ABSTRACT
Virtually all elements of organizational communication include some element of persuasion. It might be an interpersonal communication, such as a manager approaching an employee with a stretch goal or the opportunity to work on a new project. One school of thought, behaviorism, contends that human behavior will most clearly reveal what a person is thinking and that persuasion is most effectively exercised at the behavioral level. Learning theory that dominated educational psychology during the first half of the twentieth century was mainly behaviorist in nature and represented an approach to psychology that emphasized observable, measurable behavior and discounted the role or value of mental activity. The cognitivist school basically went inside the head of the learner to see what mental processes were activated and changed during the course of learning. In cognitive theories, knowledge is viewed as symbolic mental constructs in the learner’s mind, and the learning process is the means by which the symbolic representations are committed to memory.
