persuasion
Definition
Persuasion refers to the process by which communications aim to change evaluative responses, such as attitudes, or nonevaluative responses, such as beliefs, through mechanisms that include source credibility cues, argument quality, and the extent of cognitive elaboration a recipient applies to a message. Source credibility, comprising perceived expertise, trustworthiness, and bias, consistently predicts attitude change in persuasion contexts, with meta-analytic evidence placing its effects on a par with message quality as a predictor of opinion change. Social cues such as likes and shares represent a related class of persuasive input: experimental evidence shows that exposure to such cues increases the perceived reliability and perceived accuracy of misinformation, even among individuals who have received an inoculation intervention.
Sources: Mang et al. (2024), Traberg et al. (2024)
Related Terms
Applications
Persuasion and Source Credibility
Source credibility is one of the most consistently studied predictors within persuasion research, where perceived expertise, trustworthiness, and bias each carry separable effects on attitude change. Meta-analyses confirm that source credibility effects in persuasion are comparable in magnitude to argument quality effects, and while between-study variability is substantial, the evidence for their existence is largely unequivocal. This consistency stands in contrast to misinformation contexts, where source credibility effects have proven far less reliable, partly because researchers in that literature have not systematically applied the conceptual frameworks developed within persuasion research.
Sources: Mang et al. (2024)
Persuasion and Inoculation
Inoculation interventions operate within a persuasion framework by proposing that individuals can be pre-emptively prepared against persuasive attacks before exposure to misinformation occurs. A threat component forewarns recipients that a persuasive attack is imminent, and a refutational pre-emption equips them with tools to counter the manipulative techniques underlying that attack. An emotion-fallacy inoculation targeting emotional deception as a persuasive strategy significantly reduced the perceived reliability of misleading news, and its protective effect remained consistent even when social cues increased the persuasiveness of that misinformation.
Sources: Traberg et al. (2024)
Persuasion and Social Cues
Persuasive social cues, including likes and shares on social media platforms, constitute a distinct source of persuasive influence in the misinformation environment, one that operates alongside message content and source credibility. Exposure to such cues increases the perceived reliability and perceived accuracy of misinformation, and individuals tend to underestimate their own susceptibility to this influence while attributing greater vulnerability to others. This asymmetric perception of social influence on the self versus others has direct implications for intervention design, since a false sense of immunity to persuasive cues may leave individuals more vulnerable to socially endorsed misinformation.
Sources: Traberg et al. (2024)
