Topic 1 – Central Route to Persuasion
I was seated at one of the public parks in town when two well dressed men and a woman approached me. I could not suspect them for robbers based on the way they were dressed and their expensive looking bags. Therefore, I concluded that they must have been salespeople for one of the companies.
They introduced themselves to me as KJ, DM and JM. They were different type of salespeople. They placed their bags on the bench I was sitting on and removed from them some booklets and tracts that they presented to me. They also removed bibles and went on a path to convince me about an everlasting kingdom and destruction of all rebellious people. They tried to convince me how most of us in different faiths and denominations are mistaken in our beliefs. They started an unceasing quotation of scriptures without letting me interrupt or even give my take on the scriptures they were reading. All of them were directed towards showing me how their way was the only right way and why all the other faiths are wrong in their beliefs. They almost convinced me were it not for the fact that I had studied the scriptures myself and been able to interpret them from the context. I understood, or rather came to understand that they used something my friend CK calls psychological attack to try to persuade me.
I established later that they had begun a new branch in our neighborhood and they had won a sizable number of followers from the neighborhood already. Their maintaining of a similar line of argument in convincing people about the validity of their beliefs as well as the threat of destruction convinced many in my neighborhood of their error and hence becoming followers of this sect that had established itself in our neighborhood.
