Climax Order or Anticlimax Order?

If you had three arguments, one of which was clearly the strongest, would you use it first or save it for last? When you use the climax order of presentation, you save your strongest argument until last when you use the anticlimax order, you present your strongest argument first and then proceed to the weaker arguments. Which order to use poses a serious question when you would like to change group opinion on an important issue.

Research evidence on this question does not clearly favor one approach over the other. Nevertheless, if we take into account the existing attitudes of our listeners, we are able to come up with some, answers. If the audience is initially interested in your topic and favorable to your point of view, you can better afford to save your strongest argument for last. Presumably, the audience will be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. If, on the other hand, your listeners are initially opposed to your point of view, you may be more effective if you use your most persuasive argument first (Karlins and Abelson, 1970).

Two important assumptions underlie the issue of climax versus anticlimax order. The first is that you are able to determine which of your arguments your listeners are likely to perceive as strongest or most persuasive. It is not always possible to know in advance how your audience will react to a given line of reasoning. Even seasoned public speakers have been surprised by audience response to a particular argument or, for that matter, to a casual remark. The second assumption is that you can know in advance whether most of the audience will be for or against your stand on a particular subject. In almost all cases some audience members will favor your position and others will not. Thus you are forced to make your choices about climax or anticlimax strategy on the basis of what you know about the majority of your listeners, knowing full well that these choices will be the wrong ones for the remaining listeners. Any decision you make will win over some listeners and risk alienating others.

Stated or Implied Conclusions?

Have you ever tried to persuade someone by hinting at something? Sometimes it works, but sometimes the other person doesn't get the hint at all. Public speakers have long wondered whether it is more persuasive to state the conclusion of a speech explicitly or to allow listeners to draw their own conclusions from the arguments presented.

One argument in favor of implicit conclusions is that if the speech is already comprehensible on its own, an explicit conclusion is unnecessary. It has also been proposed that listeners with a high level of interest or ego involvement are more likely to be persuaded by an implied than by an expressed deduction, which might offend them if they hold an opposing view.

Despite these considerations, and the fact that one early study (Thistlethwaite et al., 1955) found no difference in attitude acceptance between conclusion drawing and no-conclusion drawing, most studies confirm that you have a better chance of changing audience attitude if you state your conclusion than if you allow listeners to draw their own (Tubbs, 1968). One reason for this seems to be that in making their own summation of your argument listeners may distort it; they may even find support for their own point of view in the new information you present.

Speak First or Have the Last Say?

Consider the situation in which two speakers, Doreen and Chris, are to debate an issue. Is it to Doreen's advantage to speak first, or would she have maximum impact if she spoke following Chris? In other terms, would learning and remembering the first argument interfere with learning and remembering the second?

According to a classic paper on the issue (Miller and Campbell, 1959), two persuasive communications are retained equally well if presented together and measured immediately. If audience attitudes are measured a week later, however, we expect a primacy effect—that is, the first communication is remembered somewhat better than the second. If there is a long delay between the two speakers and audience attitudes are measured right after the second speaker's presentation, we expect a recency effect—that is, the second message is remembered somewhat better than the first. Suppose, however, that there is a delay not only between the two speakers but in the measurement of audience attitude. In this instance, primacy and recency seem to cancel out each other, for neither message has the dominant impact.

A more recent study of the primacy-recency issue finds "the more recent information somewhat more influential shortly after the communications and the earlier information after a longer time lapse" (Luchins and Luchins, 1970, p. 68; McGuire, 1985, p. 273). Over time, however, conflicting communications tend to converge so that aspects of both communications are integrated into a more balanced view. Given these findings, the speaker's message, credibility, and delivery are likely to be more important than whether the speaker is first or last.

It is tempting to apply what is known about message variables to less formal kinds of communication. For example, if you want to persuade your parents to finance a new car for you, you might find yourself speculating about whether to hint or come right out and ask for it—and then whether to use a one-sided or two-sided approach. The research findings we have discussed, however, are based primarily on speaker-audience situations. Although they may indicate some trends in other kinds of communication, the information about message variables is most relevant to person-to-group communication.

Summary

One of the most formal modes of human communication we experience is public, or person-to-group, communication. We have tried to view it here in terms of both the speaker's and the listener's experience, giving special attention to persuasive rather than information communication.

The single most important judgment we made about the speaker, apart from his or her message, concerns credibility. Judgments about source credibility, as we saw, are not constant; they vary not only from audience to audience but from one time to another. In general, the high-credibility source has greater influence than the low-credibility source, but the impact of credibility on persuasion is greatest immediately after the message is received. Delivery is a second important speaker variable. In this chapter we discussed both the visual and vocal aspects of delivery and then went on to evaluate four modes of delivery: impromptu speaking, reading from manuscript, memorized speech, and extemporaneous speaking.

Our next topic was the audience itself, which we viewed from the speaker's vantage point. We described two methods—demographic and purpose-oriented analysis—that a speaker might use to adapt a message to a particular audience. Research findings on how listener persuasibility correlates with sex differences and personality traits were also examined.

Our treatment of the message itself focused on message preparation and structure rather than content. We discussed the organization of speech material, the use of supporting materials, and the speaker's choice of language as well as several other options available to the speaker in choosing an appropriate strategy.

Thus we had an opportunity to review research findings on such diverse topics as appeals to humor or fear; the degree of change to attempt in a speech; and the relative effectiveness of one-sided versus two-sided messages, climax- versus anticlimax-order messages, and stated versus implied conclusions.

Review Questions

1. What are three dimensions of source credibility? What are the differences between extrinsic, intrinsic, and total credibility?

2. What are the visual and vocal cues that contribute to audience judgments about delivery? Name the four modes of delivery, giving some of the advantages and disadvantages of each.

3. Discuss five possible ways of organizing speech materials.

4. Describe two methods of support and the general research finding concerning how a speaker's use of evidence affects his or her efforts to persuade.

5. What is the difference between the assimilation effect and the contrast effect? How do these concepts relate to how much change a speaker should advocate?

6. Under what conditions is a one-sided message most effective? Under what conditions is a two-sided message most effective?

7. Under what conditions is a climax-order message most effective? Under what conditions is an anticlimax-order message most effective?

8. What is the general research finding regarding the effectiveness of messages containing (1) stated conclusions, (2) implied conclusions?

Exercises

1. Select a speech from a newspaper or magazine such as Vital Speeches. Analyze the speech by answering the following questions:

a. What was the purpose of the speech?

b. What was the most probable state of the speaker's extrinsic and intrinsic credibility in terms of the three major dimensions of source credibility? What factors in the message and context of the message led you to your conclusions?

c. What methods(s) of organization does the speech illustrate?

d. What forms of support were used? How effective were they?

e. How effective was the speaker's use of language?

f. Was humor or satire used? If so, what seemed to be the speaker's purpose in using it?

g. Were fear appeals used? If so, were they used appropriately (that is, according to research findings)?

h. Was the message one-sided or two-sided? Was it appropriate, given the

conditions of the speech?

i. Was a climax or an anticlimax order used? Was it the more appropriate order for the situation in which the message was given?

j. Was the conclusion stated or implied? Was it the more appropriate technique for the situation in which the message was given?

2. If you were asked to present a speech to the audience that heard the speech used in exercise 1, how would you go about analyzing the audience?

3. Making use of what is known about message variables, write a three- to four-minute extemporaneous speech to persuade and present it to your class. Remember to aim for clarity and to make your presentation relevant to your listeners' interests. You may wish to choose a topic from the list that follows these exercises.

4. Give a one-minute impromptu speech on a topic assigned to you by a classmate or by the instructor. Try to determine your purpose and organization in the short time available.

5. Take your identity and membership cards out of your wallet or purse, and conduct an audience analysis on the groups to which you belong. Write a short paper on different approaches that would be appropriate for the different groups.

6. Tape-record one of your speeches, and play it back for self-analysis. What changes would you make if you were to give it again?

7. Here is a list of speech topics and thought starters for use in preparation of speeches.

AIDS Air traffic safety Anarchy Atheism Buying a car Capitalism Causes of earthquakes China Culture Divorce Empathy Ethnocentrism Flood control Hazards in the home Illiteracy Improving your memory Interpreting dreams German investment in Ukraine Learning to listen to music Muslim beliefs Overcrowded universities Personality—what is it? Plastic surgery Prayer in public schools Prostitution Public works for the unemployed Revision of the penal system Sex education in the schools Sky diving Social stratification Speech pathology Suicide Taxidermy The continental drift theory The honor system The importance of friendship The Nobel prize The overorganized society The scientific lie detector The space program The Strategic Air Command Tornadoes Trick photography Water pollution Wedding customs What makes people buy Women leaders

Alcoholism and drug abuse Animal research Birth control Boxing Censorship Cigarette smoking Communism Computers Conformity Country music Cryogenics Demographic changes Dieting foods Driver education Drunk drivers Euthanasia Firearms regulation Football for the spectator Foreign aid Forest fires Fraternities and sororities Free college education Grading systems Hell's Angels Herpes Medical practices Mental illness Misleading advertising Morality Nuclear testing Overcrowded airports Pornographic films Prejudice Rationalizing Siamese twins Slander South Africa Television evangelists The Academy Awards The armed forces The communication gap The FBI The high cost of dying The laser beam The metric system TheKuKluxKlan Urban blight