Interpersonal Persuasion By R. Perloff

Thomas Jasen Gardner

LSC515

Public Information Campaign

Monday, October 31, 2011

Week 9

Thought Paper

Interpersonal Persuasion

By R. Perloff

The foot in the door approach of influence techniques should work well for fishing tournament organizers. WDNR is already in the door with the purchase of a tournament license and should use that as a logical outgrowth to talk about Aquatic Invasive Species. A targeted request works best on pro-social issues and organizers consider themselves helpful cooperative people willing to assist with worthwhile causes.

By giving an organizer a license, it is easy to ask for reciprocal kindness by asking them to alert their participants about AIS. While they may not feel personally responsible to clean each boat and trailer, they would be empathetic about the second request of handing out brochures and pamphlets as a tradeoff.

By low-balling with a simple request to not drag vegetation down the road, we may get boaters to comply to larger concerns about their live well or dirty motors. Once they acknowledge that vegetation is contaminated, they would be less resistant to find other barriers to cleaning their boat.

         By presenting the beautiful lake surroundings in an engaging conversation, the conscious mind is diverted from resisting positive thoughts such as cleaning a boat that would reinforce the image he has created. Such a subtle association can produce dramatic behavioral compliance. This emotion-target concept is best used for late adopters who are chameleons.

Because WDNR does not employ lawful tactics for compliance, they should use rational and indirect tactics that imply that the rest of the fishermen are dependent upon your individual action for uniform behavior. But I believe that fishing tournament organizers are in a manipulative position to use hard techniques for compliance because of their relationship with the participants.

To succeed, WDNR should capitalize on social and cultural norms. Disrupting normal behavior with the pique technique is like repetitive requests that are constantly reframed to appeal to diverse topics of discussion.