Course Description (core course)
This course explores the principles of persuasion and compliance, focusing on the key processes that influence attitude and behavior change. Students will learn how to craft persuasive messages, analyze real-world examples in corporate and cultural contexts, and understand audience resistance and strategies to overcome it. The course also examines how audience traits, communicator credibility, and message design interact to shape persuasive outcomes.
Learning Objectives
Understand the primary processes that affect the magnitude to which, and the way attitudes and behavior are changed.
How to construct messages to induce these processes.
Identify and analyze examples of persuasive communication in corporate and cultural contexts.
Understand how audiences resist persuasion and learn techniques for inoculating against resistance.
Understand the interplay between audience and communicator characteristics and message design.