The SAGE Handbook of Persuasion

by James Price Dillard

  Chapter 13 in this volume on narrative persuasion identifies four mechanisms: narrative makes readers or viewers less likely to counterargue the persuasive message, more likely to elaborate on it, provide imagery to help process the message, and lead them to vicariously experience the characters’ fates. Empirical findings from previous research suggest that richer modalities can facilitate this process of narrative persuasion by inducing greater degree of transportation to the mediated world. An interactive virtual environment with a narrative has been shown to reduce risky behaviors among men who have sex with men compared to face-to-face counseling alone (Read et al., 2006). Likewise, Wang and Calder (2006) found that transporting individuals in a narrative setting helps create better product recall and leads to subsequent purchase.

  In sum, modalities in newer media have aided the persuasion process by rendering content more vivid, transporting users to an alternate reality, and affording them greater self-representation, self-presence, and spatial presence.

  Access to Information

  Modern media technologies do not simply provide information, but situate them in particular spatial configurations for users to access, using a variety of online tools, such as toolbars and offline tools such as joysticks. Information of importance can sometimes appear in layered form for users to explore. Interface features can be deeply suggestive of the ways in which users can move from one location to another in mediated environments, in keeping with spatial metaphors such as “site” and “cyberspace.” Navigability affordances on the interface that determine how users move in a mediated environment can therefore serve the critical role of improving user access to persuasive messages. They facilitate easier access to pertinent information, and in doing so, reduce search costs and cognitive burden for users. A growing body of literature in marketing also indicates that navigational tools for sorting and comparing product information have positive effects on consumers’ attitudes toward shopping, as well as toward specific products. A simple reduction of search cost can positively affect users’ attitudes. For example, Lynch and Ariely (2000) found that search cost reductions accruing from navigational ease in comparison shopping decreased price sensitivity among users, increased their liking for the products that they selected, and maintained their retention probability when they were contacted two months later.

  Navigability affordances can also provide useful cues to focus user attention toward relevant information and minimize effort in locating it. Information foraging theory (e.g., Pirolli, 2007; Pirolli & Card, 1999) suggests that online users’ behavior patterns related to information consumption are influenced by the information scent emitted by cues on the interface, which provide hints about content in distal locations. When the interface is navigable and accessible in this way, it produces positive outcomes for persuasion. For instance, users of a comprehensive health system with navigation support and decision analysis tools perceived better quality of life, higher health care competence, and greater social support compared to those with only simple Internet access (Gustafson et al., 2008). Likewise, adding a search option for personal stories related to breast cancer significantly influenced users’ attitudes toward coping with cancer (Overberg et al., 2010).

  While navigation tools afford information at the right place, pervasive and ubiquitous computing technologies make information available at the right time. Systems that enable just-in-time messaging (Intille, 2002) have been known to change people’s behaviors. Examples include a mobile phone application for helping people lose weight by tracking their calorie intake, and a mobile system for helping people quit smoking by suggesting decreasing frequency of daily smoking.

  In an environment of information overload, search and navigational tools serve to provide much-needed scaffolding to users, helping them access relevant information with ease and reducing the burden of searching, thereby enhancing user experience of the mediated environment and contributing to persuasion outcomes.

  Persuasive Potential of Technologies

  * * *

  The discussion thus far covers a variety of theoretical mechanisms via which communication technologies aid the process of persuasion. Even though some of the work reviewed in previous sections was not intended to inform persuasion theory, they hold key insights for theory and design of persuasive technologies.

  First, it is quite clear that technology is an alternative source of persuasive messages. The source need not always be human. Even websites, robots, avatars, and virtual agents can persuade people. Such attributes of technological sources as expertise (e.g., Hu & Sundar, 2010), specialization (e.g., Koh & Sundar, 2010a; 2010b), attractiveness (e.g. Yee, Bailenson, & Ducheneaut, 2009), similarity (e.g., Fox & Bailenson, 2009), anthropomorphism (Zanbaka, Goolkasian, & Hodges, 2006) and perceived realism (e.g. Guadagno, Blascovich, Bailenson, & McCall, 2007) can affect how individuals evaluate their credibility.

  Technology is also shown to affect perceptions of content credibility and level of user engagement. As detailed in previous sections, affordances related to modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability of communication technologies not only affect how individuals perceive message content, but also their level of engagement with it (e.g., Sundar, Xu, Bellur, Oh, & Jia, 2011) and subsequent evaluations (e.g. Sundar, 2000; Sundar & Marathe, 2010).

  Perhaps most important, our review reveals that technological factors affect the process of persuasion by changing user attitudes and behaviors. Attitudinal outcomes include brand or product evaluation (e.g., Fransen, Fennis, & Pruyn, 2010; Schlosser, 2003), willingness to pay (e.g., Franke et al., 2009), attitudes toward website (e.g., Liu & Shrum, 2009), attitudes toward political candidates featured on websites (Sundar et al., 2003), and attitudes about messages advocated by virtual agents (Guadagno, Blascovich, Bailenson, & McCall, 2007). Behavioral outcomes include browsing activity (Kalyanaraman & Sundar, 2006), reducing undesirable behaviors (e.g., Noar, Pierce, & Black, 2010), increasing desirable behaviors (e.g., Baranowski, Buday, Thompson, & Baranowski, 2008), and pursuing a healthy lifestyle (e.g., Campbell et al., 1994; Marcus et al., 2007).

  Conclusion

  * * *

  This chapter represents a move away from treating persuasive technologies as mere vessels for holding and carrying persuasive messages. By now, it should be clear even to the casual reader that aspects of these technologies themselves contribute to persuasion outcomes in significant ways. This is not simply a matter of explaining additional variance, however. Instead, it is a matter of assessing how different aspects of the technology can contribute to persuasion in different ways. While this chapter has attempted to delineate the theoretical mechanisms by which technological factors influence the persuasion process, much work remains to be done in developing and testing specific theoretical questions.

  For example, under the first mechanism described in this chapter, it is important for us to investigate both the nature of interface cues that trigger cognitive heuristics and ways in which the heuristics result in persuasion outcomes. Sometimes, the sheer presence of an affordance on an interface can serve as a cue (e.g., a fancy modality such as 3-D carousel leading to the “bells and whistles” heuristic). At other times, cues appear in the form of metrics (e.g., bandwagon indicators) that are an outcome of affordances seeking user input. It is unclear if both these types of cues operate in a similar fashion in influencing persuasion, or whether they trigger heuristics in distinct ways. Further, a methodological challenge is to accurately track when a user invokes a given heuristic during their interaction with a technology (Bellur & Sundar, 2010).

  Considerable conceptual, theoretical, and methodological work remains to be done with the other mechanisms as well. Allowing the user to be the source is one of the hallmarks of web 2.0, with social media applications being deployed daily to produce persuasive outcomes. Users seem to be seduced by the ability to act as sources, given that it increases their sense of agency, identity, and self-determination. While this speaks to the stickiness
of the persuasive technologies themselves (i.e., it may guarantee repeat usage of the interface), the translation into outcomes of persuasion (such as positive attitudes and behaviors) is yet to be mapped out. Likewise, the relationship between engagement with the tool and engagement with the persuasive content needs further theoretical as well as empirical exploration.

  Considerable investments in persuasive communications have already been made in the domain of games and other virtual environments, but most rely on simple exposure, and tend to treat alternate realities as just additional media for mass communications. While navigational tools have been deployed effectively by sites and apps, empirically verified mechanisms related to self-representation, self-presence, and spatial presence are yet to be systematically translated into practice.

  A particular challenge for both theoreticians and practitioners is the integration of the effects of persuasive technologies with those of persuasive messages. The future lies in proposing interaction hypotheses that predict combined effects of specific technological variables and specific source, message and user variables identified by traditional persuasion research. Technological affordances related to modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability could amplify, neutralize, or negate long-held persuasion findings by serving as cues on the interface, modifying the manifestation of persuasive content, and changing the nature of user engagement in the process of persuasion. Together, persuasive messages and persuasive technologies will serve to shape the meaning and outcomes of persuasive communications.

  Acknowledgment

  * * *

  This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) via Standard Grant No. IIS-09l6944 and by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation under the WCU (World Class University) program at the Department of Interaction Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea (Grant No. R31-2008-000-10062-0).

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