One Side or Two Sides?

Suppose that you want to persuade a mixed (male and female) audience to be more sympathetic toward the women's movement. Should you present only your side of the issue, or should you also discuss the case against it?

We now know that if audience members are initially receptive to a message and are unlikely to hear any arguments opposing it, then a one-sided approach will probably be more persuasive than a two-sided approach. In this case your effort would probably be directed toward reinforcing existing attitudes rather than changing values. If, on the other hand, the audience is likely to be skeptical or hostile to the speaker's point of view or will hear later arguments opposing it, a two-sided approach will probably be more effective. You can prepare a two-sided argument by listing the pros and cons of your subject and trying to anticipate the objections of the skeptical listener.

Once you have made such a list, you will find evidence that refutes ', substantiates the arguments against you. As you speak you present the first points and acknowledge the extent to which the objections are invalid and do not negate your main arguments. You then go on to cite evidence supporting your side of the issue.

Why should a two-sided approach work when the listener is likely to hear opposing arguments later on? Inoculation theory suggests an explanation in the form of a medical analogy. There are two ways in which a doctor can help a patient resist a disease: maintain the patient's state of health by prescribing a balanced diet, adequate rest, and so on, or inoculate the patient with a small amount of disease so that the patient builds up antibodies. Now, imagine that your patient, the audience member, is about to be attacked by a disease—that is, a persuasive message discrepant with your own. When you use a one-sided approach, you offer support: you give arguments in favor of your position and try to make the listener strong enough to ward off attacks. When you use a two-sided approach, you "inoculate" the listener through exposure to a weak form of the disease—the counterargument—so that he or she can refute it and thus build up defenses against future attacks. Inoculation theory holds that inoculation is more effective than support in building up resistance because listeners exposed to a weak version of the counterarguments tend to develop an immunity to later arguments favoring that side. You might try this tactic to see whether your experience corroborates the predictions of inoculation theory. Remember, though, that an inoculation must be a weak version of the disease.

A final point to be made is that the one-sided approach seems to work better if most of the members of your audience are poorly educated or of low intelli­gence. Perhaps in this case presenting both sides confuses listeners, leaving them uncertain which side you actually advocate.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 848