Is persuasion ethical? Essay

This simple question has engaged scholars and practitioners alike. Aristotle and Plato discussed it. Machiavelli touched on it. So have modern communication scholars and social psychologists. And you can bet that practitioners—Tommy Hunger, Phil Knight, Donna Karan, even Michael Jordan—have given it a passing thought, no doubt on the way to the bank. Yet persuasion ethics demand contemplation. As human beings we want to be treated with respect, and we value communications that treat others as an ends, not a means, to use Immanuel Kanf s famous phrase. At the similar time, we are practical creatures, who want to achieve our goals, whether they are financial, social, emotional, or spiritual. The accomplishment of goals—money, esteem, love, or religious fulfillment— requires that we influence others in some fashion somewhere along the way. Is the need to influence contrary with the ethical treatment of human beings? Some scholars would say it always is. Plato, who regarded truth as â€Å"the only reality in life, † was offended by persuasive communication (Golden et al. , 2000, p. 17). As, he regarded rhetoric as a form of adulation that appealed to people’s worst instincts. Although Plato did believe in an ideal rhetoric estimably composed of truth and morality, he did not think that ordinary persuasion measured up to this standard. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant would view persuasion as immoral for a diverse reason: In his view, it uses people, treating them as means to the persuader’s end, not as appreciated ends in themselves (Borchert & Stewart, 1986). This violates Kant’s ethical principles. In a similar fashion, Thomas Nilsen (1974) has argued that persuasion is immoral because a communicator is trying to encourage someone to do something that is in the communicator’s best interest, but not essentially in the best interest of the individual receiving the message. As considerate as these perspectives are, they set up a rather high bar for human communication to reach. What’s more, these authors tend to lump all persuasive communication together. Some communications are certainly false, designed to manipulate people by appealing to base emotions, or are in the interest of the sender and not the receiver. But others are not. Some messages make very intelligent appeals, based on logic and evidence. Additionally, not all persuaders treat people as a means. Therapists and health professionals ordinarily accord clients a great deal of respect. The best counselors treat each person as unique, an inexplicable treasure to be deciphered and understood. Many people who do volunteer work—such as those who counsel teens in trouble or AIDS victims—do not receive great financial benefit from their work. Their communications can be extremely much in the best interest of those receiving the message. On the other extreme are philosophers who argue that persuasion is basically moral. Noting that people are free to recognize or reject a communicator’s message, conservative thinkers tend to embrace persuasion. Believing that people are adequately rational to distinguish between truth and falsehood, libertarian scholars argue that society is best served by diverse persuasive communications that run the gamut from completely truthful to totally fallacious (Siebert, Peterson, & Schramm, 1956). Persuasion, they say, is better than coercion, and people are in any incident free to accept or reject the communicator’s message. There is some understanding in this perspective. However, to say that persuasion is intrinsically moral is an extreme, absolute statement. To suppose that people are capable of maturely rejecting controlling communicators’ messages naively neglects cases in which trusted but evil people exploit others’ vulnerability. What of men who trick or seduce women and then take advantage of their dependence to demand added sexual and emotional favors? Perhaps we would argue that the women chose to get involved with the men—they’re persuaded, not coerced—but it would be heartless to propose that such persuasion is moral. Moreover, the idea that all communication should start somewhere and that the individual or organization that it starts from influences the way the communication is expressed (Forsyth, D. R. , & Kelley, K. N. 1994). The idea that all communication goes somewhere that the sender’s view of what the audience is like will influence how they frame their communication, but that the receiver will also tend to take their own meanings from the communication, despite of what was intended in the first place. Just as students on a course must have to work in a variety of formats, so also they should have to deal with a diversity of audiences so that the effect of audience on what is said and how will be reinforced. All communication is put together with some purpose in mind, whether or not the sender is fully aware of what this is. Again, one can understand the communication and its effects better if one is fully aware of what the real purpose of it is. It must become apparent that what we think someone’s purpose is, is more significant than what it actually is. The pupils will come to understand that we act on postulations when decoding messages. The physical or social situation in which the communication takes place will constantly affect how it is understood, and will perhaps affect how it is put together in the first place. In terms of interpersonal and group communication, it is at least helpful to discuss or simulate examples which may be described as public or private situations so as to get across the force of this concept. Try getting a pupil to role-play behaviour in public that they would usually use at home, and the point will have been made (Dunbar, N. E. , & Allen, T. H. 2003). All communication has to be put into some form such as speech or pictures. Diverse forms have diverse qualities, and different advantages and disadvantages. The form used affects how the communication is put together and understood. Effective communicators weigh up the compensation of the various forms of communication accessible to them. It is often the case that we use more than one type of communication at a time. The number of forms that may be used through the medium of television in an evening news broadcast is a case in point. Students must be allowed to make decisions concerning the use of forms of communication during their course. They must practice the conventions of the form or format. On a more sophisticated level they should grapple the idea that the medium is indeed the message, and that the same message is transformed in various ways once cast in a form other than its original. References: Borchert, D. M. , & Stewart, D. (1986). Exploring ethics. New York: Macmillan. Canary, D. J. , & Spitzberg, B. H. (1990). Attribution biases and associations between conflict strategies and competence outcomes.Communication Monographs, 57, 139-151. Cooper, M. D. , & Nothstine, W. L. (1998). Power persuasion: Moving an ancient art into the media age. (2nd ed. ). Greenwood, IN: Educational Video Group. Dunbar, N. E. , & Allen, T. H. (2003, May). Toward a message-centered approach to attributions regarding interpersonal conflict. Paper presented at the meeting of the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA. Forsyth, D. R. , & Kelley, K. N. (1994). Attribution in groups: Estimations of personal contributions to collective endeavors. Small Group Research, 25, 367-3