Discuss Psychological Audience Analysis.

Discussion: Psychological Audience Analysis

Psychological Audience Analysis Demographic information lets you make useful inferences about your audience and predict likely responses. Learning how the members of your audience feel about your topic and purpose may provide specific clues about possible reactions. A psychological audience analysis explores an audience’s attitudes toward a topic, pur- pose, and speaker while probing the underlying beliefs and values that might affect these attitudes.

It is important for a speaker to distinguish among attitudes, beliefs, and values. The attitudes, beliefs, and values of an audience may greatly influence a speaker’s se- lection of a topic and specific purpose, as well as other aspects of speech preparation and delivery.

An attitude reflects likes or dislikes. Do you like health food? Are you for or against capital punishment? Should movies be censored? What are your views on nu- clear energy? Your answers to these widely varied questions reflect your attitudes.

A belief is what you hold to be true or false. If you think the sun will rise in the east in the morning, you hold a belief about the sun based on what you perceive to be true or false.

A value is an enduring concept of good and bad, right and wrong. More deeply ingrained than either attitudes or beliefs, values are therefore more resistant to change. Values support both attitudes and beliefs. For example, you like health food because you believe that natural products are more healthful. And you value good health. You are against capital punishment because you believe that it is wrong to kill people. You value human life. As with beliefs, a speaker who has some understanding of an audience’s values is better able to adapt a speech to them.

Analyzing Attitudes toward the Topic The topic of a speech provides one focus for an audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and values. It is useful to know how mem- bers of an audience feel about your topic. Are they interested or apathetic? How much do they already know about the topic? If the topic is controversial, are they for or against it? Knowing the answers to these questions from the outset lets you adjust your message accordingly. For example, if you plan to talk about increasing taxes to improve education in your state, you probably want to know how your listeners feel about taxes and education.

When you are analyzing your audience, it may help to categorize the group along three dimensions: interested–uninterested, favorable–unfavorable, and captive– voluntary. These dimensions are summarized in Table 4.3. With an interested audience, your task is simply to hold and amplify their interest throughout the speech. If your

R E

C A

P Adapting to Diverse Listeners • Focus on a target audience.

• Use diverse supporting materials.

• Balance logic and emotion in supporting materials.

• Use visual aids.

• Appeal to such common values as peace, prosperity, and family.

psychological audience analysis Examining the attitudes, beliefs, values, and other psychological information about an audience in order to develop a clear and effective message

attitude An individual’s likes or dislikes

belief An individual’s perception of what is true or false

value Enduring concept of good and bad, right and wrong
Analyzing Your Audience before You Speak 95

TABLE 4.3 Adapting Your Message to Different Types of Audiences

Type of Audience Example How to Be Audience-Centered

Interested Mayors who attend a talk by the gov- ernor about increasing security and reducing the threat of terrorism

Acknowledge audience interest early in your speech; use the interest they have in you and your topic to gain and maintain their attention.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

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Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
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I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
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I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
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