The relationship between the developmental level of persuasive strategies and their effectiveness

Research on the development of persuasive communication skills has described the emergence of four basic strategies in persuasive messages. This study includes two experiments to assess the role these strategies play in the process of gaining compliance. In both, college students received messages requesting they volunteer for an experiment and advocating compliance. Messages differed in the level of strategic adaptation of the compliance‐gaining appeal they offered. In general, form of request (supported versus unsupported) and content of specific message appeals influenced compliance, but level of strategic adaptation made little or no contribution to message effectiveness.     

The effects of nonverbal behavior on outcomes of compliance gaining attempts

An increasing number of investigations have demonstrated that the use of certain nonverbal behaviors such as gaze and touch can increase compliance‐gaining effectiveness. A meta‐analysis of 49 studies with a total of 9977 subjects was conducted to determine the strength of the nonverbal‐compliance relationship. The results indicated that there are consistently positive and small effects for gaze, touch, proxemics, and apparel in increasing compliance‐gaining effectiveness. Several different theoretical accounts of these data are evaluated. Finally, the effects of the nonverbal behaviors are compared with those of verbal behaviors. The nonverbal behavioral effects on compliance‐gaining appear to be as strong, and in some cases stronger, than the effects associated with various verbal compliance‐gaining strategies.     

Seeking and resisting compliance: Selection and evaluation of tactics in a simulated college student drinking context

A laboratory study was conducted to determine the types of compliance‐gaining and compliance‐resisting strategies selected and subsequently judged for effectiveness by college students in a simulated casual drinking context. 96 participants in the study were assigned one of two conditions in the study: compliance‐gaining (attempting to induce drinking by the partner) and compliance‐resisting (resisting offers of alcohol). Results indicated that participants in both conditions utilized direct forms of social influence most often (simple offer, direct refusal). Resistance strategies were rated more effective than compliance strategies and compliance‐gaining strategies were differentially rated as effective. Heavy drinkers and moderate drinkers rated the effectiveness of compliance‐gaining strategies differently from non‐drinkers. Theoretical implications were advanced for the compliance‐gaining/resisting area, and practical implications were suggested for those interested in developing programs for campus alcohol awareness.     

Graduate theses: An index of graduate work in speech,XXXIII

Six themes of physicians' relational communication were hypothesized to predict patients' satisfaction and compliance, to relate to strategies used by physicians to gain compliance, and to relate to frequency of physician‐patient contact. Telephone interviews with 234 adults who had seen a primary care physician within the previous six months confirmed that perceived relational communication was strongly related to affective, cognitive, and behavioral satisfaction. More expressions of receptivity, immediacy, composure, similarity, and formality and less dominance by the physician were associated with greater patient satisfaction. Only perceived similarity related to patient‐reported compliance. Several relational message themes were associated with physicians’ use of 17 verbal compliance‐gaining strategies. More prior contact also was associated with more perceived use of immediacy and receptivity messages by the physician and with more satisfaction. Finally, satisfaction was modestly correlated with compliance.     

Advocating for controversial issues: The effect of activism on compliance‐gaining strategy likelihood of use

Previous research has demonstrated that compliance‐gaining strategies can he arrayed on an unidimensional continuum, anchored by positive, pro‐social strategies and negative, antisocial strategies (Hunter & Boster, 1987; Rolojf & Barnicott, 1978, 1979). Individual differences, including argumentativeness and verbal aggression (Boster & Levine, 1988), have been shown to affect one's ethical threshold. This ethical threshold is consistent with a Guttman simplex and determines both how many, as well as how antisocial, compliance‐gaining strategies individuals may consider using. Activists, who are highly involved and committed to their cause and who tend to be less verbally aggressive and more argumentative than the general public (Campo, 1999), are likely to have a lower threshold and to use more strategies. This study examines to what extent activism predicts one's ethical threshold, when controlling for the known effects of argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, and sex. Participants (N = 454) at two separate universities completed a repeated measures questionnaire that asked them to indicate their likelihood of use of 25 separate compliance‐gaining strategies. Based on respondents’ likelihood of use of these 25 strategies, the data were consistent with a Guttman simplex. A multiple regression model was tested, and indicated that one's ethical threshold is directly predicted by level of activism and verbal aggressiveness. Sex and argumentativeness were not found to be significant predictors in this revised model. In addition, activists used more strategies than non‐activists. Implications for advancing research related to activism and compliance‐gaining strategy selection are discussed.     

A note on “Clozentropy: A procedure for testing English language proficiency of foreign students”

This study investigates whether attributions made while observing compliance‐gaining interactions always are a matter of perspective. We propose that Construct Differentiation moderates the effects of perspective on causal judgments, such that highly differentiated individuals are more responsive than less differentiated persons to information from interaction that their psychological perspective makes salient. Participants viewed three videotaped compliance‐gaining interactions, one each while taking the perspective of the message source, the message target, and a third‐party observer. Then they rated causes for the target's actions and the target's intent. As predicted, Construct Differentiation was positively associated with intrapersonal variability in ratings of causal judgments across the three perspectives, and positively associated with actor/observer differences when taking the perspective of message source versus target. Implications for interpersonal communication, constructivism, and attribution theories are discussed.     

Personality Traits,Television Viewing,and the Cultivation Effect

This research investigates the impact of 3 personality traits—trait anxiety, sensation seeking, and psychoticism—on cultivation effects regarding perceptions of violence. A survey measuring violence prevalence estimates, personality traits, television consumption, and genre preferences was completed by 427 undergraduates. Results indicate that low trait–anxious individuals, and to a lesser extent high sensation seekers, are more susceptible to cultivation regarding personal vulnerability to crime whereas those low in psychoticism are susceptible to cultivation regarding societal violence perceptions. The worldview offered by these traits, as opposed to TV genre consumption or resonance, seems to best explain these effects.     

The effects of humor on perceptions of compliance‐gaining in the college classroom

The purpose of this study is to explore humor as a factor in students’ perceptions of college teacher compliance‐gaining in the classroom. Four hundred twenty‐eight college students reported the frequency of their college teachers’ uses of compliance‐gaining tactics, the frequency of humor uses with compliance‐gaining tactics, and the effectiveness of humor used with compliance‐gaining tactics. Results revealed positive and significant relationships between humor uses and uses of particular compliance‐gaining strategies. Findings suggest that students perceive teachers to use humor more frequently with certain compliance‐gaining tactics. Moreover, students reported that certain compliance‐gaining tactics are perceived as more effective than others.     

An experimental study of certain physiological,introspective and rating‐scale techniques for the measurement of stage fright

After a review of the research on compliance‐gaining strategies, it was decided that deductive approaches toward the development of a taxonomy of compliance‐gaining strategies are limited because of epistemological and methodological problems. Instead of a deductive approach, the paper proposes that an inductively‐derived taxonomy is a more valid and reliable classification scheme of compliance‐gaining strategies. The paper therefore attempts to ascertain the representational validity of a particular inductively‐derived taxonomy of compliance‐gaining strategies. The assessment of the representational validity was accomplished by comparing proposed properties of the taxonomy with a multidimensional scaling representation of subjects’ perceptions of persuasive messages. The comparison indicated that the taxonomy had a high degree of representational validity. Finally, it was suggested that future research should focus on the dynamics of the properties of compliance‐gaining strategies.     

Development and test of a cognitive rules model of interaction goals

Although scholars frequently describe communication as goal oriented, they offer limited detail about how people form interaction goals in situations. This paper presents a “Cognitive Rules” model which specifies assumptions about the structures and processes underlying goal formation. According to the model, people represent their knowledge about goals within an associative network model of memory, which contains cognitive rules linking situational features and desired outcomes. People's likelihood of forming a goal depends on the accessibility of relevant cognitive rules as well as the fit between perceived situational features and rules. An experiment testing these assumptions is reported. As predicted, a priming manipulation influenced interaction goals in attributionally ambiguous but not in attributionally clear compliance‐gaining situations. Unexpectedly, the effect of priming on goals occurred only for people high in construct differentiation. Implications of these findings for accounts of goal formation and message production are discussed.     

Are compliance‐gaining strategies dependent on situational variables?

Previous research has apparently established that persuasive strategy use is heavily dependent on characteristics of the specific compliance‐gaining situation. Situational variables believed to have systematic effects on strategy choice include intimacy of the interpersonal relationship and duration of the consequences of compliance or noncompliance. This study, an attempt to replicate the prototype studies in the area, finds little support for many of the findings now accepted as general propositions. The likelihood that a strategy will be used in a given situation depends significantly on unanalyzed aspects of message content, so that generalizations about strategy types are problematic.     

Communicating Value and Impact through Advocacy: Dealing with the Scalability Issue in the Province of Ontario

This article explores the progress being made in Ontario for marketing, advocacy, influence, and results about the high impact and value of the over 300 library systems in the province. It covers the challenges we face, our goals, and our tactics and strategies to collaborate and achieve results on a province-wide scale. We are building our skills by understanding the components of good marketing communication processes, its foundation in relationships and influence, and how to take data and statistics and transform them into powerful narratives, visuals, and talking points that have an impact on audience and help with progress towards advocacy goals. This is a new early stage case study of the Ontario Public Libraries strategies for building these lobbying processes, gaining community input and support, and building province-wide collaboration and effort using affordable and powerful social media tools.     

A study of women's compliance‐gaining behaviors in violent and non‐violent relationships

Recent research by communication scholars has investigated the dynamics of abusive spousal relationships (Chandler, 1986; Infante, Chandler, & Rudd, 1989; Infante, Chandler‐Sabourin, Rudd, & Shannon, 1990; Rancer & Niemasz, 1988; Rudd, Burant, & Beatty, 1994; Sabourin, Infante, & Rudd, 1993). Infante and his colleagues have suggested that those involved in violent relationships communicate differently with their partners than those involved in nonviolent relationships. Based on this prior research, it seems important for communication scholars to further investigate the communication behaviors of individuals involved in violent relationships. This current study seeks to advance the family violence research by comparing the types of compliance‐gaining strategies that battered and non‐battered women report using during their disputes.     

Communication and role development for zoo volunteers: responding to role-sending,role-making,and role-remaking

High turnover among volunteers means organizations spend significant resources recruiting and retaining them. Research on employees indicates the importance of role development in increasing employee identification and satisfaction while reducing turnover, but limited research has addressed these issues for volunteers. This study explored zoo volunteers’ role development in two phases. In phase one, interviews explored how volunteers learned and understood their roles. Results indicated volunteers learned their roles through communication with supervisors and peers and were generally satisfied with them despite limited opportunity to be innovative. In addition, some volunteers became concerned when their roles were changed with limited input from them. In phase two, questionnaires explored relationships between volunteers’ communication experiences and outcomes. Results indicated volunteers responded negatively to role-remaking, but communication with management, education staff, day captains, and family was associated with positive outcomes. By contrast, communication with peer volunteers had a negative impact on some outcomes.     

Outside the library: Early career researchers and use of alternative information sources in pandemic times

Presents findings from a study into the attitudes and practices of pandemic-era early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to obtaining access to the formally published scholarly literature, which focused on alternative providers, notably ResearchGate and Sci-Hub. The study is a part of the Harbingers project that has been exploring the work lives and scholarly communication practices of ECRs in pre-pandemic times and during the pandemic, and utilizes data from two rounds of interviews with around 170 ECRs from the sciences and social sciences in eight countries. Findings show that alternative providers, as represented by ResearchGate and Sci-Hub, have become established and appear to be gaining ground. However, there are considerable country- and discipline-associated differences. ECRs' country-specific level of usage of the alternative providers is partly traceable to the adequacy of library provisions, although there are other factors at play in shaping ECRs' attitudes and practices, most notably convenience and time saving, as well as the fact that these platforms have become embedded in the scholarly dashboard. There is a dearth of evidence of the impact of the pandemic on ECRs' ways of obtaining scholarly papers.     

从播客现象解读网络的亚文化传播对社会个体现实行为的影响

亚文化这种非主流的、局部的文化现象在传统渠道中生存较为隐匿,但在网络传播中,特别是随着播客的兴起,亚文化由此而得到了生存和扩展的土壤.一些非主流的文化思想也借助网络的力量得到释放,并对社会个体现实行为产生了明显而重要的影响.文章旨在从播客的传播现象着手分析网络亚文化传播与社会个人形象之间的影响.     

Reclaiming erased lives: archives,records and memories in post-war Bosnia and the Bosnian diaspora

In this paper, based on conventional and digital ethnography, I first identify three dominant research areas relating to the issues of destruction, use and abuse of archives and records in post-war Bosnia, and discuss their legal, political and ethical dimensions. I then go on to present two ethnographies describing how survivors of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and genocide in Bosnia and in the Bosnian refugee diaspora perceive, experience and deal with missing personal records and material evidence of their histories, as well as how they (re)create their own archives and memories, and in the process reassert their ‘erased’ identities in both real and cyber space. This paper also describes how contemporary technologies—including biomedical technology and information and communication technology—impact the reconstruction of individual and collective identities in shattered Bosnian families and communities in the aftermath of genocide. The ethnographies described point to the novel contribution that these technologies have made to re-humanising both those who perished and the survivors of the war in Bosnia.     

The semantics of social influence: threats vs. persuasion

This study investigates how language is used to make sense of influence attempts. More specifically, the perceived potency and evaluation of both influence agents and targets and the influence tactic used are examined for their effect on the actors' perceived power and influence success. The two influence tactics examined are threats and attempts to persuade. A pilot study (N=145) and main experiment (N=189) were conducted to create 84 simple sentences, the units of analysis for this investigation. Agents are perceived as more powerful than targets of influence. The tactic used to secure compliance (threaten versus attempt to persuade) does not affect the perceived power of either the agent or the target. A bad agent is seen as more powerful than a good agent, and a bad target is considered more powerful than a good target. Furthermore, good agents have more success in gaining compliance by using persuasion than by using threats, and they have more success when influencing a good target than a bad target. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Virtually Working: Communicative and Structural Predictors of Media Use and Key Outcomes in Virtual Work Teams1 A previous version of this work was presented as a Top 3 Paper in the Organizational Communication Division at the International Communication Association Annual Conference,New Orleans,LA (May 2004).

Organizational trends toward team-based structures, globalization, and reliance on communication technology have spurred research addressing the communication processes of virtual teams. However, much of the extant research focuses on the ways virtual teams differ from conventional, face-to-face teams and fails to examine variations in virtual team characteristics that may impact team communication behaviors and experiences. The study reported here identifies two categories of virtual team characteristics (communicative and structural) and uses these to explore their relationships to team communication technology use and team outcomes. Analysis of data from 98 virtual teams reveals that structural features primarily relate to media use, whereas communication considerations are associated with team outcomes. Additional analyses indicate that various communicative predictors moderate the relationships between technology use and outcomes. These results point to theoretical and practical implications for researchers, team members, managers, and organizations related to virtual team design and communication processes.