Self-Persuasion

Self-persuasion is used to explain one aspect of social influence, under the premise that the person being persuaded takes an active role in persuading themselves to change their own attitude. Unlike the direct technique of ordinary persuasion, self-persuasion works indirectly, by placing a person in a situation that motivates them to talk themselves into changing, with no direct attempt made to convince them of anything; because the person ends up believing the motivation for the change came from within, rather than from another person's influence, self-persuasion is generally a more powerful form of persuasion than more traditional, direct techniques, and it plays an important role within social judgment theory, the elaboration likelihood model, cognitive dissonance and the narrative paradigm.