When we persuade someone, we urge them to do, feel or think something, but what about time?The effect of this persuasion will most likely weaken and increase the likelihood that others will stop doing, feeling or thinking about what we wanted to induce, but this reduction in persuasive effects, due to the influence of time, does not always happen. Sometimes the opposite happens, the numbing effect.
Therefore, a message intended to persuade us may not succeed. However, the numbing effect causes this message to influence us over time. Forgetting the source, the persuasor, is quite common. Once we forget who sent the message, its influence can increase, resulting in changes in attitude.
- When a persuasive message is released with the intention of changing an attitude.
- The more effective the moment is right after its delivery.
- In terms of the effectiveness of the message.
- It will persist as long as the message is memorized.
- So the more it is treated.
- The longer the persuasion will last.
However, how to deal with something bigger than a message?Treatment will depend, in part, on cognitive investment. The more cognitive resources the message invests, the more likely we are to remember it, the more attention to the message, understand what it transmits, think about it, repeat it, comment with other people, compare it with other messages, the ease of being able to see it again, etc. ?
Sometimes a message becomes persuasive over time. Contrary to the expected, as we have seen above, changes induced by persuasion may take time to appear, so that persuasive effects appear long after the message of the persuasive appears, there must be certain conditions, among which we highlight:
The numbing effect is very useful for persuading people who were initially very reluctant. The effects of persuasion usually last about six weeks. When we see TV ads that encourage us to buy certain products, ad content is often memorized longer than the brand. of the company that advertised them or even the people who have starred in advertising, so avoiding the numbness effect is a tactic that can be used based on interest.
If we consider that over time there is a dissociation between the message and the source, this is where the latent effect occurs, so some companies choose to periodically introduce similar messages, an attitude that is sufficient to stimulate memory and avoid such dissociation, numbing effect. Thus, the actors in the ads are usually the same as in the previous one, if you forget who you were, you lose credibility, instead, if it’s always the same, we’ll give it more credibility.
On other specific occasions, it is more interesting for the person to forget the credibility of the source, especially when it is inactive; in such cases, it is advisable to encourage the numbing effect. their most important messages sparsely, so after sending a message, they expect people to forget that it was they who initiated this message, but without forgetting its content.