Dad, the Clever Persuader
Introduction:
The situation in which I was recently persuaded took place at my house in August, 2014, while doing daily chores and playing with my children. The person who used persuasion on me was my dad. My husband and I have been encouraging my dad to go back to school and pursue his degree because he’s unsatisfied with his current career. We extended our assistance in anything that he needed through the process of applying. Little did we know he would take our offer literally? He asked, if I could help him fill out the FAFSA application because he did not know how to work the computer. He said, “I can’t work the computer like you young kids, you guys are all so smart”. The tactic illustrated here is the “pregiving” tactic. After I assisted him with that, he asked if I could sign him up for school. Since he had been to school before but many years ago, I had to call and obtain his user name and new password. He…show more content… The first is central route; its focus is on the cognitive aspect of thinking. The central route means thinking about the content of the message and reflecting on the ideas contained in it. (Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM, 1986, as sited in Gass and Seiter, 2014). People are more likely to use central processing when it requires careful thinking. For example, carefully planning to take out a student loan to pay for school; this would require careful processing rather than irrational thinking. That person becomes motivated because more often then not the result has a direct effect on them. The second route is the peripheral route; it focuses on the cues that are not directly related to the message. This tends to be more of a short-term route. (Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM, 1986, as sited in Gass and Seiter, 2014). For example, listening to a song and only focusing on the beat rather than the
