This book paints a different picture of audiences than the one many of us hold in our imagina-
tions, and by doing so redefi nes our roles as communicators. In the fi rst part of the book, we see
that audiences are not empty cups waiting to be fi lled with whatever information we would like
to pour into them but are instead highly selective and highly critical decision makers. Experienced
audiences already know what type of information they need from us even before they sit down to
read our documents or listen to our presentations. No matter how logical, reasonable, correct, and
factual our communications may be, if we fail to anticipate the information needs of our audiences,
we will fail to persuade them. Thus, the job of selecting persuasive content for our documents,
presentations, and meetings is less subjective than we fi rst imagined. It is highly constrained by the
audience’s information requirements.
Not only is our job as communicators less subjective than we thought, it is also less formidable.A large number of our audiences’ individual decisions can be viewed as instances of one of 13 major
decision types. Identify the type of decision that you desire your audience to make, and you can
more readily ascertain the type of information your audience will expect from you.
Perhaps the book’s biggest challenge to our image of audiences is its model of the cognitiveprocesses that underlie audience decision making. As Chapter 3 makes clear, real-world decision
making does not correspond to the abstract rules of logic, syllogistic reasoning, or statistics of the
classroom.^1 Nor does it correspond to preferences among formal gambles as decision research-
ers have often assumed. Instead, decision making is a content-specifi c and schema-based process.
Remarkably, it is only within the last several years that decision researchers have come to appreci-
ate the vital roles that context and basic psychological processes such as attention, comprehension,
memory, and emotion play in determining decision strategies.^2 And as we review communication
techniques in light of our model, we soon realize that, far from being arbitrary rules or mere con-
ventions, each communication technique directly impacts one or more of the cognitive processes
involved in audience decision making.
In the second part of the book, we see that despite our audiences’ insistence on being given justthe right information for making rational decisions, even the most sophisticated and statistically
savvy audience can be swayed as much by our style of writing or speaking as by the facts and fi gures
we present. This section disabuses us of any notion we may have had that facts and fi gures speak for
themselves. It also makes clear that who we are sometimes speaks louder that what we say. When
we fail to play our professional roles appropriately, we risk losing out to other communicators who
behave in ways that meet the audience’s expectations.