Persuasion GO: An activity for increasing students’ awareness of approaches to social influence

ABSTRACT

Courses: Persuasion, Compliance Gaining

Objectives: In this single-class activity, based loosely on the video-game sensation Pokémon GO, students learn about, enact, and “capture” a variety of compliance-gaining tactics. Along the way, they gain awareness of various approaches to persuasion, the implications of using such approaches, habitual persuasion, and the goals-plans-action model.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Tanya Walker for her kind assistance with creating materials.

Notes

1 Students enjoy Persuasion GO regardless of whether they know about or have played Pokémon GO. Because it is interactive and illustrates course concepts, we also imagine that it will be fun and educational long after the video game has fallen out of fashion.

2 Although as many as 64 distinct compliance-gaining tactics have been identified (Kellermann & Cole, 1994), we use Marwell and Schmitt’s (1967) seminal typology because it is both manageable and a staple of most persuasion classes.

3 For readers unfamiliar with Pokemon Go, “spawn locations” are part of the game's jargon.