Mass Communication & Journalism

  P ersuasion  is a form of social influence. It is the process of guiding oneself or another toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic (though not always logical) means. Persuasion has probably always been a part of human life. It seems inevitable that peo­ple will try to influence other people, even their closest friends and family members. For centuries people must have operated on the basis of intuition and common sense in their attempts to persuade. Aristotle was one of the first to try to analyze and write about persua­sion, in his classic works on rhetoric. Years later, particularly when mass communication became more widespread, people began to study persuasion even more systematically. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, with its identification of seven techniques of propa­ganda, was doing some of this early work. Part of the motive for this more careful study of persuasion was obviously fear—the war-inspired fear that propaganda could win