Chapter 16: Persuasive Speaking

The Goals of Persuasive Speaking

Persuasive speaking is speech that is intended to influence the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior of your audience. Although these three terms may be familiar to you, let’s take a moment to examine them in light of how we will think about them in this chapter.

Attitudes are our general evaluations of people, ideas, objects, or events (Stiff & Mongeau, 2003). They are our feelings about something, our judgments of good or bad, important or unimportant, boring or interesting, and so on. For example, you might have a positive attitude toward sports and exercise: “Exercising regularly is good.”
Beliefs are the ways in which people perceive reality (Stiff & Mongeau, 2003). They are our thoughts about what is true and real and refer to how confident we are about the existence or validity of something: “I believe that exercising results in a healthy body and lifestyle.”
Behavior is the manner in which we act or function. It refers to what we do, often in response to our attitudes and beliefs (Homer, 2006). For example, if your attitude about exercise is really positive and you believe that it contributes to a healthy lifestyle, you’ll probably be motivated to get out there and walk or jog or lift weights.

As you consider your audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and behavior, don’t forget the cultural context (Chapter 1) and their group affiliations (Chapter 5). Your listeners’ gender, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity—as well as their personal experiences—inform their attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. If you fail to respect these factors, you may fail to persuade your audience.

Speaking to persuade your listeners involves some informative speaking. Just look at any presidential campaign. The candidates all want to inform you about their plans and goals for the nation. However, their primary goal is to use organized and well-developed presentations to influence their audience’s attitudes and beliefs about their (or their opponents’) suitability for the presidency. And, of course, they want to influence your behavior by getting you to vote for them.

Influencing your audience does not necessarily mean radically changing their attitudes, beliefs, or behavior; it can also mean reinforcing them. For example, when a political party attempts to rally its base, its goal is not to change their faithful listeners’ minds but to strengthen their support and get them more actively involved. Of course, to do this effectively, the party must first correctly identify their listeners’ existing attitudes and beliefs. In fact, whether your goal is to change or reinforce your audience’s attitudes, it is important to use audience analysis (discussed in Chapter 12) to first identify what those attitudes currently are.