history. In the ad, conditioning is seen by pairing Romney and our emotional response to paying taxes. Paying taxes already has associated with negative emotions. When we are presented with the pairing of Romney and taxes in general we begin to have negative emotions about just Romney. The third technique, of one vivid example vs. statistics, states that one vivid example is more powerful than statistics. As humans we tend to look at one example given by a friend of family member as being held in higher respects than if we saw the same information in a statistical report. This is because we are emotional creatures; emotion drives us more than logic. This ad was very persuasive in using this technique because it uses a vivid example instead of showing statistics of what Romney has paid in taxes in previous years as well. It gives you one vivid example of showing that Romney made millions but paid on 14 percent in taxes, while you paid more. You then compare the amount of money you made and how much you paid in taxes. In this case, you are the vivid example, in other words you create your situation into the example. Though these three techniques are important for the persuasion of the advertisement, they also set up a fourth technique.

Though the previous three techniques are all part of persuading the viewer, in my opinion, Fear plus action equals direction is the most important. This technique states that if the ad can scare the viewer moderately, and give them direction on how to alleviate the fear by taking a certain action then they will be more likely to be persuaded. The ad uses this perfectly. The audience (middle- class Americans) should be frightened by the thought of having our taxes raised even more than they already are, and the ad makes it clear that Romney wants to raise the taxes for the working class, so the correct action to take in order to have one less problem to think about we should vote for Obama. Though the action is apparent, creating the emotion of fear is the hard part for the advertisement. I was curious as to how, besides just the basic information, how the advertisement could go about creating the fear emotion. According to Lombard (2001) a new technique, motion and color, is used to help the persuasion along. Notice in every scene where Romney is present the corners of the screen are darkened, and moving in and out narrowing and our view on and off slightly. Also, all Romney shots are not in full color, there is less saturation making his scenes look dimmer. All of this works together. The darkening, moving, corners of the advertisement can elicit emotional responses better than just hearing information. The space around Romney is dark and seems to be narrowing, almost Closter phobic like, giving the emotional response of negativity. This technique is not only paired with the technique of fear, but conditioning also. Romney is paired with this darkness, over and over again, with breaks of full color in the shots of workers. Like this advertisement, many ads use many techniques, or combinations of techniques to persuade us.

The unlimited amount of techniques used to persuade us can become confusing and complicated through all the possibilities. The important thing about this article is not to know every way in which an ad is trying to persuade us, but to just be aware that these techniques are out there and that the ultimate goal of any advertisement is not just to better you, but to better their company. Now that you are a little more informed about being persuaded, you can make more informed decisions about what product to buy, or who to vote for. Once you are aware you can even start to pick out new techniques like I did about color and motion in this ad. Being aware puts you in more control of your decisions, which is something everyone wants.