Hovland-Yale Model (10 marks)

One model of persuasion through the media is the Hovland-Yale Model which says that three factors affect the communication process that influences persuasion; The Communicator, The Message and The audience.

The Communicator is ‘who is passing on the message’ and it has been said that the more attractive, well known and knowledgeable in the specific area the communicator is, the more people are persuaded.  Sorokin and Baldyreff supported this by having participants listen to two identical records. A good looking ‘expert’ in the field told participants that one was better than the other and it was found that 59% of people agreed with them even though they had just listened to two identical pieces suggesting the only reason they thought this was that they have been persuaded as the man was an ‘expert’.It has also been suggested that people who speak quickly are more persuasive as they appear to know what they are talking about.

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The Message is ‘what you are trying to persuade the audience of’ and it has been found that a balanced message is more persuasive than a bias one as the audience feel that they know enough to make an informed decision themselves and are therefore more likely to accept your argument. Also substantial fear in a message is a good persuader but it must affect the audience and not scare them completely and the more the message is shown on TV the more persuasive it is due to the stimuli being reinforced over and over. Zajoncconducted an experiment to support the fact that repeated exposure is a persuasive tool by showing participants completely unfamiliar stimuli, some more frequently than other. Later when asked how good the stimuli were more positive ratings were given to the stimuli that had been shown more frequently.

The Audience is ‘to whom you are aiming the message’ and is based on age, intelligence, personality and gender, with younger people being easier to persuade. Intelligence caneffect degrees of persuasion as more intelligent people are more likely to understand the message and to spot weaknesses in it therefore decreasing persuasion whereas less intelligent people are more likely to not fully understand the message and just agree with it anyway.

​A criticism  of the Hovland-Yale model is that most of the early research carried out in order to develop this model was carried out on students and army personnel, both of whom are not representative samples of the general public in age, wealth or education and it is therefore inappropriate to generalise these samples to the general public.