Construct · 3 fields · 5 citations

Where does persuasion collide?

One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.

● jingle · one word, three constructs Nearest construct by meaningappealcompare the meanings
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Every construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to persuasion is appeal.

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persuasion3 CONSTRUCTSAttitude changePETTY & CACIOPPO · ELMRhetorical proofARISTOTLE · ETHOS PATHOSBurden of persuasionTHAYER · BURDEN OF PROOF

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1898Burden of persuasion1953Attitude change1991Rhetorical proof
2026

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Social psychology

Attitude change through messages

In social psychology, persuasion is a change in a person's attitude produced by a communication. The Yale group led by Carl Hovland studied it as a chain from source to message to audience in Communication and Persuasion (1953), asking which features of a speaker and a message move opinion. Petty and Cacioppo's Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change (1986) added the Elaboration Likelihood Model, which holds that a message works through a central route, when the listener thinks carefully about its arguments, or a peripheral route, when they lean on cues such as the speaker's appeal. The referent is the listener's attitude, and the unit is the measured shift from before the message to after. What marks this meaning is that persuasion is an outcome in one mind, established by comparing attitude ratings, not a craft and not a duty.[1][2]

Unit
A listener's attitude toward the message's position
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Pre-post attitude ratings after exposure to a message varied in argument quality and source cues

Rhetoric

The art of finding the available means

In the humanities, persuasion is the subject of rhetoric, which Aristotle defined in the Rhetoric (composed ca. 350 B.C.E.) as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. Those means are three kinds of proof: ethos, the character the speaker projects; pathos, the emotions stirred in the audience; and logos, the reasoning of the speech itself. The referent is not a listener's measured attitude but the speech and its resources, and the unit is the set of proofs a speaker can bring to bear. This meaning treats persuasion as an art to be analyzed and taught, judged by the fit between speaker, audience, and occasion, rather than as a quantity to be measured or a burden to be assigned.[3]

Unit
A speech's available means of proof (ethos, pathos, logos)
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Not measured; analyzed through rhetorical criticism of a speech's proofs

Law of evidence

a party's obligation to convince the fact-finder that a proposition is true to the required degree.

In the law of evidence, the burden of persuasion is a party's obligation to convince the fact-finder that a proposition is true to the required degree, whether by a preponderance of the evidence, by clear and convincing evidence, or beyond a reasonable doubt. Thayer's A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law (1898) separated this burden from the burden of production, the duty merely to put forward enough evidence to reach the jury, and later treatments such as McCormick on Evidence (McCormick, 1954) carried the distinction into modern practice. Here persuasion names a fixed legal obligation attached to a party, discharged or not against a standard of proof. It differs sharply from the other meanings: the duty is assigned in advance and can go unmet even when no attitude has changed, because what matters is whether the standard is reached, not whether anyone's mind moved.[4][5]

Unit
A party's obligation to convince the fact-finder to a set standard
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Not measured; assigned as a legal rule and judged against a standard of proof

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Nearby collisions

framing4 fields · 8 citationsjingle · one name, four constructsdiscourse6 fields · 10 citationsjingle · one name, six constructstrust6 fields · 11 citationsjingle · one name, five constructs

References

  1. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4964-1
  2. Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelley, H. H. (1953). Communication and persuasion: Psychological studies of opinion change. Yale University Press.
  3. Aristotle. (1991). On rhetoric: A theory of civic discourse (G. A. Kennedy, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work composed ca. 350 B.C.E.)
  4. Thayer, J. B. (1898). A preliminary treatise on evidence at the common law. Little, Brown, and Company.
  5. McCormick, C. T. (1954). Handbook of the law of evidence. West Publishing Co.

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