As a communication major student, I do have some communication strategies to share with you.
The main concepts I like most were Social Impact Theory and Sequential Persuasion. The first time I heard about Social Impact Theory was from my psychological class. It connected this theory with the concept of Conformity, which I found was really interesting. The larger the group, the more conformity it has. In fact, this “phenomenon” exists in everyday life, but I never realized it. It was really good to know about this theory and its application.
Sequential persuasion is one of most valuable techniques used by people to get desired results. It is behavioral focused, which takes a compliance gaining approach. For example, psychological processes will affect compliance in the Foot-in-the-Door Situation. Therefore, figuring out size of request, target audience, preference for consistency, and psychological change will increase the success rate of Foot-in-the-Door activity. Acquiring this technique will help prepare me for my future career goal: an advertiser for international enterprises. Using this technique appropriately will help companies to increase the sales, acquire market value, and gain reputation.
Also, I feel that I am more persuasive in Sequential Persuasion since I practiced this strategy several times during this semester. Personally, pregiving works best when I am trying to convince people. When I am trying to get someone to comply, if I act nice or do favors for him or her in advance, he or she will be more likely to say “yes”.
I would explain the process of persuasion to another person who has not taken communication course in three steps. First, I will let this person to identify his or her target audience and the size of request. To understand audience’s personality and need is quite necessary. Secondly, using verbal and nonverbal communication behaviors to define audience’s strength and weakness. For example, some people would feel obligated to return a favor when someone did him or her a favor first. (This is called Reciprocal Concessions). To others, they would become concerned that they perceived negatively when they rejected someone at the first time, which is known as Self-presentation. Do not forget to adjust our strategies in different situations. Finally, we need to increase our credibility via citing sources, showing homophiles, or providing evidence of intention. This is because people process information and change their attitudes based on their involvement.
Dan Shen's Weekly Insight 