Researchers have identified three main factors that contribute to the effect of a persuasive communication: the source, the message, and the audience. In other words, what matters in persuasion is
who says what to whom.Sometimes people change their attitudes not in response to a persuasive communication but by convincing themselves, a process of self-persuasion. In 1957 American psychologist Leon Festinger proposed cognitive dissonance theory, which says that people often change their attitudes to justify their own actions. According to this theory, people who behave in ways that contradict their own attitudes experience an unpleasant state of internal tension known as
cognitive dissonance. To reduce that tension, they adjust their attitudes to be consistent with their behavior.
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