In this chapter, we discuss both the structural and the packaging perspectives in conceptual terms. It is worth noting that the communications literature is diffuse and poorly integrated. Some of it reads more like self-help books. To be fair, it does draw on many different disciplines – some more rigorous; others less so. As such, our purpose here is to provide a clear framework for the pollster and practitioner. There is considerable art and creativity to effective communications. Look at Cannes Lion every year- the Oscars of the PR and Marketing world. There is incredible creativity in the crafting of impactful messages. But public opinion is public opinion – with a few basic compositional truths. By nailing them down, the pollster is able to provide structure to the communications process.

This chapter describes how to continue to develop as a leader. Great leadership is not something you ever really attain, but something you are constantly striving toward. Innovation and creativity help nurture your leadership potential; resting on your laurels leads to complacency and stale leadership. As with all things, this does not come without some work and introspection. Introspection is the work, and most leaders fail to develop because they’re unwilling or unable to take the extra steps to examine themselves and their group deeply, find out what’s working and what’s not, and come up with fixes. We discuss the importance of getting evaluations and feedback on your performance as a leader, and how to incorporate that feedback in a healthy manner. We discuss the importance of availability and accessibility. We talk about the importance of leading by example, “walking the walk.” We go into the importance of clear, concise, and honest messaging, as well as embracing change and learning from your mistakes. We reemphasize the importance of diversity and conclude with some core principles and values.

Chapter 10 summarizes the book’s principles and discusses future research directions.

Chapter 7 differentiates processes of attitude formation and change, with special attention to the influence of prior attitudes on the decision to seek out a persuasive message and the ultimate impact of a message or behavioral intervention, particularly in combination with goals of action and inaction. The key elements of persuasive communications and interventions to change behavior include behavioral recommendations, persuasive arguments, the communicator, and affective feelings. Message actionability is discussed in the context to concept priming, numbers of recommendations including in a message or intervention, and other factors. These elements and the processes leading to behavior are discussed.

Chapter 1 presents the objectives of the book, which blends a traditional monograph with topics of contemporary interest and an analysis of attitude and behavior change in real and virtual contexts. Definitions and a overview of the theory are presented.

Chapter 8 describes how prior attitudes shape the processing of persuasive messages and behavioral interventions in fundamental ways. First, people select messages and interventions in ways that minimize their likely impact. They seek pro-violence messages when they already espouse pro-violence beliefs and healthy eating messages when they already follow healthy diets. These decisions, of course, decrease the probability of changing attitudes and behaviors that have negative social and health effects, which has led to my research on finding methods to decrease selective exposure biases. For example, because selective exposure is often tied to a low sense of one’s ability to self-defend if one’s attitudes or behaviors come under attack, reassuring an audience that they will only change if they want to is often sufficient to increase exposure to messages and enrollment in behavioral interventions. In addition, understanding attitude and behavior change requires understanding activation of prior attitudes and other information contained in the message. For example, easy-to-access prior attitudes generally decrease change in response to new information but may also increase change when they facilitate comparison with new information. Furthermore, when people who are called to report an attitude retrieve the initial basis for their attitude, the structure of that information in memory drives the degree of attitude change in that situation. Different sleeper effects illustrate such effects of the initial representations of the information contained in a persuasive message.

Chapter 9 discusses how messages designed with the intent of influencing behavior and behavioral interventions are successful when they influence factors in the person and the situation that ultimately make those programs actionable. Actionability is the probability that the message or intervention communicates or enables performance of behavioral recommendations . First, a message or behavioral intervention can stimulate the cognitive, motivational, or behavioral processes that ultimately make the individual perform the recommended behavior. Second, it can promote behavioral recommendations that fit within the world in which potential actors live. These factors and relevant data are discussed.

This chapter analyzes President Trump’s remarks at the 2017 Black History Month Listening Session, in particular his repeated discussion of the seemingly irrelevant subject of “fake news.” Through a framing analysis (Goffman 1974) of Trump’s language, we make sense of Trump’s seemingly non-sequitur topic shifts and illustrate how the actions he takes through these shifts function as strategic attempts to build relationships with African American participants in the session. Our analysis illustrates how Trump strives to build relationships with his African American interlocutors through first praising well-known African American figures and then shifting frames to commiserate about the news media. While praising such figures functions as Trump’s direct attempt to align with the broader African American community, making disparaging remarks about news media functions to indirectly align Trump with the politically conservative African Americans in this interaction, sometimes through their laughter at his jokes. Like many politicians, Trump elicits support as much from his implicit relational messages as from the content of what he says.

This chapter analyzes over fifty cases in which Trump sought to remove confrontational protestors during his campaign rallies. Consideration of the linguistic and semiotic form of Trump’s instructions shows that, most often, they consisted of a grammatical imperative, “Get them out,” addressed to his supporters or to event security. The activity of removing protestors became a tool of interactional messaging which not only allowed Trump to signify about his own self-image but also created opportunities for supporters to embody and enact the political project that Trump advocated. The semiotic notion of “iconicity,” in which a sign represents by way of a resemblance or similarity with its object, provides a key to understanding these events. Trump’s ejecting protestors not only allowed Trump to communicate an image of strong, masculine leadership, but also diagrammed aspects of his proposed policies. The very action of ejecting protestors served as a kind of portrait in miniature of Trump’s promised immigration policy; ejected protestors stood for those persons labelled illegal immigrants who would, Trump promised, be deported. “Get them out” thus came to allude to a large-scale redistribution of power and agency, a new morally righteous populism, that his leadership would bring about.