Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
I'm reading a heck of a lot on persuasion for…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2001 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I'm reading a heck of a lot on persuasion for my paper in political psychology. Peter Wright, summarizing an experiment in "Cognitive Responses to Mass Media Advocacy":
Adult women were presented either anaudio or print version of the text of an ad for a soybean-based food innovation....All the women were asked to treat the entire transmission segment as they naturally would in responding to mass media transmissions in their home. Half were also told that the upcoming ad would discuss a topic about which they must soon make a personal decision. This heightened the amount of attention given the ad versus the other message, as shown by reliable differences on a postmessage question.
To paraphrase Phoebe on the television show Friends, you must decide, you must decide, even though it's just an experiment, you must decide!
