I Could Get a Look at a T-bone Steak by Sticking My Head Up a Bull’s A** But I Would Rather Take the Butcher’s Word For It: An Applied Approach to Persuasive Communication

This teaching activity tasks students working in groups to determine how to structure messages to increase the likelihood that those targeted with these messages would find themselves in a new cohort. Persuasion is all about the creation, solidification, and alteration of attitudes and are, according to research, the most statistically significant predictors of behavior: people are more likely to engage in behaviors if they have positively-valenced attitudes toward them. According to Harvard Health (2022), 8% of the world’s population does not eat meat, while the remaining 92% find themselves in other cohorts (e.g., eat meat monthly, eat meat weekly, eat meat daily). The outcome here would be students creating messages that would persuade people to eat more meat at all cohort levels.