Psychology of Communication and Marketing

The course aims to provide a systematic presentation of the main and most recent theoretical approaches to the study of persuasive communication and interpersonal influence, with specific reference to the state of the art within social psychology. Particular attention will also be paid to the various applicative areas of persuasive communication and interpersonal influence strategies. Specifically, class lectures will allow students to develop knowledge about the basic components involved in the persuasive processes and the theoretical approaches to the study of persuasive communication and interpersonal influence. Subsequently, group work, organized for attending students and for laboratory activities, will aim to pro-mote a deeper understanding of each theoretical model and / or specific phenomenon linked to persuasion and interpersonal influence, with reference to the various application areas. The course aims to develop knowledge and skills that will enable students to read and interpret the results of empirical research, and to incorporate them within the relevant theoretical and application areas. Stu-dents who attend lectures will also acquire a specific competence of the approaches of public service campaigns and on compliance gaining techniques. At the end of the course students will be able to understand the phenomena related to persuasion and in-terpersonal influence, to interpret and explain them according to the different theoretical reference models. In addition, they will be able to propose solutions to specific problems in the various areas of application (public communication, political communication, health promotion campaigns, etc.) of psychosocial theo-ries on attitudinal and behavioral change. The systematic review of the main theoretical perspectives will provide the basis for a greater awareness of the processes underlying persuasive communication and interpersonal influence. Through group work, students will have the opportunity to develop and formulate independent judgments about the phenomena involved in persuasive communication, as well as to reflect on the social and ethical responsibilities related to the application of the acquired knowledge. After an initial phase of class lectures, group work is planned to deepen and connect with specific themes related to persuasion and interpersonal influence. Such group work consists in the study of relevant mate-rials, primarily provided by the instructor. The students, from one side have to integrate materials studied individually with the other members of their working group and from the other, have to clearly and coher-ently present this material in the classroom in a way that is useful for their classmates. In this way, we will try to stimulate not only critical thinking about the topics and the ability to work in a group, but also the communication skills and abilities necessary to manage a presentation in front of an audience. Through the group activity (illustrated in point 2.2.4), students will be able to improve their ability to manage, autonomously and in a group, the different stages of knowledge about the topics under study. In addition to the mere study of the material provided by the instructor to carry out the group work, students will be stimulated to integrate this material with additional material (movies, videos, commercials, etc), auton-omously found and deemed useful to stimulate debate and reflection on the phenomena.