Designed to help students become more successful persuaders, Persuasive Messages offers practical advice on refining purpose, understanding audience, and designing a persuasive message. This textbook combines theory and practice, adopting a cognitive approach to understanding the persuasion process.

* A guide to successful persuasion, using student-friendly examples to provide a much-needed balance between theory and application

* Offers a new approach using the Cognitive Response Model, which places a special emphasis on audiences, and how they react to, or process, persuasive messages

* Covers a broad range of issues including: the relationship between attitudes and behaviour; the nature of ethics in persuasion; dealing with hostile and multiple audiences; and theories of persuasion, including consistency, social judgment, and reasoned action

* Teaches readers to be critical consumers of persuasive messages by discussing persuasion in advertising and in politics