by Carolyn Devan, Brooke Francis, Hannah Klinedinst

What if I told you I had the background knowledge to persuade you to buy a flamingo? Well, I may just be able to with the help of my little friend, Theory of Planned Behavior. Looking at your behavior, normative, and control beliefs I can ideally predict and change your behavior and convince you to buy a flamingo. First, let’s look at your behavioral beliefs. You like animals, you like pink, and you’re in the market for a new friend. I am predicting, looking at your behavioral beliefs, your attitude towards buying Fred, the flamingo, is likely, which leads to a positive intention of my desired behavior which is, buying the flamingo. Your father is in favor of you having a pet for security and flamingos are the new trending pet. These normative beliefs help me guide and persuade you into buying Fred by looking at the social norms in your environment, relevant people and/or relevant things within your life. Here’s the challenge, your control beliefs are you have two jobs and you simply do not have the time to work, enjoy school, and take care of Fred. By looking at these factors I am able to form a persuasive argument for you to buy Fred, the flamingo.

This is Fred enjoying his time at daycare.

Here’s my pitch: You are an animal lover. You are in the market for a pet. Your parents support you getting an animal. You may not be able to spend the whole day with Fred, but by working your two jobs you are able to send Fred to a day care and buy him lots of toys. As silly as buying a flamingo is, by utilizing a simple model such as, Theory of Planned Behavior, you can persuade just about anyone to buy anything if you analyze your audience and use the information correctly.

 

Utilizing your tools to persuade an audience.

Welcome to Theories of Persuasion (COM 210). As an SoC major, you will be able to persuade people to buy and do things with your knowledge learned in this class. Theories of Persuasion is focused on persuading your target audience to change, reject, adopt, or accept a desired behavior. With this course, you are able to enrich your SoC electives and/or upper division courses when you begin working on your own campaigns or team projects. Not only is this used in the classroom setting, but you will be able to take away these skills and apply them to real world situations in your professional and personal life.