Module 8: Relational Transgressions, Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Persuasion Focus

Mary Heather Pruitt

COM425 – Communication Conflict and Persuasion

Colorado State University – Global Campus

Dean Colby, PhD –Adjunct Instructor

June 28, 2018

Conflict and Persuasion

People normally depend on communication to persuade their colleagues to do whatever they want. Politicians and voters, salespeople and customers, chief executive officers and investors as well as job candidates and employers persuade others through communication. One key feature of these kinds of interactions is that the sender may use different methods to persuade the receiver. Deutsch, Coleman and Marcus (2011) assert that everybody wants to win and even in the aforementioned examples of interaction, a politician would want to win against a voter; a sales person would want to win against a customer and vice versa.

According to Goodwin (2014) negotiation provides an avenue to win, and this can only take place if it is a win-win process. Ghoshal (2009) indicates that the approach adopted in economics is to convince a receiver that the pursued action is in his or her best interest. For instance, salespeople describe appealing features of their products to customers. The approach outside the economic world, on the other hand, usually emphasizes the importance of building a rapport or being likeable. Scriven (2014), for example, indicates that human beings prefer to say yes to the people they like as well as understand.

In this paper, I will explore the role of persuasion in conflict management. To do so, I will explore theoretical events in which one party persuades another party to mitigate any differences that may lead to conflict. For concreteness, I will focus on a seller to buyer paradigm in which the latter has to decide the price he or she is willing to pay for particular good. Also, it is common knowledge that a seller can only receive a commission if the buyer buys, leading to a conflict of interests.

References

Goodwin, D. (2014). Negotiation in international conflict: understanding persuasion. Abingdon- on-Thames, UK: Routledge.

Deutsch, M., Coleman, P. T., & Marcus, E. C. (Eds.). (2011). The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Ghoshal, R. (2009). Argument forms, frames, and value conflict: Persuasion in the case of same- sex marriage. Cultural Sociology, 3(1), 76-101.

Scriven, C. (2014). Conflict and persuasion after foundationalism: Toward a philosophy of witness. Anglican Theological Review, 96(3), 527-534.