Week Eleven: The Science of Persuasion

The video "The Science of Persuasion" covers six essential elements to persuade readers. Among the six, I found that three-- authority, liking, and consensus-- are very relevant to persuasive blogging.

Authority plays upon the author having credible knowledge of their subject in order to write about it successfully. This is essential to blogging because the basic fundamentals of persuading an audience successfully is knowing the subject and having the authority to gain the trust of the readers. In blogging, this goes hand-in-hand with building a persona.

Liking involves the reader more. They have to develop a liking to the writer and to the subject. Liking is successful when the readers can connect to someone similar to them, when someone compliments them, and when there is cooperation between subject, reader, and author. In blogging, the readers must be attracted to the subject and to the argument in order to be persuaded at all.

Consensus involves someone looking to the actions of others in order to decide what their own action will be be. In blogging, a reader can look at the comments of other and the interaction of the author to see how other interpreted the argument. If they agree with the majority, they can most likely be persuaded easily.

I think that the most important of the three is authority because it is a building block that the others can build off of, but without it, the argument can crumble. All of the elements, though, are contributing factors that build a strong plan to persuade.