Persuasion: Definition of Terms

• Coercion: Convincing an audience to change its beliefs and/or behaviors by using faulty logic and/or by using or threatening to use force.

• Persuasion: Convincing an audience to change its beliefs and/or behaviors without using faulty logic and without using or threatening to use force.

 

• Conviction: aimed at the audience's beliefs only.

• Actuation: aimed at the audience's behaviors only.

 

• Coercion of actuation is easier to do than coercion of conviction. (It's easy to convince someone to hand over his wallet by pointing a pistol at him — but it's not easy to get him to want to!)

• Persuasion of conviction is easier to do than persuasion of actuation. (It's easier to persuade someone that smoking is a bad idea than it is to get her to actually quit!)

 

• Adoption is about starting something new (such as beginning to recycle).

• Discontinuance is about stopping something which pre-exists (like quitting smoking).

 

• Persuasion of actuation of adoption and persuasion of actuation of discontinuance are equally challenging, since both involve overcoming the audience's inertial inclination not to change.

 

• Inertia: The tendency of a body in motion to remain in motion and of a body at rest to remain at rest until acted upon by a superior outside force.

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