Dillard (communication arts, Pennsylvania State U.) and Shen (communication studies, U. of Georgia) provide interpersonal and mass communication researchers, psychologists, and public health practitioners with a 23-chapter handbook, which has a reformatted structure that focuses on fundamental issues, theoretical perspectives, and contexts and applications related to persuasion. Communication, psychology, marketing and other scholars from the US and Germany discuss persuasion in the rhetorical tradition; the effects of message features; media influence as persuasion; behavioral, cognitive, and social outcomes of persuasion; being persuaded; theories, including discrepancy models of belief change, functional attitude theory, reasoned action theory, the elaboration likelihood model, reactance theory, and inoculation theory; and contexts like political persuasion, mass media and drug prevention, marketing and advertising, the legal setting, and technology. Along with updated content, this edition has 17 new chapters, including those on fear appeals, narrative persuasion, and health campaigns. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
The Second Edition of The SAGE Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice provides readers with logical, comprehensive summaries of research in a wide range of areas related to persuasion. From a topical standpoint, this handbook takes an interdisciplinary approach, covering issues that will be of interest to interpersonal and mass communication researchers as well as to psychologists and public health practitioners.
