BY – EDGAR ENRIQUEZ
So, in my short lifetime I have made a couple friends that were majoring in psychology. I have also made a couple of friends who would, very bluntly, tell them they are wasting their time and money unless graduate school is an option.
And we all know the cost of graduate school can be a hefty ordeal to our wallets.
What I did not realize then is the best advice I could have offered these aspiring gurus of the mind and behavior is to minor in public relations! Why? – keep in mind, as I pull these keywords from your memory banks – psychographics, influence, emotions and once again, behavior!
Kind of reminds you of PR, right?
Minor or Double Major in PR
Psychology really has much to do with targeting audiences and analyzing psychographics. According to Lauren Spinelli’s articled titled Connecting the Dots Between Psychology and Public Relations, PR professionals aim to relay information that is persuasive, effective and elicits action. To influence, you need to know how people form attitudes. According to Spinelli, in psychology, an attitude refers to a set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors toward an object, person, or thing that can affect behavior.
Spinelli says attitude formation has three basic components: emotional, or how you feel about it; cognitive, or what you think about it; and behavioral, or what you are doing about it.
When developing campaigns, the professional holding a degree in psychology may perhaps work best around the nuances within social perception, such as positive and negative bias, cultural and context influences, and stereotypes.
The PR | Psychological Allure
So, you’ve determined who your target audience is and understand their attitudes, now, how will you grasp their attention? How will you ensure the message is retained? What’s effective?
Keep in mind, as I retrieve some basic key words from psychology 101 – the three processes involving memory – encoding, storage and retrieval.
According to Ritu Pant’s article, Visual Marketing: A Picture’s Worth 60,000 Words, it comes down to the way our brains receive and transmit information. It’s a matter of speed, as we process images 60,000 times faster than text. Also, 90% of information sent to the brain is visual and 93% of all human communication is visual.
To compete with 6 to 8 second attention spans – opt for visual strategies.
PR professionals often use storytelling elements. So, by incorporating a visual strategy onto your press releases, or merging your blog content onto an infographic, etc., your message can reach target audiences on a much profound or psychological level.
Allure can be a beautiful thing, my friends.
Final Thoughts
Further understanding the ubiquitous role of psychology within public relations can be beneficial. Topics worth consideration: emotional intelligence, gratification and so-called happiness hormones like dopamine, smartphone addiction, etc.
The last topic warrants ethical and moral discussion, as such, visual communication can often mislead in the form of propaganda, corporate green washing or may even exacerbate a crisis. So, there are many unscrupulous areas within the psychological aspect of PR to be wary of.
With that said, my friends immersed within the expertise of psychology, perhaps consider a job in PR. It may help finance for your graduate studies – just saying.
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