Distorted Communication V: Persuasion, Attitudes and Responses

At the most basic level, persuasion is a form of influencing people in a process of guiding them toward the adoption of one’s views without coercion.255 It is also seen as a form of communication in which influencing is taking place without conscious awareness. One of the early and most famous successes of persuasion in commerce took place in 1957 when during the showing of the film Picnic, James Vicary, a marketing researcher, flashed on the screen for 1/3000 of a second the message, ‘Drink Coca-Cola’ or ‘Hungry? Eat Popcorn’. He repeated the message every five seconds throughout the film. The time exposure was so brief the messages were not detectable by the human eye; they were subliminal, below the level of conscious perception. After continuing his research for six weeks, Vicary reported that Coca-Cola sales in the theatre lobby increased by 57.7% and popcorn sales rose by 18.1%.256 While this version of persuasion is a rather specialised form of subliminal persuasion, most persuasion today takes place somewhat less hideous and less repulsive even though the core of operating behind the backs of the target — to use persuasion language — remains the same. So does the fact that persuasion occurs without the consciousness of the target but with the full consciousness of the persuader. It always involves a conscious effort directed towards influencing thoughts, attitudes, or actions of a receiver.257 Much of what we say and do is reflexive (conditioned association), as opposed to being reflective (symbolic association).