Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

166 Understanding Rational Decision Making

can also enhance comprehension and recall. Such overviews aid comprehension because they

enable the audience to activate the appropriate schema.^250 Placing recommendations and conclu-

sions at the beginning of documents and presentations, also known as placing the “Bottom Line Up

Front” or BLUF, serves a similar function and is standard practice for many U.S. military personnel.

For contextual information to have a positive effect, it must be presented fi rst, before the rest of

the message is delivered. In a test of the sequencing of contextual information, 48 undergraduates

were asked to listen to two ambiguous passages about familiar topics. Half of the listeners received

the contextual information required to activate the appropriate schema either just before or just

after hearing the passages. The other half received either no contextual information or inappropri-

ate contextual information about the passages. Listeners who were given the appropriate contextual

information prior to hearing the passages had signifi cantly higher recall of the material than the

other groups. Listeners given inappropriate contextual information recalled even less material than

those given no contextual information.^251 A similar study fi nds that readers who are given a title

at the end of a message show no better recall than those who are not exposed to a title at all.^252

It is important to note that introductory contextual information may fail to increase compre-

hension and recall if it is inconsistent with the audience’s existing schemata.^253 A study of medical

patients reading health care pamphlets found that confl icts between the pamphlets’ introductory

statements and the patients’ existing schemata hindered patients’ comprehension of the informa-

tion in the pamphlets.^254 The study’s authors recommend relating new information in health care

pamphlets to patients’ current schemata.

Genre Labels

When documents and presentations are introduced with a genre label such as strategic plan , medical

report , or sales pitch , audience members may activate a genre schema that infl uences their understanding

and recall of the information they subsequently read or hear.^255 As linguist Ronald Langacker explains,

Our knowledge of a given genre consists in a set of schemas abstracted from encountered

instances. Each schema represents a recurring commonality in regard to some facet of their

structure: their global organization, more local structural properties, typical content, specifi c

expressions employed, matters of style and register, etc.^256

In a study of a genre schema’s effect on recall, one group of college students received instruction

in the schema of scientifi c journal articles, a genre with which they were initially unfamiliar. A

second group received no schema instruction. The group that received instruction in the schema

of the genre recalled fi ve times as much information from a scientifi c article they subsequently read

as the second group.^257

Different genre labels can lead to different understandings of the same information. A test of the

effects of genre labels on comprehension found consistent differences in readers’ interpretations of

stories when they were told the story was an autobiography versus a work of fi ction.^258 A similar

study found differences in the audience’s interpretations of stories that were labeled either as spy

stories or travelogues.^259 Depending on the genre schema activated, even the same sentence can

serve very different functions. For example, in a news report, the statement “The Bellagio hotel in

Las Vegas cost $1.2 billion to build” functions to describe the amount of money it costs to build the

hotel. In an ad, the same sentence provides a reason for the audience to visit it.^260

The two mailings on the following pages from a city’s Chamber of Commerce illustrate the

importance of genre labels and genre-specifi c textual features in eliciting the desired decision (note:

the dates, the numbers, and the names and addresses of the Chamber and Chamber member have

been changed). Although both mailings had the same purpose, to collect dues from Chamber