Persuasion with Prof. McClosky

When Professor McClosky starts out she begins by telling us the concepts of economics, rhetoric, and science, and the first thing that comes to mind is "how can any of this relate to communications". However, she then goes on to explain that all of it is tied together. She then Goes on to explain that the world that we live in revolves around communication, in specific sweet talking.

The Conduit Theory that she goes on to explain has a lot in common with the concept of credibility judgements that we learned about early on in the course. The way the professor explains it is that if you were to imagine a tube that takes a bank deposit from one person and zooms it over to the teller, it would be pretty similar to that. The human mind perceives what others are trying to tell it quickly, is the point she is trying to get it across. She then goes on to talk about how persuasion happens in every conversation we ever have, except not in the way we may be thinking.

Persuasion happens every day, for example when we are sitting in class learning about these communicative theories, we are being persuaded or "sweet talked" into believing that these theories are the reason we communicate. At the end of it, as the professor claims, we are "happy that we have learned said theory" just as in the example of a man sweet talking a girl at the bar would be happy to finally receive her number.  All in all it is a very intriguing presentation that gives a lot to think about, especially the idea that persuasion is not different in science or humanity, but rather everything is conveyed the same (in the conduit manner). She then goes on to talk a little bit about predictions, and how there simply is no way to predict anything one hundred percent. She explains how that is also a way of persuasion, and in relation to what we have learned in class I think that would have a lot in common with Intentional verbal communication. Other people intentionally tell vulnerable individuals things that they can "predict"to gain benefit from them, which is a great example of people intentionally verbally taking advantage of those around them. Once again a great video, Professor McClosky's theories are extremely interesting, and much more important then we could have imagined once she shows how everything ties together.